NLA: Respecting by listening

[AWilder106 at aol.com]

David and Rich,

I am in favor of getting people to be able to think critically about how they 
are governed.  This means asking questions and getting information.  It means 
history, politics and the liberal arts.  Small "c" capitalism is about 
improving what you've got, and education fits right in there.  It also  seems 
to me that greed doesn't know any "-ism." 

 I remember taping one adult ed student for a project, and he said something 
like this:  some of us weren't meant to have anything, that's the way the 
system works.   He had carefully thought over the circumstances of his life: 
poor, Catholic, crowded parochial schools, alcoholic parents, and a learning 
disability.  This is what he came up with. 

 What I plead for here is some sort of critical attention to the thinking 
process and an avoidance of using words and their concepts which overlook or 
paint out a careful construction of  complex  realities.  A good place to 
start with students is their own lives and the difficulties they encounter. 
There is a way of respecting people's realities by listening to them and 
starting from where they are.  How many people have been carefully listened 
to by one other person? 

People have to own words and literacy, they have to work themselves into the 
social dialogue, ideally, in my view, by building up--or in-- from their own 
realities.

Andrea