The title and thesis of Branch’s book-“eyes on the ought to be”-come from Myles Horton (1905-1990), an American educator and activist who established with fellow educator activist Don West the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee.Highlander is one of three sites of nontraditional adult education Branch examines to illustrate ideological and material consequences of educational literacy practices. Writing from a perspective informed by New Literacy Studies and critical pedagogy, Branch analyzes educational discourses and literacy practices in three sites-a jail, a job training program, and the Highlander school-to demonstrate how teaching literacy “always involves a vision of the present inextricably tied to a vision of the future” (214). Whether explicit or veiled, this vision of the world as it “ought to be” shapes debates about adult educational practices and determines which conceptions of literacy will be valued and implemented in particular settings. A central aim of Branch’s book is to identify and evaluate the ideal worlds that such discourses and practices invoke.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric