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This case enables me to flesh out the interdependent model for critical literacy
education with concrete examples. These are summarised in Table 2.
Critical literacy in teaching and research
Table 2: 2: The model applied to to Mexican American Studies
Power without
diversity
Power without
access
Power without
(re)design
Access without
power
Access without
diversity
Access without
(re)design
Diversity
without power
Diversity
without access
Diversity
without
(re)design
(re)Design
without power
(re)Design
without access
Design without
diversity
Large numbers of Mexican American students in the Tucson School
District created the need for a diversified curriculum. The District
introduces an ethnic studies programme which the State of Arizona closes
down.
Using State power to shut Mexican American Studies down removes
students’ portal to access and success.
Teachers use their power to design a programme that engages Latino
students and improves their academic performance. The State uses
power to ban the re-­‐designed curriculum, removing agency from the
students and the teachers.
The State of Arizona wants to give students access to education without
allowing them to contest what is included in the curriculum, what is
excluded and whose interests this serves.
History, identity and value are implicated in access. In Arizona, the diverse
backgrounds of the students were excluded when the courts closed
Ethnic Studies programmes down for Mexican American students. These
programmes were specifically designed to enable epistemological access.
The curriculum is not open to revision. Only dominant texts and
interpretations are permissible.
The funds of knowledge that students bring with them to school are not
valued or given status in the curriculum.
Programmes that increase the participation of minority students and give
them access to graduation and college are constructed as deviant.
Mexican Americans are assimilated into schools without institutional
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redesign.
The Mexican American Studies programme has no power against the
State.
The redesigned curriculum no longer has institutional access.
Curricula are designs for learning that, as in the State of Arizona, often
ignore the diversity of the learners for whom they are designed.
2. The case of The Spear in South Africa
Because texts are always positioned and positioning, it is impossible to give a neutral account
of any case. In the case of Mexican American Studies I made no attempt to disguise
2. The case of The Spear in South Africa
my own position: it should be clear that I support the programme and find the actions
of Because the State texts of Arizona are always to be positioned unconscionable. and positioning, The Spear it is is impossible the title of to a painting give a neutral and, in
this account case, of I will any try case. to In be the more case circumspect of Mexican by American limiting Studies myself I to made the ‘facts’, no attempt in the to first
instance. This is not to suggest that the choice of facts and their sequencing are neutral.
disguise my own position: it should be clear that I support the programme and find
the actions of the State of Arizona to be unconscionable. The Spear is the title of a
painting and, in this case, I will try to be more circumspect by limiting myself to the 231
‘facts’, in the first instance. This is not to suggest that the choice of facts and their