Linguistics and Education 16 (2005) 359–361
Book review The Literacy Curriculum & Bilingual Education: A Critical Examination, K. CadieroKaplan, Peter Lang, New York (2003). (pp. ix–xvii, 1–127, ISBN 0-8204-6715-4) One of most fascinating qualities of words is that they can signify multiple meanings, and as Cadiero-Kaplan attempt to make clear, who benefits when certain meanings are privileged over others can have far-reaching implications for practices. Three words that appear in the title of this book, literacy, curriculum, and critical are the main contested meanings that Cadiero-Kaplan unpacks, with an eye toward engaging readers in a Freirianesque journey of consciensization to realize the larger historical, political, and economic spaces within which the meanings of these words exists. A central goal of this book, then, is pose and expose the literacy curriculum as a problem of who forms, legitimizes, and disconfirms the meaning of practices that inform the experiences of teachers and students alike. Although the words bilingual education appears in the title, the book is actually about bilingual education policy. There are several brief references to various bilingual program approaches, but these are dropped in as part of the backdrop to the larger policy issues Cadiero-Kaplan wants to elucidate about literacy curriculum. Accordingly, the way bilingual education enters the conversation about literacy curriculum is with respect to past and present-day policies as these reveal whether and to what extent language choice or the right to a quality education for English learners is emphasized. When the focus of bilingual education policy is on language choice, the trend over the past century has been to either permit or prohibit the use of languages other than English for teaching and learning purposes, which is presented in chapter 2. Drawing on the work of Brisk (1998), Cadiero-Kaplan argues that the ideological policy of language choice and its resulting practices is a form of compensatory education that is solely concerned with getting students to learn English as quickly as possible (p. 20). Quality bilingual education, in contrast, leans on ideology, pedagogy, and practices that draw on students’ language and culture as vehicles for education (p. 20), a policy which she fully endorses. Quality bilingual education is necessary, but insufficient for building the kinds of literacy curriculum that Cadiero-Kaplan proposes teachers and students have a right to experience in school. In other words, to gain a full understanding of quality bilingual education, teachers, and students need opportunities to examine critically their place in the world through schooling experiences that enable them not only to read the word, but also to read the world. Readers who are thoroughly familiar with this Freirian phrase will gain little from Cadiero-Kaplan’s introductory treatment of it. But, for readers who are new to critical literacy ideology, this book makes a strong case for why it is important for teachers and students, especially those in bilingual education, to begin to challenge meanings and practices that are held to make common sense and be appropriate for children and adolescents in these programs. 0898-5898/$ – see front matter © 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2006.01.001
360
Book review
The core of the book centers on helping readers understand how literacy curricula have been constructed to support and challenge cultural hegemony and certain historical interpretations of key events, people, and ideas. In other words, people with varying interests construct the goals of literacy to reflect a particular ideology about what constitutes appropriate literate behavior. These ideologies of literacy in turn inform curriculum and pedagogy. Cadiero-Kaplan presents and critiques four social constructions of literacy ideologies as particularly relevant for schoolrelated activities such as thinking, behaving, and using oral and written language for academic purposes. The four ideologies are functional, cultural, progressive, and critical literacy. The ideology of functional literacy is aimed at producing students who can perform literate behaviors required for low-paying labor and for conducting simple business activities, such as writing checks, balancing check books, making lists, and reading instructions and most forms of environmental print. Embedded in this kind of literacy are values of observable behavior and competition. Reading and writing are taught as isolated, fragmented skill behaviors, often as scripts for teachers to follow, in a sequence from part to whole, with positive reinforcement as the primary motivation for showing skill mastery. This kind of literacy ideology tends to prevail in schools with children from poor and non-English communities, where faithful educators feel that it will ensure that “no child is left behind.” Cultural literacy is based on the ideology that access to mainstream American culture depends on the acquisition of core beliefs, morals, and values that underpin what it means to be an educated American citizen. As Codiero-Kaplan points out, this is double-speak for elitism, providing additional cultural capital for those already in power by placing their views of history, classics, and the Great Books over other forms of knowledge. Typically presented as a list of essential reading, cultural literacy thrives on a pedagogy of direct