Literacy: the challenges of its practice

Abstract

In spite of the important researches made known in the last decades about the multiple aspects which contribute to the production of school failure in literacy, we have seen recently to be brought to light the connection of this problem to the teaching methods used by teachers. Based on a dialogue with Freire and Morin among others, we continue in this article, our defense of an urge to see literacy through less reducing point of view. In our reflections about the daily life in the school's world we have noticed that the approach between Paulo Freire's legacy and the epistemology of complexity may point out new clues to the construction of emancipating literacy practices. Such practices do bring power not only to teachers-to-be, but also to learners, as they write and express themselves, especially in historical contexts of exclusion and the denial of cultural differences in the Brazilian society. This work focuses, through situations of field research, on the multiplicity of experiences with the written language, which happen on the school's daily life, revealing the hybrid and multiple literacy environments which are part of that daily life. The challenge we face at school nowadays is that of seeing the reading as more than a mere act of spelling, and seeing writing further than a speech transcript. We, teachers, have to take hold of theoretical references which help us look at and see the process of literacy from its broadest sense. It does not mean that we should propose to teachers a new literacy method, but focus on the importance of a collective reflection and on the permanent "get ready" as basic conditions for the strengthening of a literacy practice compromised with the working-class children.