Why Literacy is the Key to Justice

Recently, I served on a panel to discuss meaningful approaches to providing equity in education. When it was finished, a colleague who hadn’t attended asked me how it went. “I think it went well,” I responded, “but I somehow wound up talking about literacy the entire time.”

The more I reflected on this experience, the more it affirmed the strong belief that while literacy is one of the most prominent gateways to opportunity, it is also one of the first aspects of education to be under attack when oppression occurs. From visible signs of tyranny like book banning to more subtle indicators of disenfranchisement like removing early access to the foundational skills that build reading proficiency, societies that seek to limit what children learn start with the key to social justice: literacy. To combat and counteract such efforts, teachers must actively and intentionally work to strengthen student capacity in reading, writing, speaking and listening by embedding these skills into instruction every day.  

Speaking and Listening

The first literacy skill that most human beings acquire is known as oracy, which is spoken language. Babies are born with the capacity to speak any language, and they develop their oral skills within the first few years of life. At the same time, listening skills are also evolving during this time via secondary vocabulary as children engage in the work of picking up the sounds and words they hear, as well as parsing out their meaning. While we might therefore assume that verbal skills are entirely intuitive, kids must also learn the more academic components of speaking through targeted instruction if they are to experience growth in phonology, grammar, morphology, vocabulary, discourse, and pragmatics. As students get older, speaking and listening become vital classroom skills in the context of social interaction, academic conversation, and comprehension of content. Therefore, teachers must provide students with ample opportunity to both talk to one another (ideally, free of devices or distractions) and to process what they hear for the sake of developing important oracy skills from early life onward. Without these opportunities, younger students are already at a disadvantage from the get-go. 

Reading and Writing

Education researcher James Britton says that “Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.” As kids get older, they begin connecting their oracy skills to reading and writing with the help of their teachers. Unlike speaking, which is an organic skill for nearly everyone, reading and writing involve specific skills that need to be taught. When students miss out on early opportunities for foundational literacy, they frequently fall behind as readers for the rest of their lives. Therefore, students who are not given the appropriate access to necessary skills will almost certainly find that literacy acts as a barrier to their success rather than as a pathway to achievement. 

For that reason, all schools need to take literacy just as seriously as any other content, and not just in the early years; students must continue to be given opportunities to grow all the way through the end of high school. Furthermore, when students are showing any gaps in their literacy skills, appropriate support must be in place to correctly diagnose and treat the correct challenge so that growth is not just possible, but also closely monitored. As equity scholar Zaretta Hammond points out, literacy “is the vital equity work: students must comprehend what they’re reading, possess advanced decoding skills, have word wealth, and be able to command all of these literacy skills.”

Critical Thinking

For students to think critically, they must be able to engage in deeper thought about the varied topics of study they encounter, which requires background knowledge. For example, if a student is reading about the climate on Mars and already has information about the climate on the planet Earth, that context could help them better access the text, whereas a student who has not yet learned much about climate would have less to draw from while they are encountering new ideas. Therefore, to help kids develop the habit of engaging in critical thinking, we can improve their expressive and receptive language literacy by making sure that when we introduce a text, we provide background knowledge where possible to help them understand what is in front of them. Otherwise, students who have had more exposure to a variety of concepts will have an inequitable advantage over their peers. 

Inquiry

A key sign of advancing development in critical thinking skills is the ability to engage in inquiry by asking open-ended, complex questions about learning. Students who are consistently tasked with asking such questions have more opportunity to grapple with concepts that are not just grade-level, but also more rigorous. For example, if we want to help students produce more language and learn more about what they know at the same time, a quick strategy for summarizing new content is to ask students to write one or two detailed questions as an exit ticket before leaving the classroom. The more we encourage students to produce language, the more we learn about how to ensure everyone is being given the chance to engage in instruction that holds them to high standards and expectations.

As a next step, we all might wish to consider whether we prioritize literacy beyond English or language arts classrooms as a vital component to both equity in education and student success. Every grade level and content area focus must include the skills shared above; otherwise, students are not being given the opportunity to access coursework that will elevate their skills and allow them to continue growing. In our pursuit of liberty and justice for all students, literacy cannot be allowed to be brushed aside or glossed over as one of the strongest, most effective pathways to student achievement. 

Written by Miriam Plotinsky, Education World Contributing Writer

Miriam Plotinsky is an instructional specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, where she has taught and led for more than 20 years. She is the author of several education books (both out and forthcoming) with W.W. Norton, ASCD and Solution Tree. She is also a National Board-Certified Teacher with additional certification in administration and supervision. She can be reached at www.miriamplotinsky.com.

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