This chapter outlines a qualitative study in which the researchers critically analyzed a collection of books and stories for children in early elementary school that depict the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean. Though educators are required to teach this material to their students, they often do so in a one-sided way. Noting the outsized effect that the books and stories that students encounter in schools shape and solidify young children's thinking, the authors feel called to help educators raise their consciousness of the voices and perspectives that have been left out. By not interrogating the myths of Christopher Columbus, we are committing a double genocide. The Arawak, the people who Columbus ‘discovered', have already been destroyed by the violence and diseases of Columbus and his men. By refusing to allow their voices to be a part of the way we educate children today, we continue to disavow their history and their culture.
Critical Literacy
In terms of its theoretical roots, critical literacy encompasses three main strands. First, it represents an active acknowledgement and valuation of different voices, viewpoints, and perspectives (Hall, 1998; Ralfe, 2009). Educators who practice critical literacy consider issues from multiple vantage points. Second, critical literacy signifies the need to understand texts and discourse on a deeper level. Engaged in critical literacy pedagogy, teachers and students discover how to look beneath the surface and examine underlying ideologies apparent in what they read and hear in school (McDaniel, 2004). Such close examination allows students to arrive at and explore both traditional and non-traditional interpretations. Third, critical literacy asks educators to engage consciously and critically with issues of power, privilege, and marginalization at work in schools and society. As students come to understand the ways texts and discourse can advantage or disadvantage certain groups, they can awaken to new possibilities for change in themselves and in their worlds (Vasquez, 2004).
Theoretical Framework
Three theories related to transformative education inform this study: social justice, critical pedagogy, and critical literacy. Social justice is the umbrella theory, critical pedagogy provides the lens, and critical literacy provides the specific focus of the study as well as the tools for CDA. The overarching theoretical frame for this study is social justice. Social justice seeks to examine power dynamics of the privileged within institutions, spread awareness of oppressive systems, and confront the tensions that surround oppression and power. Social justice demands not only consciousness-raising, but also action steps toward change (Vasquez, 2010).
Woven within and through theories of social justice is critical pedagogy. Wink (2011) defined critical pedagogy as “a radical pedagogy that makes concrete the values of solidarity, social responsibility, creativity, and discipline in the service of the common good and critical spirit” (p. 12). Critical pedagogy disrupts the status quo and pushes educators to privilege those who are consistently marginalized. Critical pedagogy aims to confront the dominant culture through a recursive process of questioning, reflecting, and acting. Without a critical lens within the classroom, students and teachers are doomed to repeat cyclical patterns, a process that Freire and Macedo (1987) call “narration sickness” (p. 70).
Critical literacy represents a mix of theory and practice, with roots in critical pedagogy. Critical literacy requires teachers and teacher candidates to first understand their privilege and then to begin to identify microaggressions within the community. Critical literacy calls for educators to confront anti-democratic values, to take action against microaggressions and social injustices, and to question the agendas of all texts and discourses. Through critical literacy, teachers “begin to understand that power, access, identity, and difference together with the ways in which language is used are all interconnected” (Janks et al., 2014, p. 1).
Research Gap
Building on the foundation of these three intertwined poststructuralist frameworks, the study represented in this chapter recognizes the need for qualitative research, grounded within a critical paradigm that consciously strives to contest the dominant discourse and embrace “alternative voices and diverse points of view” (Baxter, 2002, p. 831). As Rodgers et al. (2005) assert, contemporary researchers should be empowered “to disrupt discourses, challenge restrictive pedagogies, challenge passive acceptance of the status quo, and reveal how texts operate in the construction of social practices” (p. 376). Empowered by these precepts, the researchers designed this study to challenge and confront the cultural myths of Christopher Columbus head-on. Our goal is to address the gap in the research related to this vaunted historical figure. In so doing, the researchers hope this work presents a more inclusive, diverse, and accurate picture of his voyages and their impact on indigenous cultures and lives and the land.