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| Nourishing
Conversations: Urban Adolescents, Literacy, and Democratic Society |
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| Colleen
M. Fairbanks University of Texas at Austin |
This essay explores the implications of literacy instruction aimed at “nourishing conversations” about life experience in literacy classrooms (Robinson, 1991, p. 264). Drawing on literacy projects conducted in Saginaw, Michigan and Austin, Texas, I examine these projects from three points of view: learning from inquiry, valuing the agency students can manage, and understanding “a mess called democracy” (Fine, 1991, p. 207). In this way, I suggest the nature of the students’ experiences in these projects, emphasizing the sense that students made of their lives when they were allowed to raise their voices through literacy and to project images of urban adolescent life. Finally, I explore the relationships between the opportunity to use literacy for these purposes and participation in democratic society, arguing that curriculum in which adolescents are encouraged to investigate their life experiences engages them in democratic life. | |
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| JLR v. 30 no. 2 1998 pp. 187–203 |
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