profiting from Literacy and reading, who does that?

Literally literacy for profit of all!!!

In a recent hot air blog on the Washington post website (www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fthe-intersect%2Fwp%2F2014%2F05%2F28%2Fyou-might-want-to-reconsider-that-donation-to-the-reading-rainbow-kickstarter%2F&h=FAQGL3LLL )

By Caitlin Dewey form may 28 2014, Levar Burton’s new kickstarter campaign, to fund a new “reboot” of Reading Rainbow and literacy promotion is a dastardly venture with a clear ulterior motive, to make profit? Who does that? I mean really who in their right mind makes profit from selling books? Hmmmm… the whole publishing industry, local independent bookstores everywhere, and even yes, Amazon and audible.com yeah its wrong to profit from doing the world an important service like literacy.

Teaching literacy to the masses and being for profit

These two things are not at conflict with each other in the real world and really never have been or will ever be.

Its either that there is this infinite and endless peace between profitability and literacy or else bookstores everywhere would not exist, and all books would only be available through the already budget gutted libraries and struggling charities.

We need for profit literacy companies and stores also, lest we fall into communism. (joke)

While there might be plenty of research on the importance of early literacy and phonics that does not in anyway negate the need for a life long love of reading to encourage a educated free and democratic society.

To follow in the logic of cutting funding for everything that’s not phonics or early reading, lets just leave it at that, if they are literate they will stay that way. Except if they never read for fun, and feel reading is just either boring or a chore. Wait if they can read then there is no need for langue arts education past 2^nd grade. So our kids can learn just enough to read then they need nothing. I smell total BULL SHIT!

If the question was only about teaching kids to read period, it would be much easier to address the language need of our students. But try teaching reading to someone who is reluctant to read at any age? We need to engage them too.

OMG the show is already popular? really? That is  not a legitimate reason to stop future generations from learning to love to read from a digital platform!

Just because the new reading rainbow stuff is going to be available to computer first does not make the program an elitist group of selfish literacy lovers, it means they have to start somewhere and starting with the population that watched the 80’s-2000’s show ( who mostly have computers by now)_is actually a good thing.

SO if your going to criticize profit making, why not only read the physical library books, only watch library dvd’s, and watch reruns of reading rainbow no one is stopping you. And please everyone reading this support reading and literacy initiatives in your area. There are tons. Like Reading partners and  SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARIES and I would hasten to add SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORES!

But please don’t turn the Levar Burton/ new Reading “reboot” into a capitalism bashing party, or a soap box with out a mirror.

I hasten to ask this Caitlin Dewey what she does to promote children’s literacy in her own life…..

I for one am working on my library masters and I work in a local bookstore, selling literacy and love of reading BOTH each and every minute I can.
 

Let's let go of some of our power to empower youth, and get more out of our research!

Power dynamics, in our example are being an adult who is imediately both outsider to youth culture and the adult is seen as an “authority” figure  and the resulting power struggles pervade almost everywhere in modern life especially between teens and adults. Best’s 2000 article on about how adults create media that manifest into social constructions of “proms” and often dictate the lasting cultural significance of a prom.  The counter argument that I support is that young adults and youth need to, can and will identify themselves through their own personal experiences of certain rites of passage (like prom). This somewhat unpopular idea needs to be taught, reinforced and spread so that youth will know that their personal growth experiences will certainly shape them more than any adult label or adult construct.

The problems arise when adults assert their agendas and perspectives on teens who see things their own way, and clearly need to identify and define themselves on their own terms. Consequences can of the lack of self discovery can be devastating to a younger person and he or she’s future. Our current ageist power hierarchy (in Bes’s case) of those of who controls the meaning of and responsibility for youth behaviors and experiences needs to be questioned and flipped.

To bring this idea into what I can do as a future librarian or researcher, I will make sure I include youth through out the research process, and continually examine what they think, how they experience and how they describe their lives and make a free and safe spaces so they can discuss all f this and more entirely on their own terms.

Power dynamics such as those presented in Best (2000) Dimitidis (2008) and Taft (2007) also speak of the predominant racism inherent of our understanding of the construct of the legacy of the conventional American young adult experiences. The American young adult experience is often portrayed in literature, and through out all media as almost always white, upper middle class, heterosexual, traditional nuclear family. The dominance of this portrayal in media and literature is unsettling and to me is quite disturbing despite the changes over recent years progress has been slow, and has not even come close to equally representing the shifts in our demographics on any scale. It is goal of mine to focus on the minorities in our midst” those youth who are outcast and marginalized and try to empower them throughout the research and program evaluation process that I am doing this term.    

I also hope to do more research on the lack of diversity in youth literature (particularly up to YA).

The idea of being open and reflexive to mental gymnastics that Susan talked about are essential to growth and development as a researcher. We must all strive to avoid our own biases and to keep ourselves out of the way of our own research.

Our Linden Tree (poem on Linden Tree)

Our Linden Tree

Our Linden Tree

is a giving tree

that grows with each gift

given, each two-legged creature

that burrows inside our walls, teaches

us all something new.  The miles of smiles

             on the faces of regulars, the wondrous warmth

         of newcomers with all those bright eyes, the tales

       grandparents, newborns and those in the midst of

                      those sage ages all welcome in our spaces,  

                      day after day this nurtures us to our core.

     Our sustenance

  also comes from

                                            the joy of giving

                                   guidance and raw materials

 with which they create their own

beautiful new worlds, whose origin is

within each freshly opened and newly loved book

discussion on ethics in youth led research

 Kafisis (2010) observations on implied consent were useful (any researcher should not assume anything), and the transparency of research methods is also a necessary part of any legitimate scientific research. The relative anonymity (albeit limited over time) of online studies took away a lot of the hierarchy and power distance that is my biggest concern in adult research on children.  

