Response to Lyons

Of all the readings from the course this semester, I felt that Lyons' "Rhetorical Sovereignty" evoked the theme of the course--the politics of literacy--the most. I know that politics come into play with many of the other pieces, but as Lyons historicizes Indian assimilation into American culture and depicts their exploitation, literacy seems like another instrument of war. Indians lose land, an integral part to their identity and community according to Lyons, by the machinations of the legal and political system. They are included in the proceedings, they are included in the conversation, but they are also controlled by their lack of power. On the one hand, the treaties have helped preserve Indian values, yet they would become documents that could be amended or ignored by the powers-that-be.

Determining the terms by which someone is defined is a powerful rhetorical and political tool. Lyons values this function the most. He seems irritated with the Indian scholars who look to the past and only the past to shape Indian identity. Instead, Lyons wants Indians to acknowledge that past, be aware of that past, but move ahead into the future. Although Lyons concedes that introducing Native American Rhetorics and the idea of Rhetorical Sovereignty into academic settings won't do much, it would certainly be start.

I hope that we'll be able to talk about the idea of Rhetorical Sovereignty more in class. Lyons points out that it is term loaded with all sorts of meaning and implications. And, while I have a somewhat clear idea of how it might function for his agenda, I wonder how it could be used in our classrooms or by other cultures.

Summary of Richard Scott Lyons "Rhetorical Sovereignty"

In "Rhetorical Sovereignty," Richard Scott Lyons discusses how Indian populations have been reconstructed by the dominant power, controlling Indian identity and political power in public discourse. He calls for several reforms—ideological, political, educational, cultural—while focusing on American Indian rhetorical sovereignty, that is, the right of indigenous people to represent themselves how they want to be represented. Controlled by institutional powers intending to assimilate American Indians into White American culture, writing for and about American Indians is largely problematic, given its association with a long history of violence and colonization. However, combined with American Indian Rhetoric and the principle of Rhetorical Sovereignty, writing can be used to revise history and show an accurate depiction of American Indian culture as well as voice localized concerns related directly to the community.

Lyons traces the development of the term sovereignty throughout history to reveal how its meaning can change and be reappropriated. In medieval Europe, the sovereign was only answerable to himself and to God. Lyons indicates that sovereign power is locatable within peoples, an important concept that leads to his discussion of American Indian treaties with the Europeans and, after the Revolution, Americans. In short, Lyons describes how American Indian sovereignty is revised to fit the expansionist agenda of American government. He accuses Americans of committing rhetorical imperialism by controlling the terms of the debate that has left Indians out.

Next, Lyons reviews some contemporary work on American Indians. His main concern is that many of these scholars turn to the past rather than the present, focusing on what is lost or reinforcing the “Indian” way of thinking, mainly through oral communication. Lyons endeavors to relocate American Indian scholarship in the present cultivation of immediately locatable peoples and cultures. The “New Ghost Dance,” he describes, focuses on returning American Indian power to American Indians with the mutual support of non-Indians.

He ends by looking at institutions to begin teaching American Indian Rhetoric and a revised

history of minority struggles in which Native American are put with African Americans, Women, and others. He urges for higher education to take on American Indian Rhetoric and Indian Studies. He also briefly describes a Native American type of education that focuses on the values of the community.

Meandering Thoughts on Geisler

I had a colleague who loved--as far as I know still loves--Activity Theory. This person would tell me that as much as we work through technology, referring mainly digital and electronic technologies, it also works through us and shapes what we think and do beyond the time we use that particular piece of technology. At the time, I looked at her wish sincere disbelief. My mind immediately jumped to ridiculous conspiracy theories. “Are you kidding me? This sounds like The Terminator. The Matrix. The Robot Uprising.” However, I had a much more sober mind when reading Geisler, and now my former colleague’s loony idea makes some sense.

