If you have not seen Dorothy Heathcote in action, or know little about her influence on process drama then go to this web site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5jBNIEQrZs#watch-main-area The You Tube site shows a 1971 Omnibus Programme called 'Three Looms Waiting" made by Roy Smedley
I was working in a secondary school in South London with this book: David Almond's 'The Savage' yesterday. If you have not read it yet, you must. I think children from Year 4 upwards could enjoy it, although it has sw*** words in it, censored in this way with stars, and a character with a knife. No reason not to read it to school children though. Professional judgements based on teachers' knowledge of their children are needed - but not too conservative!
We were working with teachers on utilizing drama techniques and role-play scenarios around the action of the book. We were suggesting pre-reading activities, activities while reading it as a class and post-reading activities. This book has rich-potential for the generation of multiple meanings and it will encourage emotional and intellectial enagagement with the story and characters.
The front cover alone forms the basis of the first pre-reading activities - asking the children to deconstruct what the illustration and the text tells them about this story and what it might be about - pain, transformation, anger etc etc
I have three sessions for various different groups on the subject of my book 'Literacy on the left' coming up. Within a framework of Marxist educational theory there are a number of dilemmas that my book will need to address and I may have to raise in these sessions. Tensions around base/superstructure models; the perspectives around the notions of relative autonomy and the tensions between literacy for autonomy and literacy for revolutionary change. All really spring from base/superstructure models. This, in a nutshell, is about Marx's view that the nature of society derives from the primary economic activity of that society and the productive relations there-in. It is who owns the means of production and the means of exchange that influences the way we carry on our lives, our relations with others and even how we think, our morality and the ethos we follow - this is what Marx called the base. The superstructure are the mechanisms that are constructed in society to perpetuate these relations in society - the media, schools, police, courts etc etc.
The question is: 'does this mean society has it all sewn up, or can we affect change by tinkering with the superstructure?' If I manage to introduce radical literacy practices in my classroom, will this have an impact on those children in the class or are the superstructures of society too strong? If I do want change, should I wait for the revolution that Marx predicted that will come anyway as the response to the contradictions of society - am I better off organising explicitly for this moment? Is literacy on the left a hopeless activity?
