1. Critical Literacy in Schools

2. What is Critical Literacy?
Critical literacy not only emphasizes the ability to read and write but the ability to use reading and writing as the basis of higher-order thinking skills that allow a person to analyze and critically evaluate what is read and written (Tozer, Senese, & Violas, 2009).

3. The Importance of Critical Literacy in Schools
Empowers Students
Change as members of society
Change society as members
Students acquire analytical skills
Gained from support, guidance, and modeling
Refocuses education
Nurtures the ability to see what secures/endangers freedom
Stresses the importance of dialogue between teacher and students

4. Leaders in Critical Literacy & Pedagogy
Paolo Freire
Ira Shor
Howard Zinn

5. Paolo Freire Left law to become an educator
Had a reputation as a progressive educator
Icon of social change through education
Participated in educational movements in the early 60s
Forced into exile from Brazil after he spear headed a program to make five million adults literate and politically progressive threatened land owners
Developed the “banking” concept of knowledge
Several social movements have adopted Freire’s ideology
Taught at Harvard and Geneva

6. Freirian Pedagogy
Considered an alternate view of a way to communicate between teachers and students
Schooling as a means to a socially just society
Adopted as a means for breaking away from political and economic oppression in third world countries
In industrialized nations often viewed as a tool for political empowerment

7. Ira Shor Fascinated with the work of Paulo Freire
Grew up in a white working-class family in the Bronx
Professor of English at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island

8. Shor’s Pedagogy
Works to integrate critical notions of social critique with techniques of pedagogy in ways that create new educational possibilities
The end goal is to produce a thoughtful, just, and democratic education
Engages students in a way that subverts the exploitation of the subordinate classes, the manner in which social structures reproduce themselves in the everyday life of the classroom, and the process by which authority regulates the poor
The classroom is a venue for the construction of knowledge

9. Howard Zinn Historian, playwright, & activist
Grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class immigrant family
Opposition for war and passion for history shaped by his service in WWII
Involved in the Civil Rights Movement when he taught at Spelman until he was fired for his support of student protestors
Served as professor of Political Science at Boston University until his retirement in 1988

10. Zinn’s Viewpoints
Recognizes the importance of social change through resistance and protest
Identifies the educational system as preparing young people to live with contradictions and to accept those contradictions as being OK.
Maintains Freire's sentiments that schools are not providing students with an accurate picture of reality

11. Implementing Critical Literacy
Consists of acts of cognition
The authentic act of liberation is a praxis
Resist the banking methods of domination
Teachers and students should be co-investigators inside the classroom
Focus on the community and humanization
Question the status quo
Involve students with an on-going problem that is happening in real-time

12. References
Tozer, S.E.; Senese, G. Vilas, P. (2009). School and society: Historical and contemporary perspectives. McGraw Hill: New York, NY.
Lownd, Peter. (n.d.). A Brief Biography of Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire Institute. Retrieved on 4/21/11 from
Howard Zinn. Retrieved on 4/21/11 from