Leonard’s (2007) article in Best’s (2007) book spells out my most pressing concern with adult research work on youth. The gatekeeper phenomenon is created in the inherent power imbalance in the adult researcher and children divide. Leonard clarifies that the gatekeeping can keep children quiet during the first few stages of the research. Gatekeepers have the power to permit or restrict the access “to people or situations for the purposes of research.” (p. 135) According to Leonard, trust and rapport need to be created, built and strengthened “at a number of different levels.” (p. 135) This trust and rapport building practice is to avoid a reemergence of the power distance.  Its interesting to point out that one of the good practices Leonard points out is a continual review of consent to ensure that children remain willing to be involved.  

Delgado (2010) takes the power struggle a step further. According to Delgado there is even a power struggle between the youth doing the research and the youth being studied.  “Effort must be made throughout the research endeavor to identify power differentials and help youth recognize these situations and develop appropriate ways to redress them.” (p. 86) This might require additional time and effort to the research process, but this step may well be crucial to all youth led research processes.  To address this I would facilitate problems solving conversations that would focus on how to ensure all youth have equal say in the research process.   

According to this weeks chapter in Dimitradis, (2008) the assumed drastic power imbalance between adult researcher can be alleviated by using youth led or youth participatory action research (YPAR) methods. Where youth take up the position of researchers and use their own observations and experiences as well as those of their peers as the primary data collection.  This data collection empowers youth at least for as long as their research is being done and is one of the most effective methods for bridging the power gap between youth and adults.  It empowers them as Dimitradis (2008) explains having youth lead research it “de-parochialize(s)” research. (p. 125) Taking research away from the “elite” adult researchers, making research a “much more universal elementary and improvable capacity.”  (p. 125) This youth led aspect, plus the conversation on equality of power mentioned above, both addresses how I would solve the power distance issue in my hypothetical evaluations research project on a youth service program at a library.  

Wednesday's waitings

wednesday's waitings
ten things I am looking forward to

1. Kelly (Always #1)

2. Internship in fall, i will get 180 hours done somehow. Time will be spent with a good friend of mine doing important library work.

3.  finishing poetry class, consider myself to be a better poet then ever before, after a fabulous class.
4.  filling time in self care self aware ways.
5.  finishing the books Im reading. (Science Fair by Dave Barry, Dealing with Dragons, Hattie Big Sky)
6. Working on the cover song.
7. writing enough new poems for my first Chap book
8. Galapagos in late June
9. Future possibilities
10. Growth and healing.

all in this together now, eternally toward empowerment!

Certainly through my limited research thus far, I have recognized the importance of both self and adult led empowerment for our youth, the importance for all youth service professionals to acknowledge the capacities of youth in advocating for their own needs. Seems to me that the best services respond to youth, don’t force their own agenda. The research methods of all of my four articles were mostly literature reviews.

In the articles I selected from the 1980’s (Flum, 1988) and (Hodges, 1988) both give examples of how library youth services need to delegate roles, network with all other local/community youth services, and above all else cater specifically to local youth needs.

Flum talks about the plight of youth in the 1980’s in away that is engaging and strongly progressively politically charged. Taking away some of the agency, or personal powers of the youth that Flum should be advocating for. She puts the bull’s-eye of the brunt of the burden and blame sharply on the shoulders of YA professions especially YA librarians, without giving enough blame to the young adults themselves in terms of their own advocacy. If adults must keep acting as gatekeepers, how will, how can that ever be considered full empowerment?

Hodges (1988) stresses that no single solitary library can be all things to all people at all times. No library can sufficiently fulfill equanimity of satisfaction even to any one particular customer base, such as young adults or children. No library is perfect, Can any library ever possibly be good enough to all people given strict human and budget limitations? According to Hodges the lack of perfection means, the role of decision making for young adults must be “as meaningful for their needs as can be achieved.” (p. 112)

The articles we read in this weeks reading talk about how to best make those decisions. One example being the Participant Action Research (PAR) method discussed in Raby’s 2007 article in Best’s book. PAR is a research method in qich the researcher engages with the youth being impacted by the services on equal footing as supposed to doing research on them, it is a collaborative research approach. Allowing the youth to feel and be as fully capable and able to construct and use their own thoughts producing meaningful and perhaps even practical actions and thoughts, and produce such awareness that is best made through, as Raby quotes Freire, “self inquiry and reflection.”  (pg. 53) The idea is to create spaces and dialogues that permit free expression and careful reflection with these shared ideas, the researcher gains information and the youth can be at least slightly empowered as a result of the research.

My articles from the 1990’s also spoke of how the voices of children and youth need to be eternally empowered by youth and children librarians.

Walter’s 1997 article discussed the need for policies and reforms in the area of digital libraries accessibility to children and youth and having policies that enable the libraries to provide better service.

In Hannigan there is a focus on the feminist perspective on six women and their contributions to young adult services in public libraries.

As sociology was my undergrad major I really enjoyed the Dimitradis (2008) chapters. These chapters were great reviews for some of the foundational ideas that started sociology as a legitimate academic avenue.  I enjoyed a lot of the vocabulary and the ideas of urban culture and I now question whether I live in an urban place or a suburban space.

I think that what I learned from these articles and chapters will remind me to work with the people I serve and not keep myself in a place of authority, I will do this to best as I am able at least to the extent this is possible.