Teaching Critical Literacy With The Consideration of Privilege

                Ernest Morell spells out the many ways in which he has practiced using critical literacy in his classrooms and seminars which have been helpful in the instruction of urban youth. He systematically goes through a wide range of traditional schools of thought and give power to how they are effective, with the intention to give the reader insight to how he has used these schools of thought in his own practices. By laying out the framework for the multiple ways to utilize critical literacies in the classroom, Morell’s focused classrooms were in Los Angeles in which two schools had varying demographics, though the classrooms he worked in act as a representation of lower class demographics that traditionally have lower grades, graduation rates and college acceptance. The practices he uses allow for students to become more connected with the educational process to better their understanding of the importance of critical literacies. Similarly, Patrick Camangian uses critical literacies to teach autoethnography to urban youth.

                Camangian’s teaching engages students through the teaching of autoethnography to develop compassionate classrooms, and promote self and social reflection (179). This form of pedagogy allows his students to build projects that are not only self-reflective and exemplary of issues in their personal society, but also show that these urban youth are able to produce written work and express critical literacy at the college level. This teaching not only empowers the students, but opens up multiple avenues for the students to realize their potential. This pedagogy becomes more experiential as the students become more involved with the research that they do and conduct interviews and work outside of the classroom, allowing students the opportunity to become more critical in the process in which they take while they conduct research. Outside of the research the students conduct, they spend time on reflection to examine how these things have been working to affect them personally in their own lives. This self-reflection allows for the students to take on a more personal approach to think critically and analyze the work that they are doing. This reflection allows for deeper critical literacies on socioeconomic, racial, and class differences that are working with and against the students. Peggy McIntosh writes and essay that follows a similar way of thinking as she unpacks white privilege.

                Though McIntosh studies feminism, she makes a great comparative analysis to the unconscious thinking between men’s privilege and white privilege. This thinking allows her to become critical towards the way in which men think about their own privilege and unconsciously oppress women by means of not giving up privilege but attempting to allow more openness to women in a patriarchal society. She explains that this form of though is unconscious thinking towards the privilege that men have and not realizing the affordances that being male allows. Similarly, she acknowledges that being white leads to this unconscious thinking. McIntosh lists 26 statements that bring attention to the reader of the many affordances they have being white or if they were white. On a macro level she realizes that racism still exists in our society and that we are not all free yet alone treated equally. McIntosh does not give any answer to these problems but offers ideas to restructure thinking towards how we think as a society to make changes. This way of thinking relates to Morell’s thoughts on critical literacy and Camangian’s practices in teaching autoethnography in that we need to think critically about our own affordances as an individual and try to work out how we can make social change for the better.