Eliana Lipsky (etlipsky@gmail.com) is an Ed.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at Loyola University Chicago researching authentic student inquiry in the Modern-Orthodox Jewish day school Tanakh class.

Jennifer K. Shah (jennybshah@gmail.com) is an Ed.D. student in Curriculum and Instruction at Loyola University Chicago researching critical literacy implementation with teacher candidates in CatholicK-8 schools.

The authors explore the concept of glocalization and its implications for learning in day schools.

The advent of the internet has changed the relationship between local, national, and global communities, leading to a popular concept of glocality (Brooks & Normore, 2010). Issues that were once local have become global due to the ease at which people can upload to, download from, and surf the Internet. With increasing text accessibility and information overload, the 21st century requires educators to radically shift the way they define and understand what texts are and how they and their students use and relate to those texts. We assert that critical thinking with critical literacy prepares students as 21st century glocal citizens by providing an avenue to examine the constant incoming information. Incorporating the lens of critical literacy in education is a transformative process that occurs over time. In this paper, we first define glocalization, then we define critical literacy and examine why it is important now. Finally, we present examples of how teachers can include critical literacy skills in the Jewish day school classroom.

Glocalization: A 21st century reality

At the turn of the 21st century, the concept of glocalization developed as an abstract concept to help economists discuss the changing macro-micro economic relationships resulting from the impact of technological advances on the relationships between local communities and the global economy (Brooks & Normore, 2010; Haque Khondker, 2004). Brooks & Normore explain, “Robertson’s (1995) notion of glocalization is reflected in the way that local, national, and global interrelationships are mediated by local, national, and political dynamics” (p. 53). Education theorists borrowed the term glocalization to understand how these macromicro relationships exist in education. Part of glocalization’s impact on the field of education is that texts should be considered from multiple local, national, and global perspectives in a fair and equal way. Brooks & Normore (2010) explain that “students and those who teach them [should] develop the skills and dispositions to identify the critical values at play,” and that “such skills include open-mindedness, careful attention to others’ views, considering ethical implications of decisions, [and] learning how to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of our own and others’ positions…” (p. 60). Critical literacy embodies these skills and values.

Local Jewish day schools espouse mission statements that include graduating young Jewish adults committed to living a Jewish life while concurrently promoting the value system of their home nation in order to contribute to the global community. To educate their students as both Jewish and global citizens, Jewish day schools offer a dual curriculum. These two missions are sometimes in conflict. Many Jewish day school students have learned to compartmentalize their two worlds and use their secular identity to consider secular texts and their Jewish identity to consider Jewish texts (Lehmann, 2008). Additionally, in a small study exploring Jewish identity, Friedman, Friedlander, and Blustein (2005) found that several participants have “two cultural identities with one identity (i.e., as a Jew or as an American) more salient than the other depending on the situation…” (p. 80). As research on role and identity conflict demonstrates, such a division of self does not serve students in the best way possible (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000; Coverman, 1989).

When students experiencing identity conflict leave their Jewish community havens, they are overcome by the onslaught of information from the secular world. It is imperative for Jewish day school students to be able to manage the new and varying information they encounter. These students need many opportunities in school to openly grapple with the external information they confront in and out of school in ways that demonstrate the interconnectedness of their Jewish, local, national, and global identities, engaging them in open dialogue around these differing value systems. Critical literacy is a way to facilitate this experience.

What is Critical Literacy?

Critical literacy is defined as “a philosophy that recognizes the connections between power, knowledge, language, and ideology, and recognizes the inequalities and injustices surrounding us in order to move toward transformative action and social justice” (Mulcahy, 2011, p. 2). In other words, the ownership and dissemination of information is considered a large contributing factor to existing power dynamics in any given relationship. For example, prior to glocalization, students primarily received information from their parents, teachers, and peers. As technology continues advancing, students gain more control over the information they encounter. The language and medium used to convey that information can maintain or alter the existing power dynamics. Attention to such power opens doors to transformative action.

Practicing critical literacy conditions the reader to think about what is presented, what is absent, and perhaps why it is so. Critical literacy advocates argue that a text is any medium contributing to a discourse that a reader can interpret; texts range from images and symbols to movies and clothing. No text is considered neutral. Critical literate teachers and students discuss issues of access and power in every classroom despite the age of students or the subject matter being studied (Shannon, 2011).

Critical literacy has four steps: 1) Disrupting the status quo, which entails “seeing the ‘everyday’ through new lenses” (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002, p. 383); 2) Interrogating multiple viewpoints, which requires the reader to examine texts from various perspectives including his own; 3) Understanding sociopolitical issues, which involves critiquing connections between power, language, and current systems and identifying historical origins and influences of a text; and 4) Taking socially just action, which applies what is learned for the purpose of promoting social justice in local, national, and global communities (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002). Teachers and schools can engage students actively by asking critical questions such as whose perspective is included or excluded, are there multiple interpretations of the same event, how does the author position the reader, and finally “whose interests are served?” (Janks, 2014, Introduction).

