Eyes on the Ought to Be - Kirk Branch

CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Branch, Kirk. Eyes on the Ought to Be: What We Teach When We Teach About Literacy. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2007.

Following Bernstein, Branch sees instructional discourse as institutional discourse.  He says that "educational literacy" issues are not theoretical at all, but rhetorical and ideological; therefore, countering or intervening in problematic educational practices involving literacy using theory won't work because these practices exist because of policy.  Specifically, "competencies" (innate characteristics) are reconfigured as employable and external "skills" that can be possessed.

While acknowledging contributions of "New Literacy" as recognizing the ideological nature of literacy, he joins Janks in critiquing this approach for its focus mainly on local practices and meanings, rather than educational literacy practices in classroom contexts  (which always have a relationship with and point outward to Brandt's literacy sponsors and surrounding cultural expectations of literacy).  According to Branch, the role of literacy is to help adults take responsibility for their communities.

Branch identifies discourses around literacy and points out how literacy is valued for being "transformational," but is seen as dangerous institutionally when it is actually "transforming" of social and cultural circumstances and communities.   He uses examples from teaching in prisons and Highlander School during the Civil Rights movement.  In terms of rhetoric, he points out the differences between contextual and universal teaching (métis vs. techne respectively).

#literacy #rhetoric #empire #race