Giroux Reader

Testing, Assessment, and the Teaching of Writing

“…Paulo Freire (1988), Henry Giroux (2006), and Ira Shor (1999) would contend that writing-and education in general-had to militate against a "banking system" that inexorably removed it from its democratic and egalitarian moorings.…”

“…Not only would this provide for better papers, but it would also give students some much needed practice in writing and rewriting as professionals do. The political and personal advantages are best expressed by Henry Giroux (2006): At issue here is the development of a pedagogy that replaces the authoritarian language of recitation with an approach that allows students to speak from their own histories, collective memories and voices, while simultaneously challenging the grounds on which knowledge and power are constructed and legitimated. (pp.…”

A Movement to Belong: The Green Movement as a Site of Citizenship

“…Engagement with their new ethnicities entails that immigrant youth are not "passive recipients of social transformations, as may have been assumed, but are responding to change in a variety of ways that draw upon the signs, symbols and motifs made available at local, national and international scales" (Nayak, 2003, p. 167). All youth, as Giroux (2006) argues, are made to be political subjects and take on political identities as a way to belong. Thus, it can be argued that for immigrant youth, new ethnicities, coupled with the current realities facing youth in general, contribute to the ways in which they engage with and learn to be citizens.…”

False Consciousness and Developmental Writing

“…It is imperative, in my opinion, that we, as developmental writing instructors, acknowledge the role we play in " legitimizing and reproducing dominant cultural capital" (Giroux 2006, p. 13). As Giroux argues, teachers "tend to legitimize "In engineering this approach, we do not 'bridge the gap' or 'invent the university, as much as we 'magnify the divide' between developmental students and the rest of the college population."…”