Focus on Policy: Standing Up to Neoliberalism through Critical Literacy Education

Strains on the global economy and an imminent recession in the U.S. offer a particularly ripe moment for educators to raise questions about educational reform, the world of schooling, and the kinds of literacy practices that will prepare students for their lives as citizens in a world structured through the social and economic relations of Neoliberalism. In this article, we demonstrate how we center class struggle and analysis at the heart of our teaching and research through two vignettes’one from a second-grade classroom and one from an ESOL adult education classroom. These projects arose from our collaborative work with the teacher activist group to which we belong, the Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Research Group.