I moved away from my own loony conspieracy theories when I put this idea into another perspective. The other day, I was reading about the “gamitization” of our culture. That, in short, is how games affect learning and judgment. Of course, my conspiracy-addled mind immediately thought: “Video games are going to make us docile energy sources for the Robot Revolution! Real life will never exist again!” But no. At least not yet. I bet that games have been influencing what we do for a long time. I thought about how we learn and use games for fun. Yahtzee helps us with math. Scrabble exercises our vocabulary. Monopoly teaches us to be greedy capitalists. With all accept for the last example in mind, I was comforted to realize that gamitization hasn’t taken over my entire life.

Board games are easy to put away though. The types of technologies that Geisler talks about aren't so easy to set down and leave behind. They replace maps, phone books, journals, checkbooks, and more. When the medium changes, things can get messy. Thinking back to my gaming example. Some gaming experiences are more immersive than others. If you wanted to, you could play certain video games indefinitely. How do we know when to call it quits? Believe it or not, it's easier for me to turn off the Wii than to put down my laptop and leave work behind.

Geisler’s use of activity theory made me think of the concerns that I have with digital technologies taking over my free time. I am no Luddite, but I have recently quit Facebook and drastically reduced my using the computer for recreation. Using these things so often just seemed natural to me. Then, I realized that they were replacing some of the things I valued. Faster isn't always better. I sometimes like to be slow.

While I don’t fully understand Activity Theory now, I see its relevance. I like how it can integrate abstract culture and material action into a theory. While I think that this theory might be better situated outside of English Studies, it does have a lot of interdisciplinary appeal to me that can make sense out of our lives. Maybe there is something to all this book learning after all.

Summary of Geisler's "When Mangement Becomes Personal"

Cheryl Geisler applies Activity Theory, the idea that human mental processes materialize through tools and the development of tools, to the vogue of personal digital assistants (PDAs), focusing on Palm Technology. After giving an overview of the cultural history of the Palm, Geisler reviews how the Palm has affected her own professional and personal life, describing how she has transferred regular pen-and-paper writing tasks into her PDA. Overall, Geisler finds that the Palm, instead of mediating work from personal life, invades her private space.

Her analysis of the cultural history suggests the Palm came from needs and desires directed by American business culture. The broad trend of professionalization compelled people of the “managerial class” to manage their time effectively and condense the planners and notebooks that they carried into fewer tools. Geisler points to “technologies of the body” responding to the time-crunch culture and shaping how these technologies are produced—the Palm PDA actually fits into the palm. This new technology replaces the business technologies, like the rolodex, of the past with something intended to be more efficient.

Geisler presents a personal analysis of how the Palm affected her task-management and digital writing. Her complex analysis, in short, suggests that her personal writing / plans were showing up at work. This creates problems, as the line between work and personal life is blurred. With the current ubiquity of PDAs, social networking sites, and demanding, hybrid jobs that cross between recreation and professionalization time and space, it would seem that Geisler’s analysis presaged our digitally saturated personal and professional lives.

Response to Cushman's Chapter

I really enjoyed reading Cushman’s work this week, yet I still have mixed feelings about this type of academic work. I’m certainly not questioning its integrity and usefulness, because the immediate, “real-world” impact is front and center; but then again, maybe that’s part of what bothers me. In my assigned chapter, we go along with Cushman as she follows Raejone’s attempt to get into college, which ultimately fails. Cushman successfully shows through her analysis that transfer can help bridge gaps between social others, and this endeavor is, in my opinion, full of good intentions.

However, the reality comes crashing down in the end, leaving Raejone in no better place. I admire Cushman for revealing that these efforts are sometimes in vain. We are denied a comforting closure to Raejone’s story. It helps build Cushman’s ethos. Nonetheless, I can’t stop wondering if Cushman should have done something more to help Raejone. It may not be her position as a researcher to “save” Raejone from a life of poverty and hard labor, but in a way, Cushman profits from Raejone’s hard life. Is this a bizarre form of exploitation?

