Critical Literacy in Schools
What is Critical Literacy?
• Critical literacy not only emphasizes the ability
to read and write but the ability to use
reading and writing as the basis of higherorder thinking skills that allow a person to
analyze and critically evaluate what is read
and written (Tozer, Senese, & Violas, 2009).
The Importance of Critical Literacy
in Schools
• Empowers Students
– Change as members of society
– Change society as members
• Students acquire analytical skills
– Gained from support, guidance, and modeling
• Refocuses education
• Nurtures the ability to see what
secures/endangers freedom
• Stresses the importance of dialogue between
teacher and students
Leaders in Critical Literacy & Pedagogy
 Paolo Freire
 1921-1997
 Ira Shor
 Howard Zinn
 1922-2010
Paolo Freire
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Left law to become an educator
Had a reputation as a progressive educator
Icon of social change through education
Participated in educational movements in
the early 60s
Forced into exile from Brazil after he spear
headed a program to make five million
adults literate and politically progressive
threatened land owners
Developed the “banking” concept of
knowledge
Several social movements have adopted
Freire’s ideology
Taught at Harvard and Geneva
Freirian Pedagogy
• Considered an alternate view of a way to
communicate between teachers and students
• Schooling as a means to a socially just society
• Adopted as a means for breaking away from
political and economic oppression in third
world countries
• In industrialized nations often viewed as a tool
for political empowerment
Ira Shor
• Fascinated with the
work of Paulo Freire
• Grew up in a white
working-class family in
the Bronx
• Professor of English at
the City University of
New York Graduate
Center and the College
of Staten Island
Shor’s Pedagogy
• Works to integrate critical notions of social critique
with techniques of pedagogy in ways that create new
educational possibilities
• The end goal is to produce a thoughtful, just, and
democratic education
• Engages students in a way that subverts the
exploitation of the subordinate classes, the manner in
which social structures reproduce themselves in the
everyday life of the classroom, and the process by
which authority regulates the poor
• The classroom is a venue for the construction of
knowledge
Howard Zinn
• Historian, playwright, & activist
• Grew up in Brooklyn in a workingclass immigrant family
• Opposition for war and passion for
history shaped by his service in WWII
• Involved in the Civil Rights
Movement when he taught at
Spelman until he was fired for his
support of student protestors
• Served as professor of Political
Science at Boston University until his
retirement in 1988
Zinn’s Viewpoints
• Recognizes the importance of social change
through resistance and protest
• Identifies the educational system as preparing
young people to live with contradictions and
to accept those contradictions as being OK.
• Maintains Freire's sentiments that schools are
not providing students with an accurate
picture of reality
Implementing Critical Literacy
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Consists of acts of cognition
The authentic act of liberation is a praxis
Resist the banking methods of domination
Teachers and students should be co-investigators
inside the classroom
• Focus on the community and humanization
• Question the status quo
• Involve students with an on-going problem that is
happening in real-time
References
• Tozer, S.E.; Senese, G. Vilas, P. (2009). School
and society: Historical and contemporary
perspectives. McGraw Hill: New York, NY.
• Lownd, Peter. (n.d.). A Brief Biography of
Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire Institute. Retrieved
on 4/21/11 from
http://www.paulofreireinstitute.org/
• Howard Zinn. Retrieved on 4/21/11 from
http://www.howardzinn.org/