Students' Right to Their Own Language

"Here in the United States, the call to situate the study of literacy in the public realm has also been framed in terms of language rights. In rhetoric and composition, the clearest example is the 1974 Students' Right to Their Own Language (STROL) resolution" (Long 34).

This resolution sought to bring the literacy of the oppressed into the mainstream in the 60s and 70s. Great. So more pedagogy of the oppressed. And again recognizing different types of literacy - which is important.

What I wonder is how realistic this is. I believe it's important to recognize different types of literacy, but I also think that a public school's job is to prepare students to be literate in the literacy of the school that they are attending and the mainstream community. I think that ignoring mainstream literacy in favor of students' own language and literacy further disadvantages students. Whether we like it or not, we are all, in some way, a part of this crazy mainstream community and need to be literate in the majority in order to protect the minority. It's like Dewey said, when you increase technology, you increase democracy because you increase people's access to information. So the more ways a person is literate, the better.