To Pledge or Not to Pledge- that is the question

Eric,

 I enjoyed reading your piece about the pledge. It sparked some things for me as I was reading, so I wanted to share those thoughts. I also think you have a great opportunity to take part in some critical inquiry. 

I applaud you courage to subvert the authority in your school and take a stand against having people mindlessly pledge their allegiance to anything. However, I do wonder about a couple of things. You said that you won't swear your loyalty to a piece of fabric. That's cool. I get it. I can understand that perspective. That piece of fabric means a lot to me because I've been very happy to see it flying in a foreign country because it meant I was safe. The great thing about this country is that you don't have to see it that way. But here's the thing: that's not really what the pledge is about. It's not about a piece of fabric.

You see, the pledge is about swearing loyalty to our country. You point out that you think your students would, like you, refuse to participate if they were to genuinely explore what they are saying. I guess what I'm inviting you to do is really explore those words. "I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the Republic, for which it stands..." Here's my point. The pledge is not just to a "piece of cloth," it is a pledge of allegiance or loyalty to our county. It is a pledge of loyalty to the Republic that the flag symbolizes. 

What I'm saying is this: You sleep under the blanket of freedom provided by the Republic. That freedom affords you the opportunity to dissent. If you are dissenting after really considering those words, then by all means dissent away. But, do so knowing that it is the Republic that gives you the ability to do that- not just a piece of cloth. 

I think you have a great opportunity to engage in some critical inquiry with your students. You could, if you were so inclined, genuinely explore the words of the pledge. When a student asks why you don't lead it- or a student asks to lead it, you could ask why they ask their questions. Then, you could really explore the words. Everyone would be basing their decisions to pledge or not to pledge  on an authentic exploration of what they are saying. The words would then become meaningful- or they would be omitted from you daily routine. Either way, everyone would have the chance to really consider why they made the choice they did. 

Just my two cents. I really enjoyed your piece. Excellent food for thought. 

Trevor

Dialogue for Professional Learning

Addressing the ways culture impacts classrooms can seem a daunting task, but one possible approach is collaborative discussions with others. Becoming sensitive to the ways culture, literacy and language transact in classrooms is an ongoing endeavor, and we have found honest, reflective dialogue to be beneficial in working through and understanding the complexities of culture.

We offer a collection of questions and scenarios as a starting point for professional discussion and inquiry. We invite you to share them with your colleagues and continue the dialogue in your own school community.

Object Lesson Activities

Have you ever participated in an activity that caused you to think about things you had not previously considered?

Object lessons do just that - they engage us in activity with a purpose in mind. These activities often expose assumptions, misunderstandings, stereotypes, and buried belief systems. Here we offer a few such activities, designed to raise consciousness about culture and learning.

Join us in building a resource list of object lesson activities designed with wobble in mind!

Wobble: a Definition and the Mission

A Definition of WOBBLE

Learning occurs in Wobble if we are open to it.

When we aren't wobbling, all seems in order and little thought is occurring. The wobble signals or calls attention to a shift in balance. Attention must be paid. A response must be authored. Some sense of balance needs to be restored.

By being willing to call our own beliefs into question, we push ourselves into new journeys of thought and exploration, to interrogate our own stance as rigorously as you might interrogate that of others.

In wobble you consider the possibilities, raise questions to explore those possibilities, gather substantive data on those questions, and to then decide what your stance is.

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Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on how WOBBLE has played out for you in the area of Literacy and Culture in the classroom.

Please, present and discuss moments of WOBBLE that you have encountered in your life as a teacher, student, parent, and/or observer as it fits into the world of classroom literacy and culture.

Some questions that might help you frame your thoughts:

Describe how you have been put into an uncomfortable place when confronted/introduced to a behavior foreign/different from your own cultural perspective.

What changed for you, if anything?

Did it cause permanent damage or open a door to new directions?

Will you ever be the same?

The Why & the Wherefore

The blog title—Culture, Literacy, and Education—sounds so ponderous and academic, yet all three terms are rooted in our day-to-day existence. We read, write, and learn and, in doing so, we develop understandings of our selves and everything and everyone around us. Who we are becoming is dependent upon who we have been. What we will experience owes greatly to that which we have already done. The ways we will engage texts tomorrow cannot be separated from how we engaged texts yesterday. How we will construct our selves and others in the coming days, months, and years is connected to how we have constructed self and others in the past.

This blog represents the efforts of one group of learners who, during the short space of one semester, tried to deepen and nuance their understandings of how issues connected to culture and literacy play out in working classrooms. By looking at culture through the lenses of our own experiences, everyday literacies, theory, and teaching, we—preservice teachers, inservice teachers, and doctoral students—have sought to call our own beliefs into question as we also critiqued the many texts we accessed.

This blog is not about having complex issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity and other sociocultural factors rendered superficially or completely figured out. Instead it is about ideas in process. Each of us has thought deeply about what issues of culture and literacy mean for us as learners, teachers, parents, teacher educators, researchers, and citizens in an imperfect, but practicing democracy. We invite you to engage in our thoughts, knowing that what we write here remains in a continual process of becoming.