Critical thinking and critical literacy are two separate entities. Both are important in today’s glocal world. Critical thinking forms the base which helps the individual student reason through, analyze, and evaluate text while critical literacy “strives to make students aware of the interrelatedness and interconnectiveness of the world,” stretching beyond the individual to the societal level (Mulcahy, 2011, p. 9). Utilizing critical thinking one dissects a text answering questions directly related to that text, whereas critical literacy extends critical thinking skills by asking the reader to examine their world alongside the text (Freire & Macedo, 1987) through generating questions related to the environment in which the text was created and disseminated.

Why Critical Literacy now?

Today, students learn information from a variety of media sources that may or may not be sanctioned by their parents and teachers. Darling-Hammond (2010) exclaims, “Indeed, in 3 years from 1999- 2002, the amount of new information produced nearly equaled the amount produced in the entire history of the world previously” (p. 4). The exponential increase of information has drastically changed our relationship to text. No longer can information be passively received. In an age of information overload students must actively engage with surrounding texts, constantly questioning the overt and subtle messages these texts are sending, and understand the power dynamics at play within these messages.

Critical literacy is gaining momentum in secular education. For example, a common United States historical narrative is often taught from a Eurocentric, white male perspective with an emphasis on the progress made as a nation. Such a narrative excludes the numerous voices and experiences of people who were and are part of the nation’s story. In the 21st century, teachers can no longer claim that it is difficult to locate these other narratives. In the above example, a critical literate teacher contrasts the Eurocentric, white male narrative with the omitted narratives of other peoples’ experiences and perspectives. The critical literate teacher artfully guides her students through numerous sources of information, asks students to identify past and continuing inequities, and motivates students to find ways to take action to expose those injustices, and, where possible, right them. The actions students take can be as simple as creating a pamphlet with information to be distributed to the broader school community explaining what students learned and some ideas about how to affect positive change in the school or glocal community.

Whether sanctioned by adults or not, students are part of the glocal dialogue. Twenty-first century students are typically technologically savvy and know how to use the internet for their purposes. Students using critical literacy skills distinguish credible information from misinformation. They are also able to identify how the misinformation might lead to bias or prejudices. Using their technological know-how students can expose such bias and prejudice and share their concerns with the glocal community.

Critical Literacy and Jewish education: A practical consideration

Through a lens of critical literacy, Jewish day school students will see that their worlds are interwoven and that their daily choices impact their Jewish and national identities as well as the world and global Jewish communities. Using critical literacy, students will understand how a text in a Humash class influences their understanding of a secular text and vice versa. Students will build on their critical thinking skills as they examine texts across the curriculum.

How one incorporates critical literacy in a Jewish day school depends on the school’s hashkafa (ideology). In some, critical literacy will look the same across the dual curriculum. In others, where Torah and traditional commentaries are given more authoritative status, implementation will vary. A critical literacy curriculum provides students with more opportunities to engage in ethical and moral thought across all subject areas. This will help students integrate their Jewish and secular values by providing a safe space for them to share their questions and concerns about information as it relates to their bicultural identity. It also motivates teachers to create more culturally relevant pedagogy for their students.

The glocal dialogue between Jewish and secular values allows students to examine how the interactions of the glocal community shape Jewish discourse over time. Jewish discourse and exegesis have evolved due to historic and sociopolitical environments. Culturally relevant pedagogy requires the intentional inclusion of modern and contemporary biblical commentaries that align with the school’s hashkafa to make explicit how the school’s particular Jewish ideology developed and continues developing. For instance, on a consistent and regular basis a Modern-Orthodox Tanakh class should include modern voices who espouse Modern- Orthodox values. Doing so provides students in Modern-Orthodox schools opportunities to understand better the current and future development of Modern-Orthodox ideology. Furthermore, consistent inclusion of female voices in such a curriculum allows young women to see themselves in the long established Jewish dialogue around Torah, which up until recently has not been an explicit curricular goal. More consistent inclusion of modern commentaries in any Tanakh class offers all students opportunities to see themselves in a discussion of Torah and offer them deeper insight into how their Jewish identity influences their world view and understanding of the glocal world and vice versa.

More important, students perceive themselves as having personal experiences that shape the way they approach and interpret a text. Teachers can capitalize on such awareness and engage students in conversations where they consider how different texts and their sociopolitical contexts have shaped a millennium of Jewish dialogue. Since everyone and everything in a class is a text and the conversation is brought to a glocal level, classroom discourses come alive with greater meaning and relevancy to students’ immediate lives.

Conclusion

Jewish day schools seek to prepare their students to become the next generation of Jewish and global citizens. To do this, Jewish day school students must have a more unified sense of self. The tenets of critical literacy force students to examine their and their communities’ continuing development. Students will engage in more meaningful learning opportunities, construct meanings for themselves, and see themselves in a glocal discourse. In turn, students’ abilities to critique the information they encounter and to determine if it aligns harmoniously with their own value system will improve. Students steeped in a dialogue of critical literacy are aware of incongruences among Jewish, local, national, and global value systems and have more opportunities to consider ways to manage these incongruences that do not require a divided identity. Armed with critical literacy, Jewish day school students are more prepared to engage in the 21st century world.

References

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