Appropriate Reading?

I have also come to the realization, like many of my classmates, that the process of becoming a reader has more avenues than solely through novels. Two teenage sisters I teach came to an after school tutoring session with their leisure reading. Their leisure reading contained several urban teenage books written by Wahida Clark. I first I was surprised by how the books were so explicit. Afterall, they were titled, "Every Thug Needs a Lady", "Payback is a Mutha", and "A Hustler's Wife." I gave my normal didatic input on how thugs shouldn't be glorified and how teen pregnancy is a serious issue. The girls said how they were well aware but just found the reading exciting and real. I began to think of how Richardson supports read-aloud passages that make the reading "come alive" and how Tovani supports giving students opportunities to read provocative text. While I probably won't be pulling Wahida Clark out for a Civics or Government and Politics class, it was a strong reminder of what often appeals and excites young readers. I hope to adapt my curriculum by providing text sets with modern applications and connections for students but for the content itself to become as exciting as the books students choose to read on their own.

Primary Vs Secondary Sources

Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman (2004) argue that teachers should assess several important aspects of reading material in their 4th Chapter, "Toward a Balanced Diet of Reading" in their work Subjects Matter. In their consideration of the authors and sources in a textbook, they assert that

...any textbook is the author's subjectivity. There is no such thing as 'just the facts.' Consciously or not, willfully or not, no matter how hard they try to be 'unbiased,' secondary-source authors always infuse the books they create with their own attitudes, views and cultural stance. (p. 61)

A persuasive, postmodern stance from two professional educators. I do agree wholeheartedly agree with their outlook on how subjectivity is present everywhere in our texts. However, they reserve this judgement solely for secondary sources content that have "...been gathered from other materials (sometimes other than textbooks), and then combined, reshaped, interpreted, and presented by the authors" (Daniels and Zemelman, 2004, p. 61).

My issue is that they seem to imply that primary sources, as raw materials, somehow rise above the issue of subjectivity. Just because a source is primary does not necessarily divorce a source from its subjectivity. This may or may not have been exactly what Daniels and Zemelman were saying, but I think its important to bring this up when discussing content literacy.