Literacy with an Attitude, Second Edition: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest

A comprehensive update of the classic study that delivers both a passionate plea and strategies for teachers, parents, and community organizers to give working-class children the same type of empowering education and powerful literacy skills that the children of upper- and middle-class people receive.

The classic, indispensable guide for teachers, parents, and community organizers concerned with educating working-class children, Literacy with an Attitude dares to define literacy as a powerful right of citizenship. Patrick J. Finn persuasively debunks the time-honored paradigm for teaching poor and working-class students. Our job, he argues, is not to help such students to become middle class and live middle-class lives―most don’t want it. Education rather should focus on a powerful literacy―a literacy with an attitude―that enables working-class and poor students to better understand, demand, and protect their civil, political, and social rights.

This tenth-anniversary, second edition features eight new chapters and a revised and updated original text.