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Carol Lee's Keynote Address
The following text is excerpted from the opening keynote address, "Well Shut My Mouth Wide Open: Cultural Performances in Teaching and Learning Literature as the Light of Our Lives," presented by Carol Lee of Northwestern University at the 2002 Invitational Conference, Literacy, Diversity, & Equity in the Context of Reform, April 25, 2002.
TRANSCRIPT
Human groups may be defined among multiple dimensions: ethnicity, nationality -- within such groupings by gender, age, economic status. In addition, by religion, by profession or craft, and, perhaps most foundationally, by family or clan. Within any of these groupings, there is both homogeneity and heterogeneity.
The fact is simply that human culture is pretty complex, complicated, dynamic, and that cultural diversity encompasses us all. The point being that, if our intention is to grapple with issues of cultural diversity, then we have to begin to think about the diversity that we all have that we all experience, and diversity is not somehow the purview of the other folks over there. And, until we can figure out how to talk about that diversity that does not inherently divide Americans into the enduring "us" versus "them" categories, we will always struggle in our attempts to move this experiment in democracy forward.
I have taken some time to talk about the issue of our conceptions about diversity, because I believe that it has implications for how we think about examining the teaching and learning of reading. I'm arguing here that our approach to teaching students who have been historically marginalized in our public schools is not to simply be do-gooders, crafting exotic approaches for their learning. Rather, I want to argue that the core scientific principles that our field has developed around how people learn, how people learn to engage and use language, what's involved in the process of making sense of what we read, and the process involved in the act of composing -- all of our current understandings of these processes -- point to the need to take culture, people's lived experiences, ways of viewing the world, belief systems and ways of using language, their routine everyday practices into account.
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