Post UKLA conference

The weekend was all about the United Kingdom Literacy Association conference in Winchester.

I gave a Key note speech on the Friday afternoon on the content of the book I'm writing called 'Literacy on the Left'. People came to me afterwards and throughout the conference saying how much they had enjoyed it. Which is really pleasing - some of the comments were quite over-whelming in the warmth of their praise. Yet, as I expected, I felt opinion was divided over all.

The main trust of my argument, as I saw it, was the divide on the 'left' between post-structuralist and Marxists and how each side see the objective of their approach to literacy teaching as very different. I said at the start of the lecture, as I write in the introduction of the book, opinions are passionately divided with each group seeing the other as wrong-headed, naive or even politically right wing (see McLaren, Hill, Cole etc on the Marxist side). I suspect that my own views on this divide came through and consequently, for some, I was not 'flavour of the month'. Still, I have never heard a lecture at UKLA before that explored these themes and debates. Post structuralist and post modernist perspectives are very prevalent within the world of literacy research in universities and perhaps it is useful and timely to look again at the politics of what we believe and try to implement in classrooms.

The picture is of Lenin and his wife Krupskaya who was responsible for post revolution education policy in Russia. For my book, it is crucial to examine what these Marxists did. I'm reminded of James Bond Films by the presence of the pussy cat.