Harvard Graduate School of Education

Fall 1995 Issue >

Rewriting Literacy

Edited by Candace Mitchell and Kathleen Weiler.

New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1991. 281 pp. $17.95 (paper).

The contributors to this book, who include James Gee, Donaldo Macedo, and Jonathan Kozol, explore what it means to be "literate" by pulling literacy development out of the political vacuum where it traditionally resides in the academy and placing it in its historical, cultural, and ideological context. The book is subdivided into four sections: "Literacy, Discourse, and Power," "Multiple Ways of Constructing Reality," "The Politics of Reading and Writing," and "Literacy, History, and Ideology." The chapters provide insight into the relationship between knowledge and power, allowing teachers to develop with their students the necessary practical solutions for eradicating oppressive educational practices that continue to run rampant in schools in the United States.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the democratization of school curricula and pedagogy, a process that works to rupture the exclusive practices of traditional education by welcoming diverse histories, experiences, critical thinking, and dissent into the classroom. At the heart of Mitchell and Weiler's vision is the ideal that literacy is no longer a process of containment, but is rather a source for agency and liberation. As part of the "Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series," edited by Henry Giroux and Paulo Freire, Rewriting Literacy: Culture and the Discourse of the Other is a major contribution to the literature on critical literacy.

P.L.