Among the objectives that Chapter 9 seeks to achieve are these:
Students should be able to discuss how Jefferson's conception of the connection between literacy and democracy compares with the critical literacy perspective. To what degree are the methods of critical pedagogy necessary to achieve critical literacy?
Students should be able to discuss the basic tenets of cultural and ideological hegemony theory and the extent to which that theory is supported by data in this chapter and in their own experiences.
Students should be able to discuss whether contemporary society is marked more by hegemonic than by participatory democratic processes, and to what extent schools serve one or the other of those ideals.
This chapter should enable students to describe and explain how the different perspectives on literacy—the conventional, the functional, the cultural, and the critical—potentially serve different social groups and different ideological orientations in contrasting ways.
Students should also be able to explain how the four different literacy perspectives serve different educational goals.
Students should be able to explain the importance of media access and consolidation of media as it relates to current trends in information technology.
