Running head: COMMUNITY LITERACY: A LOOK FROM THREE PERSPECTIVES

Community Literacy: A Look from Three Perspectives Rebekah Phillips Community Literacy Professor Russell October 21, 2011

COMMUNITY LITERACY Community Literacy: A Look from Three Perspectives

The three readings discussed in this book each present well-planned and carefully thought out ideas on the topic of community literacy. Each article approached community literacy in different lights, such as personal identification, communicating and intentionally stirring up conflict, while presenting equally valid ways of looking at this diverse and often complicated topic. The first article, by Anne Ruggles Gere, focused on the smallest component of community: a small gathering of people who workshop together to find meaning and understanding in their lives and the lives of the people around them. The second article, by Higgins, Long and Flower, instead focused on addressing the question, what is community literacy? In the final article, by Eli Goldblatt, the reader is introduced to the often radical theories held by a man named Saul Alinsky, and how Alinksy rallied his Chicago neighborhood and ultimately changed it for the better. Each of these articles refer to different cities and backgrounds, and yet manage to keep the main question of community literacy in focus: How can we help this community help themselves? Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition, by Anne Ruggles Gere, was perhaps the only article that was not based around a university or professional business groups assistance. It is instead the story of a group of women living in the San Francisco area who have formed a small community through their writing workshop. The Tenderloin Womens Writing Workshop shows the power that workshops have everywhere: they give their members a confidence boost, affirming the members in their histories, and build a community around the written word. It shows that learning is possible and should be encouraged outside of academia.

COMMUNITY LITERACY For aspiring writers, the workshop is the greatest resource. As Gere explains, the way writing is taught in schools places more emphasis on making the writer work on a series of

defined goals that rarely have room for creativity or self-expression. Self-help books through the centuries have emphasized this point. Sarah Hale, the editor of Godeys Ladies Magazine in the 1800s, included advice to aspiring writers, recommending that they keep a journal of their private thoughts as well as read actively in order to learn from the great writers of the time. In this way she championed the idea of personal writing for the women of that era. Gere lists several more examples of advice such as this, and in her research goes back to the Colonial days, where Benjamin Franklin joined a sort of workshop in which he and the other members wrote and shared essays on certain subjects (p. 40). Geres main point in writing this article is to show that writing workshops are capable of building up towns by focusing on the community and individuals within that community. As a reader, I agree with her position. These workshops are great assets to the people of small towns, and will undoubtedly make community ties grow stronger, as the act of writingespecially personal writingdraws people together. By writing about shared experiences, the women attending these workshops will be able to bond and work together to overcome hardships. The second article, Community Literacy: A Rhetorical Model for Personal and Public Inquiry, begins immediately by proposing a question to the reader: What is community literacy? The authors go on to explain their views on what the subject really is: an invitation for others to learn, talk and discuss various goings-on in original ways. These specific others would generally include the urban youth, their parents, and all inter-city teens. This article is focused on making the community work together, bringing up points such as, What should we, as a community, do? and How can we, as a community, reason together? (p. 169). The authors

COMMUNITY LITERACY stress the importance of communication. One example which frequently reoccurs in this article

involves a debate between landlords and their tenants. Through specific questions and strategies, each side is prompted to, in a sense, walk the proverbial mile in another persons shoes. The purpose of these questions is to focus on common concerns, and deliberately seek out opposing views in the hopes of effectively communicating the opinions of both sides. There are always diversity and conflicts when people of different backgrounds encounter one another, and this article wholeheartedly welcomes it. Always stressed is the importance of overcoming barriers, engaging your opponent, and making sure each side is well aware of where the other people stand. Ideas given to help the opposing sides communicate include telling personal stories and prompting the speaker to elaborate on their concerns. One specific tool the authors championed is rivaling, or having the writers to imagine the different interpretations of a specific question or conflict, which forces the writer to enter the mindset of their opponents point of view. You may be willing to do this, the authors suggest their students say, but I would choose this option instead because I fear those consequences more (p. 186). This allows the person making the crucial decision to hear, in point-blank detail, what the outcome may mean for those directly involved (p. 186). What appears to be the main point of this article is the idea of communicating and actively engaging in order to root out stereotypes and biases to form a more complete and unified community. This type of literacy would be cultural literacy (p. 167). This article in particular suggests that there are many types of illiteracies home for me, and that not all illiteracies relate to being able to read and write as I had previously thought. It was therefore highly informative for me, as I feel I have learned the value in seeing the other persons side and its importance in

COMMUNITY LITERACY understanding issues, especially when the dilemmas brought forth are caused by differences in attitude, culture, upbringing and economic status.

