Poetics of the Oppressed Questions

• "There are many languages besides those that are written or spoken." What does Boal mean by this, and how does it tie into the discussions we've had in class about new definitions of literacy? Do you agree with his statement? Why or why not?
• What are the two different kinds of poetics that Boal discusses before explaining the type of poetics introduced by ALFIN? How is the "poetics of the oppressed" he talks about more appropriate for a program like ALFIN designed to teach literacy?
• What is the "technique for breaking repression" that Boal describes on page 150? How is this related to his claim that the theater is "rehearsal of revolution"?

Questions for Steele and Aronson: Stereotype threat...

Steele ans Aronson:

• In this essay the authors discuss the ill effects of stereotype cues and stereotype threat both psychologically, and to a lesser degree, psychosomatically. Do you believe that stereotype threat has the propensity to physically affect, when activated, negatively stereotyped students?
• The authors write: "From hundreds of interviews that I've conducted with black college students, it's clear that many believe that the stereotype places them in situations freighted with unnerving expectations. Some report feeling a sense of unfairness, that there will be less patience for their mistakes than for white students' mistakes, and that their failure will be seen as evidence of an unalterable limitation rather than as the result of a bad day." How has this thinking been engender/proliferated, and by whom? Please explain. 

Questions for Street and for Richardson.

• Street argues that literacy is a “social practice.” Using examples from Hull & Schultz, Richardson and/or Newkirk, explain what Street means.
• Street also argues that literacy is “always contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always “ideological”, they are always rooted in a particular world-view and in a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and marginalize others” (p.694 in reader). How might our discussion of Friere and/or racial power dynamics play into his conception of literacy?
• Richardson writes that “African American females’ language and literacy practices reflect their socialization in a racialized, genderized,sexualized, and classed world in which they employ their language and literacy practices to protect and advance themselves” (p. 637 in reader). How does this intersectionality create a unique linguistic practice? How does Richardson see these affect African American female students?

Questions for Misreading Masculinity (Newkirk)

• In his book Newkirk argues for the "viability and utility of forms of popular culture that many in education dismiss as inappropriate or worse." He makes the case that these forms of pop culture that young boys enjoy should not be excluded from schools or separated from what education systems deem as important mediums of literacy. What is his evidence/reasoning behind this argument and how does he come to this conclusion? Do you think that what he argues is valid and should be applied to the American education system today?
• What does Newkirk say about the "hierarchy" he claims education systems have established in literature today? What does he mean when he talks about the classification of literature into the "serious" and the "vulgar"?

Questions for Mendoza Denton

Mendoza-Denton:

• In this chapter Mendoza-Denton chronicles the erroneous assumptions, which later became aphorisms, regarding what was perceived as an inherent cognitive deficiency in African Americans; and, how these erroneous assumptions have informed rhetoric around the achievement gap. Who benefits from this form of race science, which posits race as biological? Explain.
• Despite working to deconstruct deleterious racist ideology in this chapter, Mendoza-Denton, there is a perceptible positivity and hopefulness in the author's tenor; why do you think this is?

Questions for Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks

• In the first chapter of his book, Fanon writes: “Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local culturally originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing language… (Pp.8 of the original text)?” What does he mean by this?
• In this chapter, Fanon seems to be arguing that for the colonized purposeful assimilation is concomitantly emasculating and infantilizing. Do you agree with this line of argumentation?

• Also on page 18 of the original text, Fanon argues that the Negro…will become proportionately whiter—that is he will come closer to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” Do you feel this this argument is applicable to our educational system here in the United States?