The
Sursum Corda Reading Program involves approximately twenty
Georgetown Law law students and a number of Georgetown University undergraduate
and graduate students who read an hour each week with young
children -- emergent readers from a neighborhood subsidized
housing project four blocks north of the Law Center.
The
program is conducted in the fall semester as the practicum
component of the "Literacy and Law" course taught by Professor
Roe of the Law Center and Professor Hirsh of Georgetown University's
English Department. In the spring semester, the reading program
is continued on a voluntary basis with additional volunteers
from the Law Center and Main Campus.
A standing collection of children's
books is provided by the D.C. Public Library.
In
addition to improving reading and other literacy skills of
the participating children, the reading program also develops
"legal understandings," according to Professor Roe. For instance,
the quality of the interactive reading experience between
the emerging reader and her "teacher" shapes the emerging
reader's legal culture, i.e., the set of knowledge, skills
and affinities regarding such matters as respect for the ideas,
individual personality, and rights of another, the development
of voice (as the emerging reader's speech is attended to,
responded to, and taken seriously by others), and the recognition
that justice requires the opportunity to be heard. Just as
free expression is established by the Constitution and protected
by the courts, free expression is nourished and developed
by the quality of a person's literacy-related experiences
from the earliest childhood.
