I have long believed that the will of the people, rhetoric not withstanding, does not include educating our children to the same high levels. Patrick Finn gives voice to my personal observations that public education is, at best, different for the working classes than it is for those who are expected to achieve powerful status in the community. School as an institution is designed to maintain the status quo. Don't educate the masses to such a high level they'll want to change anything. Give the students of the upper middle classes powerful levels of literacy fitting for the positions they will inherit.
Inspired by the work of Paolo Freire, Finn examines domestic literacy, a combination of performative literacy (decoding, sentence structure knowledge) and functional literacy (ability to read USA Today and complete a job application), suggesting that the system maintains a basic level of literacy that is sufficient so the masses are employable and content but not so much that they will seek power. We reserve powerful literacyÖthe ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesizeÖfor the children of the middle and upper classes.
The divisions are effectively reinforced in how we talk to our students and in what we expect from them. Because the strategies for this low level of literacy include many skill-driven, fragmented activities, students are not encouraged to use their imaginations nor to create ‹what ifŠ situations. Boredom sets in early, so does checking out. Functional literacy is unexciting and dull. If that's what reading is about, who needs it. Education is never neutral, Freire informs us; it either domesticates or liberates.
The discourse of school, Finn explains, is different from the discourse found in working class homes where communication is intimate and implicit, where context supplements language. Schools demand explicit communication. There is a basic mismatch between what students bring to school and what school expects from them.
There are no villains here. The working class does not embrace what the teacher has to offerÖhigh status knowledgeÖbecause their experiences have not proven that such knowledge is beneficial for their lives. In exchange for compliance, teachers agree not to demand too much from students, and students agree to participate in the appearance of school and not be too disruptive. An oppositional education model rules by mutual consent.
Literacy With An Attitude is a must read for all educators. Finn provokes the readers into an objective, and sometimes painful, examination of our classrooms and schools, discovering the institutional tracking that is so entrenched we don't even notice it. Finn concludes the work with an introduction to a teacher network bent on providing powerful literacy to all children. The reader will close the book reluctantly, lost in reflecting on "what if" possibilities.
David Tyack's One Best System is an excellent companion read. Tyack delivers the 200-year-old history of public education, the how and why of developing one system for all students. Respecting diversity was never the intent, nor was educating everyone beyond the basics. Together these two books challenge us to reform our schools to reflect the needs of our students.
