Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: Teaching and Feminist Counseling

I realized that counselling is inextricably linked to teaching because students often came to me not only for academic matters but also for their personal concerns, whether connected to studies or not, and I grappled with concerns about whether I was giving correct advice. All I knew was that I am not judgmental about people’s life choices, I don’t require anyone to seek my agreement and that I believe they have to be willing to carry out the solutions.

I have always found it a mystery that I seem to attract people burdened with their secrets.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: A Whole Language/Feminist Classroom – LITNUM as a Tool of Empowerment

LITNUM class held in a classroom/multipurpose room (our second venue), which was later used to house 5 families

A literacy and numeracy program guided by the more progressive definitions of literacy, located within the framework of the whole language philosophy, and conducted with feminist counselling principles effectively becomes a tool for the empowerment of women.

• Women’s subjectivities, contexts and particular situations are valued in the conduct and creation of the program.
• The program is fully participatory, with conceptions of classroom power redefined and classroom power redistributed.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: Reclaiming and Redefining: Triumphs and Challenges

The Triumphs

Throughout the quarter of healing, the LITNUM women had many things to say about our class and themselves. Below are some of their memorable quotes:

• Marami akong natututunan, kahit natigil ang aking pag-aaral.
• Natutulungan ko ang mga anak ko sa homework nila. Gusto rin nila akong tulungan sa homework ko.
• Wala pala sa edad ang pag-aaral.
• Nagagamit ko sa trabaho ang natututunan ko.
• Hindi na ako mahihiya pag English speaking kausap ko kasi masasagot ko siya.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: A Review of the LITNUM Modules Developed by the CWR for Previous Classes

The Center for Women’s Resources developed three manuals for previous LITNUM classes. The first manual, Oryentasyon ng Programang Literasi at Numerasi ng Kababaihang Aytas, was published in 2004. This was followed in 2005 by the second manual, which is the counterpart of the manual for the Aetas, entitled Oryentasyon ng Programang Literasi and Numerasi ng Kababaihang Maralitang Tagalunsod. The third manual is a continuation of the 2005 release Literasi at Numerasi Para sa mga Kababaihang Maralitang Lungsod – Ikalawang Andana.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: Recommendations for Future LITNUM Module Development

The discussion on curriculum development earlier underscores the view that a curriculum should be academically ordained by an institution and should be pre-packaged and finite. In light of the manuals already developed, it is evident that the planners do not adhere to this prescribed academic thinking.

As such, I would like to emphasize that the development of new manuals should not be bound to the previously prepared manuals. Development literacy and literacy as a situated social practice accurately postulate that the curricula of differing groups will grow out of and respond to the set of realities of a particular group, with its own socioeconomic realities, needs, and group culture, with set ways of doing things.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: Working with the CWR – Insights into Feminist Learnings

at the 30th Anniversary Gathering of the CWR in December 2012

The amount and the quality of time that I had the chance to spend with the Center for Women’s Resources has afforded me many opportunities to observe how true they are to their mantra of investigating women’s situations and serving and empowering women, and how they extend this philosophical regard to each other, as they have done to us fieldworkers as well. To learn and participate in a highly-acclaimed organization doing research on the level of international and national standards where the staff operates within a three-tiered hierarchy with a flat organization’s behavior is simply amazing and humbling.

Feminist Literacy and Numeracy – A Path to Empowerment for Grassroots Women: Bibliography

Books

Barton, David and Mary Hamilton (1998). Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One  Community. London: Routledge.

Fordham, Paul; Holland, Deryn; and Micillian, Juliet (1995). Adult Literacy. Oxford: Oxfam.

Freire, Paulo (1980). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Penguin Books.

Herrington, Margaret and Alex Kendall, Editors (2005). Insights from Research and Practice: A Handbook for Adult Literacy,