Moje: Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change

In Moje’s (2008) article, she calls for disciplinary literacy strategies to be used at the secondary level. I agree with this approach to some extent. I think that students should learn how to think like scientists, historians, mathematicians, etc. so that they understand how to think critically from different perspectives. However, I fear that in some ways this approach only deepens the bias that school systems have towards producing scholars. As Ken Robinson describes in his Ted Talk, “How Schools Kill Creativity”, the whole purpose of the public education system seems to be to produce university professors, and a lot of talented and creative people are steered away from pursuing their interests because their abilities do not align with what is valued by public education. The reality is that the majority of the students that study these subjects will not become academic experts in these various disciplines. They will have jobs in which they have to draw from different skills across a variety of disciplines. I think that more than anything, the barriers of specific disciplines need to be broken down so that students understand that work and life is often not divided into school subjects.

Along these lines, I wholeheartedly agree with Moje’s suggestion that subject area teachers should not “ignore the powerful ways that young people already use to negotiate multiple discourse communities and literacies in their lives” (103). As technology transforms the way that students are engaging in discourse with one another, teachers should focus on how students can apply their knowledge of nontraditional literacies like social media to the classroom. Having students use their technological skills appropriately in a more professional setting will help them to gain valuable skills for the workplace, as many companies use social media in powerful ways to communicate messages. For example, writing a tweet about theme in a Language Arts class could help students with the skill of narrowing down information to include only the most important and relevant words to get a message across clearly. This is exactly what companies would do to send a message about a new promotion to their customers. Overall, students should be practicing culturally relevant literacies and understanding the connections between the various disciplines and how all of them are applicable to the skills they may need in the job market.