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Public Literacy: a Curriculum for Adult Basic Education

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Public Literacy: a Curriculum for Adult Basic Education DOCUMENT RESUME ED 384 783 CE 069 470 AUTHOR Moraitis, Peter; McCormack, Rob TITLE Public Literacy: A Curriculum forAdult Basic Education. INSTITUTION Adult, Community, and FurtherEducation Board, Melbourne (Australia), REPORT NO ISBN-0-7306-7927-6 PUB DATE 95 NOTE 320p. AVAILABLE FROMARIS, National Languages andLiteracy Institute of Australia, GPO Box 372F, Melbourne,Victoria 3001, Australia ($35 Australian pluspostage). PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (For Teacher) (052) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PC13 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Adult Basic Education; *Adult Literacy;Curriculum Guides; *Debate; Foreign Countries;Instructional Innovation; Instructional Materials;Learning Activities; Letters (Correspondence);*Literacy Education; *Persuasive Discourse;*Public Speaking; Writing (Composition) IDENTIFIERS Australia; *Letters to the Editor ABSTRACT This curriculum guide for a publicliteracy course uses letters to the editor as a wayof introducing adult literacy and basic education students to public debate.. Itconsists of three parts. Part 1 is an introduction thatprovides background, describes how to analyze letters, and details the coursestructure. Pert 2 is a comprehensive teacher.'s guide. The curriculumis divided info three stages. The first stage familiarizes'studentswith letteri to the editor and presents them as examples of publicdiscourse. It starts with problems and solutions'and then showsthat what is a problem or a solution depends on theangle from which it is viewed. It then points out that point of view is determinedby a number of general values. The second. stage introduces theidea that public discourse is argumentative. It covers these ideas: argument,rationality, and rhetorical structures for argument. Thethird stage shows that traditions are the source for the reasoningthat occurs in argument. It introduces the main traditions:conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and scientific management. Eachof the 21 themes or sections consists of teaching notes, transparencymasters, student activities, other possibilities, and homework.Part 3 contains sample letters categorized as follows: those thatraise problems, respond to a policy, support other letters,reject other letters, or are grouped around traditions. Each letter is presentedin a one-page format with a section for student notesat the bottom. (YLB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that canbe made from the original document. *********************************************************************** I A N00 : et 00 LU e , O S DEPARTMENT OF h./LIGATION V 0 ice of Educational Research and improvement E UCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS CENTER (ERIC) MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY This document has been reproduced as ' received Irom the person or organization \C) originating it 0 Minor changes havo been made to C- / rnprove reproduction quality 1 ,--/ <,,,, ,..,4-.66''.-1--,' Points Of view or opinions stated in this BEST COPY AVAILABLE (-- document do not nocossanly represent TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES official OERI position or policy 2 INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) " Public Literacy A Curriculum for Adult Basic Education by I Peter Moraitis and Rob McCormack Public Literacy: A Curriculum for Adult Basic Education Authors Peter i/loraitis and Rob McCormack Footscray Campus Western Metropolitan College of TAFE Victoria Design & layout Clint Smith LeamWorks Publisher The Adult, Community and Further Education Board, Victoria, 1995 This Curriculum was produced with funding from the Adult, Community and Further Education Board, Victoria. The views expressed are the authors' and not necessarily those of the Adult, Community and Further Education Board, Victoria. © State of Victoria, 1995. Designated forms and handouts may be photocopied for use by individual tutors, teachers or trainers. Otherwise no parts may be reproduced by any process except with the express written permission of the Attorney General for the State of Victoria, or a person under her authority, or in accordance with the Copyright Act. All enquiries about this publication should be addressed to: The General Manager Adult, Community anf Further Education Division Office of Training and Further Education Rialto South Tower 525 Collins Street Melbourne. VIC 3000 Every attempt has been made to contact the authors and therefore the copyright holders of the letters to the editor used in this publication; further information pertaining to any of the letters would be most welcome. ISBN 0 7306 7927 6 Acknowledgements This adult basic education project was initially