Worldwide crises due to social injustice have risen that challenge us as social activist, educators, and researchers. Addressing the social contradictions,”directed by an irrepressible radical love”, (J. Kincheloe) requires that humanity responsibly engage as citizens of the world to navigate through a mythicized reality in the reconstructing of a just society. Consequently, crises have made evident the importance of literacy, as we have been inundated by enormous amounts of printed and digital text, requiring us to recognize bias and misrepresentations, and to read and think critically. Indeed, times of unrest and uncertainty provide the social context needed to investigate and analyze the current reality presented to us and is how, through collective struggle, a new reality can be realized.
Peacemakers Reading Forum is a global reading project. The goal is to collectively participate in reading texts that examine and question the underlying values promoted by capitalist forces. These powers are influencing and shaping the current reality through its institutional social policies and practices. As a forum, we are committed to engaging with texts that provoke readers to confront the “theoretical backwardness” of unjust social structures that is forever at the heart of social unrest and economic inequality. Furthermore, considering the well documented assertion by college professors that the majority of their students lack the critical thinking component necessary to engage in rigorous discussions, literacy must be redefined as a political act of acquiring the discipline to read, write, listen, speak, and think critically in order to understand and communicate knowledge critically. The outcomes of which will then lead to mental congruence and scientific practices toward equity, and advocacy for those whose voices are small or silenced. “The culture of silence created by the dominant culture did not mean that the oppressed could not respond to their own reality but that such a response often lacked a critical response.”(P. McLaren)
We acknowledge that when we begin to redefine literacy as an acquired discipline rather than just the ability to read, write, listen, and speak, the Peacemakers Reading forum assumes a much broader significance and relevance. Literacy as a disciplined act of acquiring information must be practiced and diligently cultivated, and we believe that this forum is the ideal time and space for cultivating such critical literacy skills necessary for generating discussion, social analysis and developing subjects rather than objects of history.
The culture circles are teacher-learner, learner teacher led co- investigators who, through the reading of critical texts, identify the contradictions in what might appear as mundane social realities, in totality, and who also dare to bring resolution, through healthy dialogue and collective struggle, as agents of peace.
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Mathew 5:9
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