ustxtxb_obs_1985_10_11_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

OPEN MONDAYSAT1 ‘RIMY 10-6 AND OPEN SENDAY 10–4 WATSON & COMPANY BOOKS Life Insurance and Annuities Martin Elfant, CLU 4223 Richmond, Suite 213, Houston, TX 77027 SUllie OFCANADA ing the cause-and-effect relationship \(which, after all, he admits Kozol had trivialize the argument, as though it were only a question of the chicken and the egg, and the reversal itself signifies an alienation of theory from practice. Where the theory in question is essentially a theory of social change, as in this case, the need for a foundation in practice cries out the more urgently. Here we would suggest a final basis for agreement, as well as a corrective for partial views, in the work of Paolo Freire, which Kozol clearly has studied and to which King refers in passing. Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed shows and tells how literacy instruction can be a radical force for social change, and as such it has become a handbook for popular action in the Third World and in the ghettos and barrios of the U.S. The truth it offers, the truth which is needed to supplement King’s reading of Illiterate America, is the power of the Word. Freire’s experience in Latin America demonstrated that every human being, no matter how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” he may be, is capable of looking East Dallas Printing Company Full Service Union Printing 211 S. Peak Dallas, Tx 75226 critically at his world in a dialogical encounter with others. Provided with the proper tools for such an encounter, he can gradually perceive his personal and social reality as well as the contradictions in it, become conscious of his own perception of that reality, and deal critically with it. \(Richard Shaull, Forewood to Pedagogy of the Oppressed As this happens the illiterate person moves from being an Object in the oppressors’ world to being a Subject in the transformation of that world. The power released here, the power of a humanized humanity, is the power of reflectivity which literacy confers. It is a power we must not underestimate. Wayne Pounds and Bo McCarver Austin Who Took the “Human ” Out of Humanities? In his review of Jonathan Kozol’s Illiterate America, \(TO, chael King wrote, “. . . it is not the people who can’t read that we need to worry about, but the ‘best and brightest’ who presumably can, and, yet, who rule the world for their own gain and the misfortune of the rest of us.” I must say that I utterly agree with that statement. That statement also reminded me of something I read not long ago. In his book titled Living, Loving, & Learning, Leo Buscaglia reprinted a paragraph that once appeared in a book Ginott. It was written and given to Ginott by a lady who spent some time in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. She wrote, “I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school and college graduates. So I’m suspicious of education. My request is: help your students to be human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns. Reading and writing and spelling and history and arithmetic are only important if they serve to make our students human.” Reformed illiterates will be human once they are taught how to critique what they read in order to separate the truth from double talk. Timothy M. Davis Dodd City Bedrock Politics I have just finished reading James Presley’s excellent article on the first congressional district special election of most of what he writes, but there is another side that needs to be made public. I am the chairman of the Hunt County Democratic Party, and the kinds of things that we did in the special election campaign were different from the media events that Presley describes. We dealt in bedrock politics. As happened in our county in the gubernatorial election of 1982, there was a tremendous and spontaneous outpouring of citizen effort. Many people called me and volunteered their help even before they were asked. People who were asked to help gave unstintingly of their time and energy. We had poster committees, telephone banks, receptions, and people walking door-to-door handing out Chapman materials. Every voting household in the thirteen voting precincts of Hunt County that are in the first congressional district was called at least once and some of them as many as three times. We have never had a volunteer telephone bank work so effectively. We had lots of small contributions of money, as well. Chapman won sixty percent of the Hunt County vote because lots of people helped him campaign and because most of our voters considered him to be much the better candidate of the two. We had substantive issues such as social security, jobs, farm prices, and the trade deficit, and those issues worked for us. But, basically, our people won over the Republican Party and its massive spending. Charles ,P. Elliott Commerce Purification The debate and the vote being as natural to me as sleeping and breathing I project upon my fellow citizen the innate love of democracy that dwells within my celtic soul and only on occasion awake to the realization that this or that American leader or intellectual has no such feeling and thus it is with Maury Maverick, Jr., when he advocates a Democratic Party purified of the right and center and I can but wonder is his cause so weak that it can not stand the debate or, fearing the mob, does he also fear the vote? Fred Sinclair Boerne 6 OCTOBER 11, 1985