Question Authority

A large part of what we believe and understand about the world comes from where and when we grew up. As a teenager in Muskegon, MI, in the 1960s, I believed news reports about America winning the war in Vietnam. In high school, I never questioned the central role white men played in history, politics, and science, never analyzed the roots of African Americans’ long struggle with poverty, and never heard about our country’s Japanese internment camps during World War II.

Similarly, my mother grew up a German youth of the late 1930s hearing the emotional strains of “Raise the Flag” and news reports that Germany was always victorious in battle. But she never heard about the Holocaust. Only when my grandfather tuned into BBC broadcasts did they hear a different perspective about the war. Over the years, my family members were passive recipients of information, accepting and believing a media that only gave one perspective.

Our understanding of the world is based on the information we take in, but what we read and hear is just a slice of reality. When we return from a vacation, we tend to share interesting highlights that frame other’s perceptions. The same goes for authors, journalists, and filmmakers—they carefully pick and choose their own realities to persuade, entertain, or make a point. The media and our educational system have long taught us to avoid challenging the status quo. But as educators, we can teach our students to become deeper thinkers and to understand that there are many ways of understanding a topic. Critical consciousness begins when we recognize that all text and images are not neutral, but just one interpretation of what really happened.

Librarians can help kids expand their view of the world by introducing them to critical literacy. Critical literacy encourages readers to question an author’s intentions and to examine issues from multiple perspectives to avoid simplistic statements. It supports a more complex and nuanced understanding of events, recognizing social and political influences. We all know how politically incorrect it is to say, “All Chinese/Jews/men are _____.” These groups are too diverse to capture their essence in a single statement. A comment such as “Columbus discovered America” doesn’t adequately describe the indigenous peoples’ point of view about what happened when the explorer landed in the Caribbean. The same goes for “The Civil War was about slavery.” It doesn’t begin to describe the tensions felt by a nation torn apart by numerous pressures, such as high taxes, excessive federal tariffs, and regional patriotism in the South.

Teaching kids to second-guess everything they read isn’t easy—in fact, it’s downright controversial. After all, our educational culture promotes sitting back and soaking up information. Sure, it’s easier to continue thinking that teaching is just about kids, books, and skills. But it’s a lot more than that—it’s about teaching them to be analytical thinkers. It’s our duty to teach kids to ask serious questions about the authority of the words they read. Our schools need to teach that being skeptical of the curriculum is acceptable. In fact, it’s the only way to arrive at a balanced view of the world and other cultures. Most importantly, as part of a democracy, students need to learn to take action and speak up in polite but assertive ways to redress past injustices. Taking action can involve banning soda from their diet after watching a particular advertisement or increasing public awareness about a matter of interest through flyers, posters, blogs, and speaking at public events. Sending postcards, letters, and petitions to people in positions of power can lead to changes in domestic laws and foreign policy on issues ranging from the environment to our involvement in the war in Iraq.

First off, our children need to know that the textbooks and literature they read can subtly support historical injustices because they’re written with someone else’s values and version of the truth. When I was a fifth-grade teacher, I used an American history textbook that devoted chapters to the European exploration, colonization, and the move west in the Americas. There was only brief mention that the colonizers carried diseases that killed an estimated 20 million Native Americans. My students dutifully repeated textbook comments that Andrew Jackson stood for the common man, but never once did they consider the irony that the most common men (and women) were the black slaves that Jackson owned and members of the Creek and Seminole tribes that he killed.

Librarians can enhance kids’ perceptions about important historical and current events—from racial profiling to the war on terrorism—by gathering and highlighting information and skills that’ll help students question the many ongoing stereotypes that persist today. In a lesson about the Civil War, for instance, librarians can go beyond the conflict between the North and South by uncovering materials about the role of women, blacks, and children as described in the book How I Found the Strong (Houghton, 2004) by Margaret McMullan. Specifically identifying a gender or ethnic group in a historical event makes that person or group important and visible. By doing so, the world isn’t strictly seen through the eyes of white men but through the eyes of all. All people take action, participate, and share in important decision making, as Molly Bang shows in her book Nobody in Particular: One Woman’s Fight to Save the Bay (Holt, 2000).

No one technique can ensure a child has critical literacy skills. However, there are ways to help students question what they read and understand issues in complex ways. “Problem posing” can begin as early as kindergarten. Start by asking questions that can challenge ideas in a picture book. After reading The Giving Tree (HarperCollins, 1964) by Shel Silverstein, I asked my sixth graders a series of questions designed to help them see the book in a different light: “Who does the book favor, the mother (tree) or the child?” “Who is marginalized?” “What would’ve been some ways to present this story from a different perspective?” “What kind of action could I take to promote equity and justice?” These questions led students to conclude that the book represented a generous tree whose long suffering goes unnoticed by an unappreciative little boy. A crucial part of the lesson involves students taking some kind of action to alter the outcome. My kids suggested recasting the book’s ideas to show the boy making dinner for his busy mother, being grateful for gifts, and caring for his mother in her old age. After examining the story with a critical eye, students saw a different perspective and took specific steps to change the situation.

Students are then asked to devise alternative views by writing down examples or improvising a dramatic scene. In Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type (S & S, 2000) by Doreen Cronin, a hilarious picture book about compromise, cows negotiate with Farmer Brown to improve their working conditions by sending him typed notes. After some questioning, my students recognized that in the real world the cows represented workers and the farmer their boss. Students then compared the farmer’s angry words and body language with the cows’ more polite letter writing and concluded that the author favored the workers over the boss.

