Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest. Second Edition

A comprehensive update of the classic study that delivers both a passionate plea and strategies for teachers, parents, and community organizers to give working-class children the same type of empowering education and powerful literacy skills that the children of upper- and middle-class people receive. The classic, indispensable guide for teachers, parents, and community organizers concerned with educating working-class children, "Literacy with an Attitude" dares to define literacy as a powerful right of citizenship. Patrick J. Finn persuasively debunks the time-honored paradigm for teaching poor and working-class students. Our job, he argues, is not to help such students to become middle class and live middle-class lives--most don't want it. Education rather should focus on a powerful literacy--a literacy with an attitude--that enables working-class and poor students to better understand, demand, and protect their civil, political, and social rights. This tenth-anniversary, second edition features eight new chapters and a new appendix, and a revised and updated original text. A bibliography and index are also included. [For the first edition, see ED434197.]