During most of my reading, I’m cheering the two of them on, wishing Raejone to get into college and achieve her goals. Cushman builds my sympathy for these real people in a way that pushes forward her political agenda. I see that Raejone’s experience and Cushman’s text might be able to shape policy later on, but what about Raejone the person? On closer inspection, I don’t feel comfortable with Cushman entering Raejone’s life, writing an academic chapter about it, and abandoning Raejone.

Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way. This information should be shared with others. The point of transfer is to enter into dialogue with various people—it’s a tool for shaping different communities. Certain relationships just have boundaries. We can’t intervene in everyone’s life. Still, there are living and breathing people who have to face the harsh world that researchers visit temporary before returning to their own lives.

A friend of mine said something along the lines of: “I just feel more comfortable researching dead people.” And maybe that’s why I tend to stick with literary material.

Executive Summary of Chapter 8 of Ellen Cushman's The Struggle and The Tools

Cushman examines how Raejone, a single Black mother from a low socioeconomic background, negotiates the discourse of power and her cultural language and values as she tries to gain acceptance into a State university. Navigating through gatekeepers and her idea of their expectations, Raejone translates her values into qualities and language that college admissions committee would find desirable. Analyzing Raejone’s personal statement as well as her meeting with an admissions officer Mr. Tony Villups, Cushman argues that “the transfer of language can promote social and political equality” (186).

Raejone balances the rhetorical demands of her audience with her personal experiences in her statement of purpose. For instance, Raejone reshapes the “cultural value of self-help and personal struggle” into the concrete experience of completing her GED; however, she leaves out details about the challenge to go to school and take care of her children. Cushman indicates that Raejone carefully uses personal pronouns and shared values to reach her audience.

Next, Cushman illustrates how Mr. Villups reinforces yet subverts his position as an academic gatekeeper and invites Raejone and Sasha to participate in the language of power. At first, Villups asserts his authority by exclusively speaking in the language of power, and this move keeps Raejone and Sasha from feeling comfortable enough to join the conversation. However, Villups switches to Black Vernacular—“You ain’t gotta think of nothin’ flowery”—and welcomes Raejone and Sasha’s discourse.

In the final segment, Cushman helps Raejone decode the language of the University. Raejone learns that the school does not offer a degree in primary education, and the only alternative is to apply to an expensive, local private school. While this discovery frustrates Raejone’s efforts to get to get a degree, readers learn that Raejone never even gets to enter college. She deals with extreme economic problems and defers her college hopes to her children.

Response to Greene

One of my friends would argue until she's blue in the face that Early America is largely ignored by academia, and we should look deeply into the rich history surrounding this long period instead of writing it off as precursor to The American Revolution and the 19th Century American Renaissance. Greene's piece not only reminds me of my friend's sentiments but also brings to mind our recurring conversation about dominant narratives and revisionist history. To me, the value of this work is unquestionable. However, I often wonder who should be doing revisionist history? Who has the authority to speak for the marginalized group? What are the risks? What are the advantages from looking in from the outside?

After reading "Can the Subaltern Speak?" by Spivak, I've been haunted by these questions. She essentially says the subaltern can't speak, and intellectuals should be aware of using the subaltern as part of their own political or academic agendas. Now, I would agree that the subaltern is an extreme case in light of our conversation about literacy, but the task of representing other people fairly and ethically is one that seems central to our research.

We've looked at some instances where outsiders go into a community to study the people and left that community worse off--I'm thinking of Heath specifically. I can recall hearing people say during class, "Why didn't she include this? / What did she leave out?" At first, these questions are dismissed in view of her academic background. Given her robust vita with multiple publications and an impressive educational pedigree, Heath seems to have authority to write on this matter. Yet, in the spirit of full-disclosure, there's a part of me--probably those working class roots--that wants to say: "Who is she to talk about these people?" Since then, ethnographers seem to be more transparent about their backgrounds and ideological leanings, but even with this open approach, there are still problems.