funded by the Division of Further Education, now the Adult, Community and Further Education Division, Victoria. An earlier draft of this curriculum has been photocopied and used by teachers in various settings over a number of years. It has been hard to find the time to turn a working document into something fit for publication. We would like to thank the authors of letters to the editor that we have used in Public Literacy. Many authors were unable to be contacted or did not respond to our request. However the following authors specifically agreed to our request to use their letters, and we thank them for their support: Ken Aldred, MHR -Mitcham Judith Bessant Arnold Bonnet, for the IFS Friendly Society Elina Dalziel, for the Disability Resources Centre Jennie Fickling Babette Francis Jim Groutsch John Halfpenny, for the Victorian Trades Hall Council Murray Keable, for Friends of the Earth Frank T. McDermott Gareth Owen, for the Tenant's Union of Victoria Bruce Turner. We would also like to thank Clint Smith whose patience and commitment to design and editing the document went far beyond any recompense for his work. Without his involvement the document would not have reached its current state and would have remained a photocopied draft. We can't thank him enough. 5 Public. Literacy A durriculum for Adult Basic Education Pat 1 Introduction Course Background 3 :Analysing Letters . 15 :. The.Structure of the Course 25: Further Information 29 Riv." IN1N'ODuCI.C)N 6 BEST COPY AVAILABLE COURSE BACKGROUND S 1 Why develop a public literacy curriculum? Definition 11) Public literacy is the ability to participate in public discourse and argument. This notion of public argument is inextricably tied to the idea of IDdemocracy and to the idea of citizenship. The aim of this public literacy course is to provide a framework which helps Adult Literacy and Basic Education (ALBE) students to understand this public debate and 111 ultimately to participate in it. Schemas or facts? Our experience is that most students are unable to make much sense of the 'news items' concerning public controversy and debate that 110 bombard them in the mass media. The reason for this seems to be that they do not possess any schemas abstract enough into which these news items could be slotted and thus make sense. One common suggestion is that what these students need is more 'facts', more experience. But their case is that of having too many facts, too many media-mediated experiences. They do not need more experiences; it is not that they need to see or hear more of what happens inside public institutions or buildings. In fact, the media have already 11) provided them with many glimpses of the physical settings and rituals of social institutions. Our view is that what they do need is to understand the interconnections between these disconnected 'media blips'. They need to understand the conflicting forms of reasoning, the values, the traditions and the forms of interpretation which are mobilised in public debate and embodied in social institutions, legislation and practices. c. The aim of this public literacy course is to provide a framework which helps Adult Literacy and Basic Education (ALBE) students to understand this public debate and ultimately to participate in it. " S S S PART 1: INTRODUCTION 3 COURSE BACKGROUND 2 How the course developed This material developed out of work at Footscray TAFE College with Year 12 students who had to write essays giving their opinions orpoints of view on public issues. Such issues as gun laws, smoking in public, genetic engineering, drink driving laws, logging of forests, etc. issues which are matters of publicly contested evaluations. We came to realise in helping these students that what distinguished successful and unsuccessful student writers was not just poor 'grammar' (knowing prescribed formal English usage), nor even a lack of sufficient information about a particular topic. What made an essay a good essay was much more complex than this. Both 'ideas' and lingUistic conventions It had to do with the understanding of the kind of social domain,what Foucault' calls a discursive formation, which students were expected to participate in through writing an essay, and this included who the writer took, or even unconsciously presupposed, herself to be. And it had to do with specific kinds of linguistic resources that students needed to mobilise to participate in this social domain, linguistic resources which need never have been 'accessed'by students in other domains of their life. In short, to help students write a good essay we had to help them understand both 'ideas' (including their relatioriship to those ideas) and the structures and conventions of language which typically realised those 'ideas'. Understanding the public domain Our notion of public literacy is enabling students to participate inthe powerful discourses used to shape; understand,
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