Dr. Gholdy Muhammad presents her framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy (HRL) in four "pursuits": identity, skills, intellect, and criticality. She argues that today's education is largely skills-based, ignoring the importance of the other three aspects. She presents the history of 19th century Black literary societies as the inheritance of today's youth, yet this history is not taught in schools. Clearly, standards- and skills-based education is not working for all students; curriculum must be designed for all students in order for all to succeed.

Quotes/notes

Students need spaces to name and critique injustice to help them ultimately develop the agency to build a better world. As long as oppression is present in the world, young people need pedagogy that nurtures criticality. (12)

This ideal of collectivism is in direct conflict with schools today, as schools are largely grounded in competition and individualism. (26)

The critical need for a culturally responsive pedagogy is best exemplified when we connect the past to the present and witness the lack of progress we have made as a country. (53)

[In HRL instruction] teachers should ask themselves:
Identity: How will my instruction help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others?
Skills: How will my instruction build students' skills for the content area?
Intellect: How will my instruction build students' knowledge and mental powers?
Criticality: How will my instruction engage students' thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? (58)

Identity is composed of notions of who we are, who others say we are (in both positive and negative ways), and whom we desire to be. (67)

..schools and instruction have not helped students achieve at their highest potential - and yet, these institutions and systems continue without critical examination or challenge. (87)

Our Black students are not failing: it is the systems, instruction, and standards created to monitor, control, and measure a very narrow definition of achievement that are off the mark. (87)

[the term "at-risk youth"] ...what are they at risk of? Poor instruction? Racism? Instruction disconnected to their identities and histories? A skills-only curriculum? (88)

Historically, African American people did not just want to accumulated knowledge to hold in their minds, but they sought to do something with the knowledge they gained - and put knowledge into action... (101)

When youth have criticality, they are able to see, name, and interrogate the world not only to make sense of injustice but also to work toward social transformation. (120)

Criticality pushes questioning of information and the source of the information - and this source ma include the teachers....Criticality...does not believe in hierarchies in teaching and learning...the classroom becomes a community of teachers and learners. (122)

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress....Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -Frederick Douglass, 1857 ("West India Emancipation") p. 125

When selecting texts for the classroom, teachers need to consider the curriculum (what we teach) and the instruction (how we teach). (145)

Schools and texts should cultivate and nurture criticality so that young people won't read something and immediately take it as truth. Criticality while reading allows them to question knowledge so they are active learners. (153)

Lesson plan template (159)

[For people of color in the mid-19th century] Literacy and acts of reading were linked to liberation and freedom....Through reading, they were able to experience the beauty offered in the word and the world. (168)

If we want different results as a nation and as a world, we must do something different. (169) ( )