Suddenly, a cute story about a farm turned into a lesson about negotiation. Again, a critical part of my lesson involved helping students decide on a course of action. I explained the power of a unified voice by telling them a true story about a second-grade class at Ann Leavenworth School in Fresno, CA, that wrote a letter to their councilman, Henry Periera, asking him to construct a sidewalk strictly for children’s use. The kids got what they asked for—a sidewalk was eventually constructed. Then I suggested that my students take action by joining forces (like the cows in the book) to write a letter to their principal (boss) requesting new playground equipment or changes in school policy.

Another approach to teaching critical literacy involves forming several small book clubs in which students read and discuss titles representing different perspectives of the same theme. To give students a multifaceted view on the subject of immigration, I handed them a set of books, including A Step from Heaven (Front Street, 1997) by An Na about a girl from Korea whose family members dream of America but have mixed feelings upon their arrival; Habibi (S & S, 1997) by Naomi Shihab Nye, which recounts cultural prejudice as a young American-Palestinian girl falls in love with a Jewish boy; Esperanza Rising (Scholastic, 2000) by Pamela Muñoz Ryan about a family who must flee from its wealthy estate in Mexico to pick crops in the Central Valley of California; Beverly Naidoo’s The Other Side of Truth (HarperCollins, 2001) about a sister and brother who are forced to leave Nigeria for England because of political problems faced by their journalist father; Karen Hesse’s Letters from Rifka (Holt, 1992), a story about a Jewish Ukrainian’s journey to Ellis Island; and Immigrant Kids (Puffin, 1999), a nonfiction book by Russell Freedman.

This approach to critical literacy involves students reading and discussing each book’s different perspectives on immigration. A class can explore the various family dynamics and settings, reasons for leaving, and cultural clashes by outlining them on a large chart. The point is to explain that the stereotypical immigrant experience is complex and represents a range of different stories. This lesson can be bolstered by asking an immigrant to speak to your class about his personal journey.

Media specialists are in the perfect position to organize topical book discussions relating to state content standards by selecting books that are specifically meant to enlighten teachers’ perspectives as they prepare for complex, multifaceted lessons in history, science, and English. For a lesson on American history, offer Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present (new edition HarperCollins, 2003). It’s an alternative version of history with a slant toward telling the stories of African Americans, unions, women, Indians, and any other nonstereotypical group that’s underrepresented in history books. Charles C. Mann shocked history buffs in his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005), which carefully compiles information about different migrations to the Americas. In White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America (Da Capo, 2005), Stephen Brumwell complicates our understanding of the French and Indian War as he describes savagery on both sides.

Fifth- and eighth-grade teachers can each read one of these colonial history books and share the various classroom activities that they’ve devised. Many of these books are available at Amazon.com or Audible.com in MP3 format, which allows teachers to download audiobooks and listen to them on their commute to work. By reviewing state standards and teachers’ lesson plans, media specialists can organize annotated subject lists of films, books, and Web sites describing how each provides different religious, cultural, and philosophical perspectives.

As schools’ information specialists, librarians promote critical literacy by purchasing, organizing, and advancing the use of a wide range of materials for students and teachers that provoke discussion and advance equity. When purchasing library materials, keep in mind that periodicals, online resources, films, and documentaries need to provide fresh and unique perspectives that deepen simplistic and stereotypical assumptions often offered by school textbooks. Love Thy Neighbor: The Tory Diary of Prudence Emerson, Greenmarsh, Massachusetts, 1774 (Scholastic, 2003) by Ann Turner gives a view of the American Revolutionary War from the perspective of a Tory girl who is so radically different from the perspective provided by standard fifth-grade history texts. Song of the Trees (Dial, 1975) by Mildred D. Taylor, which details the life of an African-American family in Mississippi in the 1930s, is another book that doesn’t offer a traditional viewpoint.

There are numerous books specifically for teachers that provide in-depth approaches to teaching critical literacy. My book Critical Literacy (Scholastic, 2004) gives step-by-step examples of critical responses to texts and a large bibliography to help get teachers and librarians started. Also, some online resources can help teachers and library media specialists learn more about the theory and practice of critical literacy.

Librarians can also promote the reading, viewing, and discussion of new ideas by organizing student, teacher, and parent book and film discussions. They may take a while to organize, but in the end, all of your long-term planning and promotion will be well worth it. You can easily publicize a weekly short documentary series at a booktalk, in classrooms, over the intercom, or at a staff or PTA meeting. Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power (Media Education, 2001), which describes the corporate values implicit in Disney movies, would be a provocative film to include in your series. For older students, perspectives on many topics such as history and geography are available on film at First Run Icarus Films. A Friday night movie fund-raiser might also be a fun way to increase the consciousness of parents and the community, as well as earn money for your school.

Ultimately, the goal of critical literacy is to create a more equitable, just world. The first step is for students to recognize an author’s implicit bias, whether in books, newspapers, films, or speeches. And that’s where librarians come in—by teaching students the skills necessary to become critical thinkers. Only then can they take some kind of transformative action that will make a difference in the world. Otherwise, the knowledge of past and present injustices can lead to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness because the status quo remains unchanged. Hopefully, critical literacy will build active and challenging (yet polite) thinkers who can motivate a citizenry to explore the truth, while democratizing and creating equality and justice among people.