Critical literacy, for me, means, at the least, an ability to use the
written language for your own purposes, and a concomitant ability to
discern the purposes for which a particular text, and that kind of text,
are typically used in a community. This often includes the political,
rhetorical, and ideological uses of the text and others of its ilk.
More broadly, it means the habit of making meaning with a text from the
intertextual standpoints of various textual and discursive traditions that
the text may not have invoked or even been aware of, as well as from those
it does. It means reading a text against the grain and out of its preferred
contexts as well as with/in them.
For some people it more specifically means construing the political
intentions and implications of a text, reading it in relation to issues of
power and interests.
'Authentic situations' means, for me, situations in which I feel free to
say and do what I honestly feel and desire; or alternatively, situations in
which the participants are free to behave in the ways that are most natural
and typical for them. It can be contrasted with artificial or contrained
situations, or with situations created by acting in ways that violate our
sense of who we really are, or which compel or distort our behavior.
In the field of teaching, an 'authentic situation' like an 'authentic
moment' is one in which the reality of what is really happening, now,
between teacher and students, or among students, rather than the arbitrary
and artificial conventions of what we are 'supposed' to be doing, dominates
our actions.
There is a 'romantic' view of authenticity, and a phenomenological one, and
a 'humanist' one. A good place for an educator to start thinking about this
concept is Paolo Freire's classic _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_, which
represents at least the 'humanistic' view ... and it can be debated whether
it also represents the other two or not.
Of course both these terms, critical and authentic, also often just mean
'good' or 'the kind I approve of'.
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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