Abstract
The first edition of Patrick J. Finn’s Literacy With an Attitude, which was reviewed in this journal 10 years ago (Zigo, 2002), has been of tremendous use to us as literacy educators. We have both assigned this book to our graduate and undergraduate students, who have found it both agitating and insightful. We are trained as literacy researchers, and the studies Finn writes about so concisely in the first six chapters of this new edition are familiar. Yet each time we read the book we realize anew the value of his contribution to literacy studies. In the first part of the book Finn presents the salient nuances of these studies so they are accessible and comprehensible to a general audience. In the second part, he uses these details in the service of his larger argument about the relationship between literacy and citizenship rights and how to go about fostering literacy with, well, an attitude.
A new preface explains that the first 12 chapters of the new edition are essentially the same as the first edition. The first six chapters review the findings and implications of studies such as Anyon’s (1997) Ghetto Schooling, Weis’ Working Class Without Work (1990), Willis’ (1979) Learning to Labor, and Sieber’s (1981) study of urban middle class parental school involvement. Additionally, Finn discusses progressive methods and their outcomes in American schools and oppositional identity via Ogbu’s (1991) theories of immigrant and involuntary minorities. In Chapter 7 Finn introduces Bernstein’s (1971) theories of explicit and implicit language, and in the eighth and ninth chapters he draws some conclusions about emergent literacy and class from Heath’s (1983) Ways with Words. Chapters 10 through 12 remain essentially the same: Chapter 10 describes Finn’s four levels of literacy, from “performative” to powerful;” Chapter 11 is an historical overview of some 20th century American schooling movements; and Chapter 12 is an insightful critique of the apolitical nature of Nancie Atwell’s writer’s workshop and other “New Literacy” studies pedagogies.
What is new about Literacy With an Attitude? Quite a bit, and it definitely contains enough material and updated ideas to make the new edition a worthwhile purchase for researchers and teachers alike. Chapters 13 and 14 help debunk the assumed links between literacy and automatic citizenship, and rise through meritocracy, that undergird much of our educational system’s structure. In Chapter 13, Finn analyzes two speeches and essays, written 70 years apart, to trace, and then vivisect, the idea of meritocracy, and explain his argument for literacy’s role in achieving universal social rights. He begins with the 1872 speech of Alfred Marshall, a British economist, which details the somewhat incredible pathway that working people will, Marshall supposes, take towards “gentlemanly” lives, courtesy of the industrial revolution then taking place. Marshall believed that giving literacy to all would automatically allow “all” to become independent, free thinkers. Finn extends this rose-colored worldview through an analysis of T.H. Marshall’s ideas about how all people should aspire not to escape their class but instead to aim for “the egalitarian status of citizen” (p. 156, emphasis in text). After describing these two related ideologies of meritocracy, Finn provides a four-point argument about why meritocracy only serves those in the middle class and above (pp. 160-164). This argument—about how meritocracy really is a “logic of deficit” (p. 164), highlights the skillful simplicity of Finn’s refutations of educational myths. He exemplifies his point via the Williams case, in which California children and their parents successfully sued the state for equitable school funding (p. 162). He also takes on Ruby Payne’s (2001) deficit ideologies about the poor, referencing Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson (2008).
Chapter 14 is concerned with exploring meritocracy as a strategy, albeit a faulty one, to “challenge social class” (p. 167). In this chapter, Finn reminds us that schools do not exist in a social vacuum and that the conditions of poverty that can hold students in a stranglehold also affect their educational opportunities and performance. He lays the groundwork for one of the prominent assertions of the second half of this edition: literacy education is inherently political, and its failings must be addressed not at the level of the individual border-crosser but through a collective, politically aware response.He extends his antimeritocracy argument with a discussion of how gender, ethnicity, access to health care, and unionization all affect the income level of adult Americans as much as educational disparities, which only account for a third of income level differences. He argues that most school reforms only make changes at the school and local levels, and do not begin to address the structural inequities that make it difficult for most working class children to access educations that might make empowerment a real possibility.
