23
Tim Crane Dr. Lynch-Biniek ENU 405 4.30.10 Everything is a Text, But This… is a Pedagogy Reading Word/World: For Freire, literacy was an “inherently political project” (Literacy 7). As the core subject of his personal teaching, he saw it as the crux of any effective educ ational effort. Freire writes on the dynamic interconnectedness of language and reality as a means of explaining the need for literacy education. Mastery of language is a necessity for democratic life. Our ability to use language reflects our circumstances as well as allows us to reflect on our circumstances, and in turn, alter them in praxis. Just as he binds language and reality, Freire also refuses to dichotomize reading and writing ( 33). Many teach writi ng as if students have to earn the privilege of writing by reading what others have written. This approach assumes that to become literate, students must first read what they are told to read and only then shall they be capable of making a worthy contribution in the form of writing. It bears resemblance to Britton’s analogy of “forcing starving people to master the use of a knife and fork before allowing them to eat” (Hartwell 448). Freire resisted this notion, vehemently. Literacy as he sought to realize it was not only a matter of reading words on a page, but also the world surrounding us. The acts of reading novels, newspapers, and the like (instances of the word) have relevance, but these texts have their basis in reality: conditions of the writer’s life, corporations printing the news, even expectations the writer has of the readers. These aspects contribute to the world and demand just as much literacy and criticism as what we find on the page. Sharon Crowley attempts to link literacy and pedagogy from an unusual angle. Her A
