Ideology in Literacy Education
Gee dismisses Freire based on contradictions in his ideology, but acknowledges the importance that ideology plays in literacy education. Sudol and Horning seem to accept the dismissal of Freirian ideology without understanding the ideological implications of literacy education. They settle for the more simple maxim that literacy is always political.
Gee writes:
Freire is well aware that no literacy is politically neutral, including
the institutionally based literacy of church, state, business, ends that
continues to undergird the hegemonic process of Western society. (38)It is startling that a pedagogy that Freire says is "more a
pedagogy of question than a pedagogy of answer," a pedagogy that is radical
because it is "less certain of 'certainties'"(p. 54), in fact knows what
it is to think correctly. Learners are told not to repeat what others say,
but then the problem becomes that in "re-saying what they read for themselves,
they may say it wrong i.e. conflict with Freire's or the state's political
perspective. Thus, the literacy materials must ensure that they think correctly,
that is, re-say or interpret text and world correctly.