Greene has extensive experience with her subject and is also Hispanic. I can see why she would want to revise the Anglocentric Early American narrative with the rich contributions the Spanish gave to America's intellectual history. It is engaging work and helps to get a fuller picture of American history and literacy. However--I feel somewhat uncomfortable asking this--Am I wrong to think that Greene has more credibility to speak on this matter because she's not only a collegiate scholar but also Hispanic?

Maybe some more background on my line of thought will help you understand why I'm asking this question. Last semester, I surveyed some Feminist and Queer theories, and this semester I’ve had to read some Engels. What they have in common, generally speaking, is that they value representation and action directly from people associated with their culture. Engels applauded “true” working-class movements and begrudgingly endorsed the bourgeois-tainted strand of English Socialism. Radical Feminists and Queer theorists generally rejected the mainstream culture and claim that outsiders should not represent them. While these are class, gender, and sexuality issues, I also know that this argument extends to race.

So, I’m left wondering: who am I able to represent? Who are you able to represent? Is it a level of personal comfort? Does it have to do with the past, socioeconomic background, expertise of study? Maybe I just feel more comfortable making claims about literary texts than I do about living people.

Summary of Jamie Candelaria Greene's "Misperspectives on Literacy"

Greene, Jamie Candelaria. “Misperspectives on Literacy: A Critique of an Anglocentric Bias in Histories of American Literacy.”

Summary

Greene argues that previous historical accounts of American literacy—mainly those by Graff, Kastle, De Castell and Luke—maintain a limited, Anglocentric view that severely dismisses early contributions from the Spanish. By accounting for Spanish literacy and policy in the New World, Greene vindicates this robust history of literate lives and practices obfuscated by the dominant narrative in which Anglo-Saxons introduced literacy and thereby enlightenment to the New World.

Beginning with a genealogical search, Greene establishes the power of written documentation and literacy that control accurate depiction of history. She accuses historians of literacy (references above) of leaving out a crucial part of American literacy history. As such, she briefly examines the history of Spanish literacy in 16^th and 17^th century America, including an impressive list of literacy firsts (237-238) that the Spanish introduce to the New World.

Greene points out that literate practices were especially important at this time to the Spanish. Official correspondence between New Spain and the Crown dictated protocol and established ruling bodies. Explorers, like Coronado, would enlist hosts writing experts and couriers to record and deliver written documents including maps and journal records. Greene crafts these everyday literate practices into a wider, cultural trend happening in 16^th century culture—a Spanish literary Renaissance.

The section ends with Greene discussing the fused contributions of the Spanish and Catholics on early American literacy. Educators, unsurprisingly, spent a great deal of time working with dictionaries and grammar books with the Indian tribes. However, it might be surprising to learn that some Spanish educators advocated for equal learning opportunities for Spanish and Indian children, including girls.

This point helps Greene wrap up her argument, asserting that Spanish literate practices and culture not only happened before the Anglo-Saxon settlements but were ahead of them as well. For educators, what would this new or revised history of American literacy do for our views of current Hispanic literacy and the Anglocentric perspective on the past?

Quotes

234: “Thus when a name is omitted from any historical record, an individual becomes at risk of being omitted from history itself.”

236: “Ironically, all four authors stress the importance of the historical dimensions of literacy development. Yet in a nation as diverse as the United States this message gets lost because of their narrow view of American history based on one geographical area, ethnic group, and time frame.”

236: “The explorations propelled the start of a transatlantic exchange of written communiqués regarding laws, customs, and practices in the New World.”

238: “As early as the sixteenth century, the use of the Roman alphabet was established by southerners heading north.”

241: “This information clearly shows that a sophisticated use of the Roman alphabet was taking place in North America when, as an uncle of mine would say, ‘Plymouth Rock was still a pebble.’”

