Mr Yagelski Analysis

Professor Yagelski visits a rural school in the hopes of promoting literature and empowering students to succeed, but comes across one student; Abby, questions the authenticity of his statements. It’s not until they begin discussing that Yagelski realizes many of the students back up Abby’s claims in silence as witnesses their intense listening of the conversation. While he had hoped to convince at least one of the children he was right before leaving, the debate only left him questioning if his promotion of power deriving from literacy is true or if he just didn’t see the power that lie beneath the surface. Robert Yagelski(2000) argues that literacy correlates to power because there is more than just political power and daily life incorporates its own necessities of literature.
Different Lives

As Yagelski put it, “this young woman wasn’t uninterested; she was angry about being perceived as unimportant,”(Yagelski, 2000, P.1) he hadn’t directly encountered such skepticism of something that he himself had full faith in before. Abby spoke through the perspective of one angry child raised outside the glory literacy was described to bring, but many more have also brought up their lack of belief in its value, one such individual was Elspeth Stuckey. Stuckey discussed the misinterpretation of literacy in society through the perspective of those that have yet to reach any governmental influence after advancing their literacy because of society’s class system holding them and certain groups beneath others. “Literacy, she says, does not inevitably lead to economic success and social opportunity, as our social mythologies would have us believe,” (Yagelski, 2000, P.3). Abby as well brought up the point that she felt irrelevant and miniscule in the grand scheme of political issues that take place far away from her daily life, and how can literacy actually take her to those