Literacy With an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: I found this book to be one of the most important books I've read. I was a working-class student, and Finn's description of typical attitudes astounded me, because I had those attitudes, but thought I was fiercely independent and radically individual. Oh, well.

It is written in a friendly and encouraging way, and offers proven methods to improve education across class and cultural divides.

Rating:
Summary: Finn looks at working-class literacy versus elite literacy
Review: Finn contends that the degree of literacy that is taught and exercised in schools is a key determinant in attaining social position and agency. Professionals, managers, and executives acquire an empowering literacy that emphasizes evaluation, analysis, and synthesis in contrast to the functional literacy that is taught in working-class schools which leads to routine, non-creative work and diminished social role. It is Finn's mission to empower working-class kids through changes in the educational system that will create, what he calls, literacy with an attitude.

Finn arranges schools along a line including working-class, middle-class, affluent-professional, and executive elite schools.

Working-class schools are strictly teacher-directed emphasizing order and discipline. The subject matter is largely fragmented facts with little relevance to working-class lives. An uneasy standoff exists between derogatory teachers and reluctant students.

Middle-class students also have minimal input to the educational process but see the value in the information in textbooks and teachers' efforts. Anxiety-producing testing is emphasized but is accepted as essential for success in white-collar jobs. Competency is the goal, not creativity.

It is only in affluent-professional and executive-elite schools where empowering literacy is found. Students are able to participate in planning their own education. Creativity and problem solving take precedence over getting the facts right. The executive-elite schools stress academic excellence and the exercise of control. The affluent-professional schools are more wide-ranging and even willing to critique the social status-quo.

Finn finds that working-class culture itself has an impact in school settings. The dominant form of communication is implicit which relies on unspoken, shared opinions and beliefs. However, success in schools is dependent on the ability to fully use language. Also, working-class parents tend to emphasize obedience in younger children, not exploration. But constrained personalities can be at some disadvantage in settings where personal initiative is key for success, as in good schools.

So working class culture itself must be overcome to gain equal footing with articulate elites. But the Finn mission of extricating working-class kids from dead-end schools is fraught with other contradictions and difficulties.

It is difficult to understand Finn's claim that "the savage inequalities in schools are not the result of a conspicuous conspiracy to oppress the working class." It is Finn that describes the suppression of the fledgling corresponding societies in 1790 England who had a mission to empower the English working class via the extension of literacy. He further shows that a main factor in establishing public education was to control the working class. Why wouldn't the same sort of policies deployed by many levels of government and supported by business interests against the American labor movement throughout most of its history be reflected in the public education of the working class?

Finn proposes that "transforming" intellectuals who see schools as sites of social struggle for the working class will initiate change. He does not clearly address where sufficient numbers of these agents for change can be found. Nor does he explain why their actions would be tolerated by school officials and the larger society. It is somewhat disturbing to see proposed the use of children to achieve a social agenda.

It is unclear as to whether Finn fully appreciates the individualizing that occurs in the elite schools. It is individual creativity and excellence that is developed. But in Finn's new working-class schools, students become "collective" actors for social change. Is student solidarity equivalent to maximizing education? Where would the new schools fit among his school models?

A glaring piece that is missing from the book is the location and numbers of the various types of schools that he describes. One can only speculate that the middle-class school model predominates in the US. That data is necessary to get a handle on the feasibility and relevance of his proposal.

Finn's book ultimately does not come to grips with the contradictions within the working class itself as well as the demands of capitalism. Despite an emphasis on social class in the book, Finn does very little to acknowledge that working class education occurs within and is shaped by capitalistic class relations. And what he proposes would have ramifications for those relations. Capitalism does not require extensive education for most of its workers. Somehow the reader gets the feeling that close to an invisible hand is going to guide working- class students to empowerment nirvana despite the real obstacles noted.

Rating:
Summary: Too many oversights and contradictions
Review: Finn contends that the degree of literacy that is taught and exercised in schools is a key determinant in attaining social position and agency. Professionals, managers, and executives acquire an empowering literacy that emphasizes evaluation, analysis, and synthesis in contrast to the functional literacy that is taught in working-class schools which leads to routine, non-creative work and diminished social role. It is Finn's mission to empower working-class kids through changes in the educational system that will create, what he calls, literacy with an attitude.

Finn arranges schools along a line including working-class, middle-class, affluent-professional, and executive elite schools.

Working-class schools are strictly teacher-directed emphasizing order and discipline. The subject matter is largely fragmented facts with little relevance to working-class lives. An uneasy standoff exists between derogatory teachers and reluctant students.

Middle-class students also have minimal input to the educational process but see the value in the information in textbooks and teachers' efforts. Anxiety-producing testing is emphasized but is accepted as essential for success in white-collar jobs. Competency is the goal, not creativity.

It is only in affluent-professional and executive-elite schools where empowering literacy is found. Students are able to participate in planning their own education. Creativity and problem solving take precedence over getting the facts right. The executive-elite schools stress academic excellence and the exercise of control. The affluent-professional schools are more wide-ranging and even willing to critique the social status-quo.

Finn finds that working-class culture itself has an impact in school settings. The dominant form of communication is implicit which relies on unspoken, shared opinions and beliefs. However, success in schools is dependent on the ability to fully use language. Also, working-class parents tend to emphasize obedience in younger children, not exploration. But constrained personalities can be at some disadvantage in settings where personal initiative is key for success, as in good schools.

So working class culture itself must be overcome to gain equal footing with articulate elites. But the Finn mission of extricating working-class kids from dead-end schools is fraught with other contradictions and difficulties.

It is difficult to understand Finn's claim that "the savage inequalities in schools are not the result of a conspicuous conspiracy to oppress the working class." It is Finn that describes the suppression of the fledgling corresponding societies in 1790 England who had a mission to empower the English working class via the extension of literacy. He further shows that a main factor in establishing public education was to control the working class. Why wouldn't the same sort of policies deployed by many levels of government and supported by business interests against the American labor movement throughout most of its history be reflected in the public education of the working class?

Finn proposes that "transforming" intellectuals who see schools as sites of social struggle for the working class will initiate change. He does not clearly address where sufficient numbers of these agents for change can be found. Nor does he explain why their actions would be tolerated by school officials and the larger society. It is somewhat disturbing to see proposed the use of children to achieve a social agenda.

It is unclear as to whether Finn fully appreciates the individualizing that occurs in the elite schools. It is individual creativity and excellence that is developed. But in Finn's new working-class schools, students become "collective" actors for social change. Is student solidarity equivalent to maximizing education? Where would the new schools fit among his school models?

A glaring piece that is missing from the book is the location and numbers of the various types of schools that he describes. One can only speculate that the middle-class school model predominates in the US. That data is necessary to get a handle on the feasibility and relevance of his proposal.

Finn's book ultimately does not come to grips with the contradictions within the working class itself as well as the demands of capitalism. Despite an emphasis on social class in the book, Finn does very little to acknowledge that working class education occurs within and is shaped by capitalistic class relations. And what he proposes would have ramifications for those relations. Capitalism does not require extensive education for most of its workers. Somehow the reader gets the feeling that close to an invisible hand is going to guide working- class students to empowerment nirvana despite the real obstacles noted.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutly one of the best books you'll ever read!
Review: If you have ever wondered what the difference is between children of working class families verses those of more afluence, (hint, it isn't simply the money) if you ever wondered what the difference could possibly be that leads some children into the chute toward dead-end factory jobs, while others have jobs that hold some promise, this is the book to read! Read it, then take a closer look at your child's classsroom, their homework, they way they are spoken to, etc. Take it with you as a guide and visit the classroom often, and at different times! You may be shocked at what they are actually learning. Be warned--that reading this book gives validity to the saying "The truth will set you free, but first, it will [upset] you ... !"

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Every Classroom Teacher
Review: Partick J. Finn's book Literacy With an Attitude is an excellent book that presents a view of public schooling in working class communities that every teacher and parent should read. Finn argues, from a long list of research that is presented in an easy reading and personal style, that schools in working-class neighborhoods do not generally provide the form of literacy instruction [reading and writing] that prepares working class children for occupations of leadership and power, but instead, prepares them for occupations in manual labor, retail, and the like. Finn argues that this is not done intentionally with any overt plot, but rather, is accomplished as part of the normal social order in a society made up of professional, middle, and working class persons.

Finn describes how this process works, and does so in a very convincing manner--indeed, it is difficult to put his book down once he gets rolling on this description. He concludes this book with descriptions of how to escape this form of literacy instruction and how teachers and schools can deliver literacy instruction that is enriching, leads to powerful understandings, and changes ways of thinking, not just ways of reading and writing: i.e., literacy with an attitude.

Rating:
Summary: Finn looks at working-class literacy versus elite literacy
Review: This book shows literacy at a socio-economic level, and what teachers of the working-class schools need to strive for in their classrooms. It answers descriptively the reasons schooling and literacy for the America's working-class children are not the same for other levels of the social spectrum. It is insightful and inspirational!