242-243: “That omission invariably has formed the historical premises on which pedagogical dialogue concerning the low literacy rates among U.S. Hispanics is implicitly based: that Hispanics in North America presumably had no history of literacy until Anglo-Saxon arrivals to the Americas opened their eyes and ears to the Roman alphabet, and to an enlightened world of literacy.”

Executive Summary of Ralph Cintron's Angel's Town Chapter 3 Finding Don Angel

Ralph Cintron finds Don Angel through layers of discourse. Don Angel seems splintered between identities through bureaucratic discourse as he swaps fake names, exposing the State’s dependence on paper trails for maintaining order and identification. Cintron writes most about three of Don Angel’s personal discourse communities, labeled by Cintron as viejito, mexicano, and English. Overall, Cintron analyzes Don Angel’s “layered discourses” in order to explain how he uses language to in varying ways and establish his dynamic identity.

Don Angel’s viejito discourse sets him apart from his immediate community. Attached to the “old ways,” the viejito discourse is one part performance, another part ideological. Cintron describes how Don Angel has a semiotic body that exhibits viejito discourse through dance, demonstration, and dress. The ideas of the “old ways” like witchcraft and hearth medicine come into conflict with modernizing agents like science and popular culture—the local youth find this aspect of Don Angel backwards.

However, Don Angel earns more respect in his mexicano discourse. Playing Albures, a verbal game of wit through word play and sexual innuendo where two men spar off to outperform the other putting the loser on his back so to speak, Don Angel shows of his expertise with language and syntactical change.

Cintron spends the least amount of time describing Don Angel’s relationship to English. In this discourse, he does not have the strongest command, and English would surface in his jokes. Perhaps, Don Angel used humor to make light of his social position in view of the power discourse.

Quotes

52 “I first consider the rhetoric of the "legal documents'' genre and explore some of its cultural meanings and intentions and, likewise, consider the forgings of legal documents as a profound manipulation of appearances whose goal is freedom from the forces of control. After that, I shift my analysis toward some specific oral discourse genres whose appearances, at least to the uninitiated, are also deceiving. My entire analysis is directed toward an understanding of Don Angel, a man whose life has been both banal and transgressive and, for me at least, deeply moving.”

55: “These cards and papers were parts of a genre, which itself may be part of a more complex system of rituals (including inquiries at a cocktail party, for instance) that attempt to bridge distance. Documents of identification, in particular, might be taken as contracts or signs of relationship between individuals and the institutions the individuals circulate through”

56: “These cards, then, are products of a lack of trust that plays itself out as a momentary curtailment of freedom at the moment of verification.”

57: “Perhaps we need to view the management of people and the devices used for management as cultural responses to the problems and successes of modernity: an explosive growth in population, the erosion of face-to-face interactions, an intensified concept of ownership, and so on.”

59: “In short, the unidimensionality of a law or regulation cannot help but straitjacket the multidimensionality of human need and, even more so, the almost chaotic abundance of human desire.”

63: “My point is that physical and oral representations of objects, actions, and events were very much a part of his vocabulary.”

64: “The repertoire of Don Angel, then, included at least three ways by which to animate words: gestures, sounds, and the creation of others through voice, pitch, and bodily changes.”

65: “Don Angel's viejito repertoire, it seems to me, implied a relationship to words that is distinguishable from the ideology of wording that is common in mainstream life to the extent that such life has been shaped by schooling.”

66: “Yes, I am saying that styles of power become molded to ways of holding the body and gesturing, to styles of discourse, and to ranges of thought—and all this might be called a style of being.”

68: “My sense was that his semiotic contained strands of ancient histories, cultures, and discourses, but his uprooted condition meant that following each strand would lead to a dead end, for there were no other viejitos, or matachin dancers in the neighborhood to think about, to compare, to ask questions of. In this sense, Don Angel was a powerful symbol of the fragmentation throughout these neighborhoods.”

