Questions

Finn writes "Until a powerful coalition is built of working-class parents, teachers in working class schools, and their allies we will not mobilize resources or give teachers the support they need to make such schooling work across the board. It's going to take organization and muscle to afford powerful literacy to all our children. We're talking politics here..." How do we begin building this "powerful coalition?" Are there any successful models to follow outside of Freire? Where is change occurring and how is it happening? While I admire what he was able to do and especially his theories on motivating people to want to learn, I feel like this is a very slow method of change for a situation that feels like a crisis. As we struggle to engage parents at the school level it seems almost unfathomable to believe that people who already feel so disenfranchised and "are so submerged in their daily lives that they have little or no awareness of the possibility for change, much less what they might do to bring about change." will get involved in the political arena. How does one convince a group of working class parents that they can create change? Perhaps the same behaviors that resulted in urban children having less of a "summer knowledge loss" after the election of Obama will help people feel more empowered. I am intrigued by Freire's idea of reaching out to leaders in the community first, creating a culture circle. In my district the Admin. tried to find interested parents from each school to take part in a course on how the school system works with the aim of creating well informed parents who would participate in meetings and committees and represent parents. The idea was they could then help encourage others in the school community to get involved. Unfortunately, results were not great(less than 50% still involved.) Perhaps because the mission was simply to share information on how the system works, and not to help these parents realize how this information could actually help them make the system work for them. I'm sure at no time did the discussion incorporate terms like segregation, inequality or power (heaven forbid!) We will also need to think more about dialogue vs. anti dialogue as we try to engage parents.