Customer Reviews

Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century

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We live in a different world dramatically shaped and influenced by technology, yet the predominant teaching strategies employed in classrooms across the United States have changed very little. David Warlick's Book "Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century" should be required reading for every elementary, junior high, high school, and university teacher in the United States today. That is an extremely strong statement, but it is justified given the importance of the issues addressed by Warlick and the clear, readable style in which the book is written.

"Redefining Literacy" challenges many of the assumptions and beliefs that educators have about teaching and learning, and provides practical ideas for how teachers as well as students can prepare for the future, instead of preparing for the 1950s (as many schools today seem to be doing.) Warlick's point that teachers have GOT to stop asking students to merely "demonstrate their knowledge" with assigned research reports is so vital! With copy and paste skills and ready access to the Internet, anyone can create a reasonably decent "report" about any topic in a relatively short amount of time. The problem, of course, is that much of the content is likely to be plagiarized. We must ask students to DO THINGS with information, not merely memorize and regurgitate it, or spit it out as a fancy PowerPoint presentation or a formatted Word document. We must ask students to engage in the authentic literacy activities of our new century. Developing critical thinking skills and authentic literacy skills is certainly not a new idea-- educational thinkers like John Dewey and Paulo Freire wrote about these things many years ago and in great depth. Warlick's contribution is to put the need for this skill development in the technological context of the twenty-first century. If you are a teacher or want to be a teacher, you need to read this book.