A controversy regarding literacy lies at the heart of debates over the
current state of American education. In response to the debate, this study
reviews and analyzes the literacy theories of E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Walter Ong,
Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, Shirley Brice Heath, and Paulo Freire. The
author presents...
In twentieth century America, women continue the age-old struggle for recognition
as whole, intelligent individuals, not just an "other," less hearty, less deserving
or less capable being than man. Sarah Grimke spoke of the inequalities over 150 years
ago during the abolitionist movement when she compiled her major arguments into...
Writing groups are used regularly in the academic
arena, but they are also used in the non-academic
community. This paper is an exploration of the use of nonacademic writing groups in Salem, Oregon. In Chapter 2 I discuss the theory behind writing groups--what it is about
writing and responding that...
The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to guide middle school and high school students into critical thinking about environmental issues. Through keen observation of their bioregion and through an integration of interdisciplinary literature which focuses on Oregon writers, students will be challenged to think, write, and discuss current issues...
John Keats, as a principal figure in the Romantic
movement in Europe, reacted against the philosophy of the
Enlightenment. His poetry and letters are testament to his
distrust of, and resistance to, an ever increasingly
clinical and "reasonable" society. Keats's poetic thought--imaginative,
speculative, dialectic--is the antithesis of an
Enlightenment philosophy...
Presenting and synthesizing several paradigms for the teaching of literature in American colleges, I investigate how definitions of reading, readers, texts, interpretations, and knowledge affect student acts of reading and writing. In addition, I draw upon specific examples of text-based, reader-based, and social-cultural based models for the teaching of reading...
The classroom practices discussed in this thesis come slowly and at a "slant" to feminism through critical reading of texts, a practice that I call a (re)presentation of the silent women in texts. Given our patriarchal western culture, making meaning, and especially making sense, of the role and representations of...