instruction and rote learning of facts about historical events, important people, and literary passages, giving unquestioned legitimacy to these at the expense of other peoples’ writings and interpretations of history. Readers will quickly sense that these two ideologies are anathema to Cadiero-Kaplan, who does little to hide her criticisms of them for being uncritical of the very practices they promote: exclusion, social hierarchies, and elitism. In fact, one way that Cadiero-Kaplan prepares readers for the two literacy ideologies she favors for bilingual education is to critique functional and cultural literacy for their complete inattention to the issues and practices she argues are critical for promoting a healthy democracy of thoughtful, ethical, and just citizens. Before getting to critical literacy, however, Cadiero-Kaplan provides a brief summary of progressive literacy, the third ideology covered. For Cadiero-Kaplan, progressive literacy supports whole language and vice versa, and both draw on constructivism, which in turn is supported by Piagetian approaches to learning. What is interesting in this section is the conspicuous absence of reference to progressive whole language advocates, such as Ken and Yetta Goodman, Frank Smith, Sandra Wilde, and Carole Edelsky, all of whom have written extensively over the past three decades about whole language and progressive literacy issues and practices. Instead, there are a total of 10 references to Donaldo Macedo, Peter McLaren, Michael Apple, and Paulo Friere, all remarkable progressive scholars whose contributions to critical pedagogy are immeasurable, but hardly leaders in progressive whole language theory or constructivism. It is not until later in the book, pages 35–37 and 43, that whole language is correctly linked to Ken Goodman, and Carole Edelsky. I bring this up because on the one hand Cadeiro-Kaplan places Macedo and others in the section on progressive literacy, and on the other, she dismisses progressive ideology as promoting “a curriculum and teaching processes that remains [sic] apolitical and unexamined from a critical perspective” (p. 12), citing as her sources for this claim, work that was done in the 1980s (the first edition of Peter McLaren’s Life in Schools was issued in 1989; 1998 is the 3rd edition). This is a
Book review
361
challengeable assertion. One has only to look at the volumes of work by long-time whole language advocate Carole Edelsky (for example, Dudley-Marling & Edelsky, 2001; Edelsky, 1996, 1999) to see that the characterization of progressive literacy as apolitical and disinterested in critically examining literacy curriculum and teaching is unwarranted. What matters a great deal to Cadiero-Kaplan is that readers understand that social justice and democratic ideals as she envisions them come primarily from the ability to read the world critically through a process of questioning the curriculum “in relation to the sociopolitical and sociocultural realities of those who read the texts and are supposed to benefit from them” (p. 13). The favored ideology for learning to read the world is critical literacy, which from CadieroKaplan’s perspective, teaches students “to become active participants in a democratic society” (p. 83). Much of this book is dedicated to convincing readers with a solifidian fervor that problemposing and questioning school policy and practices will lead to improvements in education for children and adolescents from poor, immigrant and non-English speaking communities. Rightly so, the book is parsimonious with respect to the presentation of research literature to bolster her belief that critical literacy can improve the quality of bilingual education for children of poor and non-English speaking communities. Given the purpose of the book, it is not unreasonable that Cadiero-Kaplan has focused her energies on deconstructing and explaining curriculum ideology both from her personal experiences as an educator and from her studies of literacy, rather than drawing on research for making her points or going into detail about teaching reading and writing. To her credit, Cadiero-Kaplan makes it clear that research is also politically motivated, so what is important for readers to understand is how history and political interests intersect to favor certain ideologies and practices over others. If readers can come away from this book with this critical awareness, then Cadiero-Kaplan has accomplished a worthwhile and laudable goal. Finally, this book challenges readers to engage in critical dialogue about political and curriculum issues that are seldom discussed in bilingual education. References Brisk, M. E. (1998). Bilingual education: From compensatory to quality schooling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Dudley-Marling, C., & Edelsky, C. (Eds.). (2001). The fate of progressive language policies and practices. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Edelsky, C. (1996). With literacy and justice for all: Rethinking the social in language and education. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. Edelsky, C. (Ed.). (1999). Making justice our project: Teachers working toward critical whole language practices. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Christian Faltis Program in Multicultural & Multilingual Education, College of Education, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1411, United States E-mail address:
[email protected]