To address these deeper issues, Finn offers the new Chapter 15, which frames Freire’s methods, complete with copies of the codifications from his cultural circles (pp. 181-187), with a new section on the historical context on the front end and a discussion of how he himself teaches the concept of dialogue with his students at the other. Unfortunately, he has removed the “Characteristics of Dialogue and Anti-dialogue” box that a number of our former students have cited in presentations and papers about the first edition. He closes the revised Chapter 15 with a discussion of the difference between acquisition of primary discourses, and learning of secondary discourses (Gee, 1994), to illustrate his point that working class students have two options. One is to acquire middle class ways with words (Heath, 1983) and surrender their own; the other, much more palatable option, is to “learn those parts of middle class discourse that will enable [them] to negotiate for a better deal, and go on being working class” (p. 196).
Finn addresses the major players in potential educational reform in Chapters 16, 17 and 18: Teachers, students, and parents. Chapter 16, “Teachers who agitate” is the previous Chapter 14, about Robert Peterson’s (1991) “How to Read the World and Change it.” In both chapters he references Bigelow & Christensen’s work on equity to illustrate teaching in the “New Paradigm Method”. In the new edition he introduces the reader to several recent Freire-inspired projects, some of which he and his wife, educator Mary Finn, have worked with directly. These include a teacher inquiry group in Los Angeles and a digital video project called City Voices, City Visions (at SUNY Buffalo) where “students become members of an active, creative, reflective community of learners” (p. 214), an experience at the core of empowering education. Urban educators will appreciate the specific examples of what Finn calls the “New Paradigm” in action as this balances out the rather daunting task with which Finn charges us: to create literate citizens who both know and demand their rights.
The first edition’s final chapter, titled “Mad as hell and not going to take it any more” is incorporated into the new Chapters 17 and 18, with an increased emphasis on action. As Watanabe’s (2008) recent study shows, and as our undergraduate and graduate students know, we are still tracking students. We just refer to it with more acceptable names, continuing to operate under the myth that “if you wind up with less, it’s because you entered a fair contest and you lost” (Finn, 2nd ed., p. 220). To take on this myth, in Chapter 17 Finn helps readers envision alternatives to the meritocracy and bootstrap falsehoods. In his description of the Futures Project in Los Angeles, we are introduced to “New Paradigm border crossers with Freirean motivation who were learning school discourse not to replace their own but to critique it and use it to further the collective self-interest of their class” (pp. 221-222). Educators play a critical role in this process, but it is the students themselves who carry the transformation beyond the classroom.
Chapter 18 describes how parent groups have used the first edition of Literacy With an Attitude to think about the effects of social class in their children’s educational experiences (with Gillian Richardson in western New York state, and Patrick and Mary Finn and Lauri Johnson in a low-performing school in Buffalo). These real-world examples are particularly powerful because they make what can seem like a daunting task achievable and accessible. The parent profiles in this chapter illustrate how radical change in literacy education must include the empowerment of families, not just individual students. They also suggest that radical changes might well begin outside of the classroom. If we are tempted to ask, can it be done? It has been done, is Finn’s reply.
Finally, we draw readers’ attention to the inspirational Chapter 19, with its titular reference to “Scaling agitation upwards.” Literacy education with an attitude includes acknowledging the social and political structures that determine whether students receive domesticating or powerful educations, and Finn consistently urges us to work with children and parents to help them alter those structures. Chapter 19 focuses on partnerships between educators and community activists; the latter possess knowledge and methods to achieve educational equity in classrooms through work outside of classrooms. This is a timely reminder for teachers, since educational policy of the last several years has had disempowering effects for both educators and students. The message of this, the penultimate chapter, is that any educational revolution requires two simultaneous actions: Educating working-class students in their own interests, and working for universal social rights. We recommend Finn’s new volume for those familiar with the first edition as well as those who are new to his writing—in either case, there is a lot to value here, for educators from elementary school to college and beyond.