KAT Promotes Literacy for Democracy

Reflections on Literacy

Addressing Your Concerns:
Literacy: Necessary but NOT Sufficient

Gleanings from the Field:
From Vocabulary Exercises to KAT Applications

Notes about the Centerfold Lesson
Using KAT to Enhance Literacy, Comprehension & Civic Action

CenterFold Lesson
Aspects of the Literacy Issue for KAT Study

Adding to Your Resource Base

BreakOut Lesson
Literacy for Democray

A KAT BreakOut LESSON

LITERACY FOR DEMOCRACY

Objectives: Students will be able to identify situations where advanced literacy/analysis skills are/have been used to preserve or expand a democratic system of self-governance, and explain the relevance of these skills to their freedom and way of life.

Skills:

• Reading for Meaning
• Inquiry-based Research
• Critical thinking
• Creative applications

Curriculum Standards: This lesson supports numerous curriculum standards in the areas of language arts (reading comprehension, research, writing and/or oral expression), and history, civics and other social studies. Depending on specific examples studied, there may also be serious treatment of the roles of science and mathematics in society.

Materials: A variety of possibilities could be used, depending on student level/curricular focus. Materials might include any of the following, among others:

• Pertinent news articles (teachers can maintain ongoing folders categorized by topics of interest)
• Legislation/statutes relevant to children – such as a copy of a state school code requiring youngsters of certain ages to attend school, or license their dogs, or wear bicycle helmets, or become vaccinated…. (Use primary sources as much as possible. Legislative offices and reference librarians can be helpful on this.)
• Political Platform statements, or Position Papers, or Documents/books like Mein Kampf (Hitler), or other declarations of ideology
• Controversial Court Cases (Good source of student materials: Constitutional Rights Foundation: www.crf-usa.org)
• Ballots and ballot questions (Use primary sources, when possible. Sample ballots should be available in newspapers or from your county election board.)
• Advertising (particularly those with fine print caveats)
• Stories that highlight prohibitions against educating slaves in America during the 1800s, and tracing the expansion of human rights with the expansion of education/literacy.
• Stories of immigrant groups whose efforts to become literate in their adopted society provided stability and upward mobility
• Ethical debates on aspects of science/health (cloning, assisted suicide, insurance for risky personal behaviors, etc.) or on issues when private rights conflict with perspectives of public interests.
• Articles about censorship (Good source: New Jersey State Bar Foundation: Students’ Corner www.njsbf.com)

Engage:

Ask students if their freedom could ever depend on their ability to read carefully and think about information analytically.

Ask them for examples of where being highly literate gives people more freedom than people who have poor literacy skills.

Ask students why they think there were prohibitions against teaching slaves in the U.S. to read during the 1800s.

Explain:

You can explain to your students that according to Philadelphia Reads (www.phila.gov/philareads ), 85 percent of the children who appear in juvenile court are behind in their reading skills.

Furthermore, the overall prison population in the U.S. with literacy skills below a 9th grade level ranges between 60 –75 percent [from Governor’s Mentoring Initiative, Florida (www.flamentoring.org) and from California State Polytechnic University (www.csupomona.edu)]
Studies show that repeat offenses (recidivism) declines as literacy increases.
Discuss the implications of these statistics.

Explore:

President Bush made these comments in a radio address on April 21, 2001: “The forces of democracy in our hemisphere are strong, but they are threatened by poverty and illiteracy…So, at this Summit we are discussing a very practical agenda to strengthen democracy. We must tear down the barriers of ignorance and illiteracy that limit the ambitions of so many children in our hemisphere, and feed their frustrations.”

Consider and research what literacy has to do with institutions of democracy OTHER than prison.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” What does this mean in terms of our actions?

Similarly, the Episcopal Conference of Angola and Sao-Tome in Angola declared on October 15, 2003 that illiteracy is one of the main obstacles to the construction of democracy in many countries.

Frederick Douglass was a Maryland-born slave turned abolitionist. His drive for literacy and education in many ways reflected his struggle - and his people’s struggle – for freedom. ( see www.ggw.org/freenet/f/fdm/backgrnd.html and www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass )

How does poor literacy impede democracy?

Extend:

Read (or become familiar with) the arguments in the Federalist Papers and/or by Charles Bahmueller (www.civnet.org/journal/issue1/bahm2.htm ) about the importance of “pluralism” (an old-fashioned term suggesting diversity) and multiple associations in order to preserve liberty and overcome isolation.

Consider the role of literacy in making this possible.

Evaluate:

Students can be evaluated by oral or written presentations in which they are asked how public expenditures on advanced literacy can be justified. Criteria for differentiating and assessing their work would be based on the level of substance and documentation of their arguments.

An alternative assessment could be to ask the students to write a research report about the advocacy for an issue of social/political improvement that relied heavily on skills of literacy. Students should be able to give several examples of documents, speeches, legislative proposals, petitions, or other evidence of “tools” used in the advocacy campaign. (For instance, Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech is a masterpiece of literary rhetoric, drawing on several other renown writers. Other examples could be Thomas Paine’s pamphlets on liberty during the Revolutionary War; or the roles of Frederick Douglass’ newspapers, autobiographies or speeches or Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the abolitionist movement; or more recently, writings such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as voices in contemporary environmental movements.)

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