Reading the Word and the World
In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire entreats us to address the broader nature of literacy. He states that educators must do more than just teach students how to decode words in decontextualized text, but that we must teach them to read both the word and the world. While his original intent was to challenge educators to take a more active stance in addressing the inequities of our world, the phrase “reading the word and the world” has been watered down considerably. Today, the phrase represents the idea that reading involves much more than the comprehension of printed text. We read the world when we study graphs and charts. We read the world when we analyze the validity of data and statistics. We read the world when we study news broadcasts and documentaries for bias. We read the world when we evaluate the credibility of websites. We read the world when we study relationships and how they are defined by power. We read the world when we study paintings and the stor...