The Importance of the Work of Literacy Education

The Importance of the Work

It was as a high school English Teacher in the early 1990s that I became convinced of two things that have shaped my life over the past quarter of a century: 1) Literate trajectories shape social trajectories-without powerful literacy skills students, their families and their communities didn’t stand a chance and 2) Those who disseminate knowledge impact not only how people think, but how they act

I became obsessed with improving the literacy and learning outcomes for our most vulnerable populations and with sharing research-formed ideas about the best ways to transform lives and communities through literacy. This led me back to graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley where I pursued a doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture and I have spent the bulk of the last twenty years at UCLA and Columbia University making my dream a reality.

In the African-American tradition, like many other traditions, literacy has been associated with freedom. Whether it be the narratives of Harriet Jacobs or Frederick Douglass, the lyrics of Bob Marley, the novels of a Jimmy Baldwin or Toni Morrison; the power of and barriers to literacy have been well-documented. Frederick Douglass stated that “Once you learn to read you are forever free.” Whether all of our children grow up with access to basic and higher-level literacy is socially up to us.

As a scholar, I am interested in how literacy is learned in families, communities and cultures. How literacy is taught effectively in formal institutions like schools; and the work that teachers and students do together in literacy classrooms

 I have an interest in the African Diaspora as an imagined community--it’s literature, it’s popular culture; its engagement; its critique, its resistance, its plurality; its cacophonous polyvocality; its beauty, its power, its joy--it’s agency, it’s undeterred presence. I’m also interested in making the diaspora knowable, and touchable to present and future generations.

Finally, I am interested in what schools do to create powerful literate trajectories for students, families, and communities. By literacies I do not merely mean those ways of speaking and writing that lead to academic success, but also a re-reading of the self and of the world. In my work I think of these as literacies of radical self-love and social consciousness. My work primarily focuses on the schooling experiences of students attending the most vulnerable public and Catholic schools domestically and increasingly across the African Diaspora.

These interests, Global Literacy Studies and the African Diaspora are what consumes my days (and sometimes my nights). They are the issues I write and speak and teach about. They form my professional associations, the Centers and Initiatives that I direct, the dissertations that are written under my supervision. Without sounding too grandiose I believe there is something at the intersection of these interests that is essential to the future of the planet and the future of the church. The ability of all the inhabitants of the planet, all of God’s children, to equitably and with dignity live lives of freedom and of consequence.

And we have had some major wins in this work. As the world becomes more educated it becomes safer, life expectancies increase, and global poverty is reduced. According to Economists in the Institute for New Economic thinking at Oxford University as late as 1820, 85% of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2010 that number has been reduced to about 25%. This is still unacceptable as we’re talking about nearly 2 billion people.

 In 1870 in the US the illiteracy rates for certain subgroups reached 75%. By 1970 the illiteracy rate in the country fell below 1% for every subgroup. The challenge of our generation of scholars is ensuring that all children and families have access to what we call “equitable excellence” through literacy. The changing global landscape requires advanced literacy and technological skills that are only possible through an empowering education. By 2050 I believe that we can reduce the racial achievement gap and the gender literacy gap while increasing access to college and jobs earning a livable wage and strengthening our global networks and our faith tradition. And I believe that with our collective efforts, Notre Dame will serve as a leader in this endeavor.

 We’ve already begun. In our first year the CLE has 10 major publications including 2 leading research briefs through the International Literacy Association, we’ve created two publication series through Notre Dame press, we hold leadership positions in all of our major professional organizations, we have developed a literacy institute for local teachers in the South Bend schools, we’ve directly touched over 10,000 educators through workshops and school visits this academic year, we’ve instituted the O’Shaughnessy Fellows and the Coyle Fellows programs to attract and mentor promising classroom teachers and early career professors. But, in the words of famous Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly, “we’re just getting started!”