The last article is Alinskys Reveille by Eli Goldblatt. Reveille is the traditional bugle call issued by the U.S. Army every morning, and thus from the beginning it is understood that this paper is supposed to represent a wake-up call given by Alinksy. Saul Alinksy, Goldblatt informs us, is a radical who wrote about getting Americas youth to work together, focusing on alliances with people in the community (p. 317-319). Goldblatt references Alinsky in order to effectively show the importance of organizing neighborhood-run literacy projects. The author wants to know who is serving whom when it comes to community projects involving academic volunteers, stating that often universities simply do not listen to off-campus suggestions and therefore limit what can be done to positively influence the community in question. There are seven core principles to which Goldblatt refers, yet he states they are remarkably un-like what Alinksy would have championed. Alinskys goal is organizing first and foremost; even though education was an important part of his overall program, he was not especially concerned with schooling or literacy. He wanted to make lives better (p. 321). Alinsky had a wonderful ability to establish relationships within the community and make them shine. A fervent believer in democracy, Alinksy strongly believed that the power belongs to the people, and that in order to use this power the people must first get together and organize. The word power, Alinsky writes in his book Rules for Radicals, is associated with conflictit is the power of active citizen participation pulsing upward, providing a unified strength for a common purpose (Alinksy, p. 51). The function of the organizer, he claimed, was to identify the individual problems that affected people and to do something about it as a group (p. 321). While controversialhis ideas were, and still are, considered radicalAlinsky

COMMUNITY LITERACY promoted what one of the articles, Community Literacy: A Rhetorical Model for Personal and Public Inquiry discussed earlier: that forcing conflict draws people into an action and makes them work together (p. 321).

In 2011, a man named Preacher Moss came to Madonna University through the Office of Multicultural Affairs. One of the struggles of any university, especially one such as Madonna, which is home to such a large variety of ethnicities and cultures, is making sure that all students feel welcomed and secure on campus. For this reason, Preacher Moss was invited to speak out against racism by explaining the similarities all cultures have and giving tips on how to deal with uncomfortable situations. During his talk, he advertised some of the points Alinsky tried to make in his life. Preacher Moss once worked at a school in California, where he taught Special Education students that were generally of Hispanic or African American descent. The lone Caucasian male in his class informed him one morning that a race war was going to occur within the classroom. Preacher Moss, instead of reacting the way the commonly used throughput model would have suggested (suspending all of the participating students and washing his hands of the problem) instead agitated the conflict. He told them he intended to let them have this race warbut first they had to think things through, telling his students that even in a race war there are rules that must be followed. By making the students define their enemy (the Hispanics against the African Americans) he pointed out that there was one other voice in the class who was going unheard: the white boys. This made the students think through the eyes of the Caucasian student, and later through the eyes of their intended opponents, until finally they realized life is not about color. They were all unified by their economic situations and by their shared status as a Special Education student, and through this thinking and agitating, the issue was resolved much more clearly than it would have been had Preacher Moss simply suspended

COMMUNITY LITERACY the students. Also in doing this, the students in the class built a stronger relationship with each other and with their teacher, who they learned to view as a fellow conspirator who would help them work through their dilemmas. Preacher Moss was effectively able to identify the true selfinterest of the group (working together to make the classroom experience more worthwhile) and how to address those needs (through speaking about what unifies the students as a whole). One more strategy Goldblatt offers in Alinksys Reveille is to write out a mission statement. The act of writing down the groups goals and abilities makes the problems and realistic notions of the group seem much more real. Once something it is written down, it

becomes more potent than if one simply speculates out loud. Writing also helps to identify where the real interest of the group lies. Not everyone has to be an agitator; this idea of writing out the groups thoughts was designed with these people in mind. As a reader, I got the most understanding out of this article. It was the one that I could relate to the most, as I could take events theorized in Alinksys Reveille and connect them to events in my life, such as the Preacher Moss story. Alinsky focused on community and forcing conflict, and as a teenager I am more apt to understand and appreciate drastic, radical or even controversial tactics than another student might. I definitely have a great respect for Goldblatts article. These three readings all focus on the importance of community and less on higher education. They all truly express the needs of the community and show the struggles we as humans have learning to work together with people of different backgrounds and desires. Community literacy is not what the name initially suggests. It is about forcing certain groups of people to recognize their abilities and strengths while working together for the greater good of the whole rather than the good of the individual. Working in the community means that the focus

COMMUNITY LITERACY of everyone involved is put on the collective and not just on educating the individuals involved. These three articles, while focusing in on different parts of this goalcommunication, personal

identification and agitatingeach return to the value held inside of a community and how best to help the community help themselves without the support or interference of a university or business, which despite their best intentions often work with a completely different goal in mind than do the people living in the community in question. At the Madonna University Writing Center, the credo is, Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Community literacy is the epitome of that statement. One cannot underestimate the power of community literacy. Once the community has learned to look at itself as a whole, overcoming personal interests in favor of the group at large, great things may be accomplished.

COMMUNITY LITERACY References Alinsky, S. (1971). Rules for radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals. New York, NY: Random House. Deans, T., Roswell, B., and Wurr, A. (2010). Writing and community engagement: A critical sourcebook. Boston, MA. Gere, A. R. (1994). Kitchen tables and rented rooms: The extracurriculum of composition. College Composition and Communication 45.1, 34-48.

Goldblatt, E. (2005). Alinksys reveille: A community-organizing model for neighborhood-based literacy projects. College English, 67.3, 314-333. Higgins, L., Long, E., Flower, L. (2006). Community literacy: A rhetorical model for personal and public inquiry. Community Literacy Journal, 1.1, 167-195.