| September 23, 2005 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Lakeisha
for President
In a video, Lakeisha reads from a book waving her hands above her head to describe the scene she imagines. “(Society is) trying not to get you to commit suicide,” says the ninth-grade reader, thinking out loud about a short story by Toni Morrison. “I can sympathize with the character.” She stops her reading, considers, reads, stops, and reflects in her conversation with the text. Later, in an interview, she talks about her reading. “I’ll go along slowly...analyzing it all, or I’ll question myself.” We are watching and learning about Lakeisha’s reading habits as part of a workshop on literacy here in Oakland. The young student has all the qualities of a highly proficient reader—that is, if you gauge reading success by whether a person interacts more deeply with a text on a “metacognitive,” or higher-thinking, level. Lakeisha (not her real name) grew up with Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker. Yet, she had trouble on tests, tests that don’t measure how carefully one ponders the big ideas, one’s aptitude for critical thinking, and the creative aspect of problem solving. In the conference, some of the teachers are skeptical. Some think she’s staging the performance. When I say how awestruck I am about Lakeisha’s reading abilities, how she reads more introspectively than most adults, one teacher elicits a noticeable guffaw: “She could never pass my AP English class!” Another teacher says that, although Lakeisha is a thoughtful reader, “that doesn’t mean she can get into college.” Our expectations for young adults are misguided at best, destructive at worst. The values most Americans place on a human being, those measured by society’s standards, have little to do with the individual characteristics that lend themselves to a healthy community. We want young adults to pass tests, go to college, and speak at chamber of commerce luncheons. During the conference, I raise a point about post-secondary education. “Wait a second, have you hung around any college students? It is a myth that people who go to college are somehow smarter than those left behind, but the college students I’ve seen are pretty shallow. I mean, for God’s sake, many of them voted for Bush!” The teachers laugh. We later find out that Lakeisha does go to college, in spite of the odds against her as an African American woman, and is now a lawyer. The teachers at the conference will return to schools across the country and build reading programs. Their students will learn to read between the lines of literature, to analyze, criticize and discuss not just novels, but the manufactured information produced by corporate America. Our nation’s activist teachers, the ones who reach young people through inquiry, problem solving and discussion, are our quiet revolutionaries. Hopefully, their students will be the ones who get loud. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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September 16, 2005 September 9, 2005 September 2, 2005 August 26, 2005 August 19, 2005 August 12, 2005 August 5, 2005 July 29, 2005 July 22, 2005 July 15, 2005 July 8, 2005 July 1, 2005 June 24, 2005 June 17, 2005 June 10, 2005 June 3, 2005 May 27, 2005 May 20, 2005 May 13, 2005 May 6, 2005 April 29, 2005 April 21, 2005 |
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2005
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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