e-MAN-ci-patory Literacy

An Essay Review of Literacy: Reading the Word and the World

I HAVE FOUND THE WORK OF FREIRE TO BE important to the development of more critical approaches to education; I don't want to lose this in my rage at the stagnation and closures within the work and the refusal of THE MAN (or his followers) to hear what feminists are saying. While he exposes a politics of listening to "the people", of "speaking with" rather than "speaking to," women are present as window dressing (the foreword by Ann Berthoff) or as an afterthought (occasional references to women). Maddening, because the text has much to offer in constructing critical approaches to literacy which feminists can draw (and have drawn) upon in their practice.

The book consists of a collection of essays written by Freire since 1980 in which he reflects upon his work in various literacy campaigns, as well as several collaborative essays and dialogues written with Donaldo Macedo.¹ There is also a major, theoretical introduction by Henry Giroux. There are chapters about (il)literacy in the USA, as well as in Africa, but distinctions between the two very different situations are sometimes blurred. This is most noticeable in the melding together of Giroux's analysis of literacy as cultural (re)production and resistance, particularly among school students in North America, with Freire's work among adults in villages within countries undergoing revolutionary change. Extensive excerpts from the literacy notebooks designed by Freire for use in the literacy campaigns São Tome and Príncipe form the longest chapter, providing a concrete sense of the pedagogical and ideological approach of the program. Of special interest are the dialogues with Macedo. Rather than dialogues, I found these to be more like sympathetic interviews in which Macedo provides Freire with a space to answer his critics.