Talking About Literacy: Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education

191 Pages·1992·1.74 MB·English

by  Jane Mace

TALKING ABOUT LITERACY
Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education
Talking about Literacy re-examines dominant notions of what literacy is, and
challenges the problem-solution reflex to the issue (the problem is illiteracy: the
solution is more literacy). Literacy has enormous emotional and political
associations, and the job of literacy educator often concerns changing attitudes
and challenging prejudices – whether in the form of publicity strategies, counselling
new students, or in curriculum design. In short, adult literacy education means
not only teaching courses like ‘fresh start’, ‘basic skills’, ‘study skills’,
‘communication skills’, ‘language support’ and ‘return to study’, but also designing
strategies to encourage people to see that these courses may meet their own interests
– and educating them and others to rethink their own negative attitudes to
‘illiteracy’.
The book looks in detail at five principles put forward by Jane Mace as central to
the education of people who often can read, but wish they could read better; who,
technically, can write, but have a desire to do so with more expression and
coherence. These principles focus on five themes: context, inquiry, authorship,
equality and community. Since it is all too easy for literacy education involving
adults who do not have formal qualifications to stop short of teaching techniques
for ‘correct’ writing, these principles mean taking seriously a view that adult
students are writers as well as readers – that they have an entitlement to be read,
as well as to read others.
Jane Mace has worked for twenty years in adult literacy and community education.
At Cambridge House Literacy Scheme, as tutor-organiser and then Director, she
contributed to the shaping of policy in adult literacy programmes during the early
years of the adult literacy campaign in the UK. At the Lee Community Education
Centre, Goldsmiths’ College, she co-ordinated a programme of courses and projects
in literacy, women’s education, reminiscence work and workplace training. As
Senior Lecturer in Community Education at Goldsmiths’ College, her work now
concerns research and development in the same areas.

TALKING ABOUT
LITERACY
Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy
Education
Jane Mace
London and New York
First published in 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 1992 Jane Mace
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mace, Jane.
Talking about literacy: principles and practice of adult literacy education/Jane
Mace.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-08044-4 (Print Edition). – ISBN 0-415-06655-7 (pbk.)
1. Functional literarcy – Great Britain. 2. Reading (Adult Education) – Great
Britain. I. Title.
LC156.G7M28 1992
374´.012 – dc20 91-41608
CIP
ISBN 0-415-08044-4 (Print Edition)
0-415-06655-7 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-03251-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-17581-6 (Glassbook Format)
to Jessica and Joe

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
To the reader xi
On writing books xvii
The shape of this book xx
Part I Issues
1 PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION 3
Liberating literacy 4
The illiterate as someone else 7
Authors and interviewees 10
Describe or quantify? 14
Authentic voices 16
2 THE TRUTH FOR NOW 23
Truths for teachers, truths for students 24
Truth or fiction? 28
Truth and talk 31
Truth and style 34
Part II Principles
3 LISTENING TO THE QUESTIONS 43
Questions: asked and unasked 45
Literacy: how do we talk about it? 47
Needs and interests 50
Context and outreach 53
Class and literacy: some themes 59
vii
TALKING ABOUT LITERACY
4 THE TEACHER-RESEARCHER 64
Researching the interest 64
Context and menus 69
Researching the answers 73
Words and contradictions 76
5 AUTHORS AND IDENTITY 83
From private to public 84
Rights and responsibilities 94
Inspirations 96
6 READERS EQUAL WRITERS 102
Reading aloud 104
Applause and audience 107
Trusting the reader 109
Friend or censor? 113
7 VOCATIONS AND VOCATIONALISM 119
The workplace as community 120
Maps and communities 125
Status and literacy 127
Communication and community 130
8 CONCLUSION 140
Afterword 144
Notes 147
Bibliography 158
Index 164
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Towards the end of working on this book I went, partly out of writer’s
procrastination, to an event on a Friday evening. As it turned out, that event gave
me more new energy than any amount of poring over drafts. It was an evening to
celebrate International Literacy Day (8 September). A group of twelve people
(students and two tutors) sat round in a room in South-east London and listened
as three of them read and spoke about their writing. To those three, and the
determination and eloquence of the whole group, I owe the inspiration to finish
what I began. Beyond them are the many adult students who have participated in
literacy education with me, without whom I would have had nothing to say in the
first place, and just a few of whom are featured in the book.*
The best advice I found from another writer was Dorothea Brande’s stricture
to the writer to treat her writing desk as a workbench. (If you start daydreaming or
fretting, get up and go somewhere else. The place where you have your writing
equipment is the place where you write.) Other advisers to whom I turned in
difficult moments included Frank Smith, Sue Roe and Natalie Rothenberg. I have
never met any of them. Three friends, however, gave me help of other kinds, and
I would like to thank them here. First, Ruth Lesirge, with whom I have shared
travel, laughter and some hard times, and who combined direct questions with
affirmative warmth in her comments on drafts. Second, Wendy Moss who taught
me again how to keep a sense of humour about serious matters and restated some
of my muddled thought in intelligible language. And third, Rodney Mace, with
whom I have lived for nearly twenty-five years, and who gave me the same
encouragement and faith that he has always given me when I have had difficult
things to face.
ix