71: “In this sense, Don Angel was part of a broadly shared identity related to contemporary Mexico. Because the term mexicano, then, was a communal marker, I have chosen it to label the discourse style through which Don Angel performed his everyday living.”

71: “To play albures, then, is to join a male game in which the participants search through phrases, words, and syllables for every possible way to suggest the penis, sperm, feces, anus, and sexual entry and exit into women, objects, animals, and particularly each other.”

76: “In other words, if the first level of meaning can be called normative, the second or albur level might be called transgressive.”

91: “But a man like Don Angel, who was inhabited by both viejito and mexicano discourses and performed them skillfully, was marginalized in both Mexico and the United States because in the eyes of others his own traces of viejito discourse acted as a kind of friction slowing the push toward modernization.”

96: “In such conditions, English potentially was a tool of exclusion and manipulation, and these were the festering sources from which the Spanish jokes and puns described earlier emerged. The motive behind the jokes and puns was the leveling of social stratification, but it was the sort of leveling that remained bound to words and bound to one's circle of intimates who understood Spanish.”

Quick Post on Duffy

Recently, I read an article on CCN warning that extremists—racist or so-called “patriotic” groups—are on the rise in the United States. As the article points to violence against minority groups, in most cast foiled by the police, I immediately thought of the Duffy’s article and civic, sometimes civil, discourse. I was impressed with Duffy’s careful reading of how the Hmong took up the rhetoric of Wausau’s dissatisfied white population and crafted strong arguments. Plus, they affirmed their position without explosive language denigrating their target audience.

While the Hmong attacked ignorance in their readers, they also built up ethos based on reasoned arguments and, I would argue, politeness. President Obama the other day said something to the effect of our nation is polarized and in desperate need of civility in political discourse, and I think the Hmong present us with a good example of civility without compromising too much ground.

In Duffy's example, literacy here created a positive outcome. The Hmong showed collective poise through appropriating the discourse used against them, and discontents were shown their frustrations were mostly baseless, for better or for worse. Turning back to the CNN article about hate groups, I wonder what would happen if the hate groups were engaged in a civil discussion with the target of their ire. Would this help inspire tolerance?

Literacy and rhetoric can be dangerous as well. Right now, I’m taking a class on Southern literature, and this was the first time I read Thomas Dixon, Jr, an outspoken racist and apologist for the KKK who wrote around the turn of the 19^th century. Dixon’s had a wide audience, and D.W. Giffith’s Birth of Nation (1915) was based off of Dixon’s books. At the time, the racist rhetoric had a firm place in the cultural imaginary. Today, if you look up reviews on Amazon of Dixon's work, you'll find some startling words praising these racist documents.

While we often study things to appreciate them and praise them, I wonder what a study about racist discourse might look like? How do people make compelling arguments for alienating an entire people based on race or sexuality? I imagine that would be a dark place to go, and I would probably rather spend time in pleasant Wausau like Duffy, but I think it’s important to understand the opposition if we are going to get a full picture of the issue.

Reading Response 5

Brandt writes, "It is interesting to note how a cultural ideal that could have derived from literary reading--the romantic writer as natural genius--plays out in parents' hands-off attitude toward children's writing development" (158).

I’ve noticed recurring the issue of identity and writing in our course readings and discussion. The quote above brings to my mind a topic that we often returned to during my first time in 7050—the lonely writer in the garret. Frankly, I’m both fascinated and stunned that people still maintain the image of a writer detached from his world, committing his genius to paper for the little to read in awe. Looking at testimonies from Brandt clearly dispels this myth.

However, it still exists in our cultural imagination and typically in a negative way. Think back to books, movies, or TV shows—basically any popular media—and bring to mind how writers or literary types are portrayed. You might recall some aloof and sensitive loner type figure, who senses deep meaning in life’s precious, fleeting moments. Often in college hijinx movies, like Animal House, these figures are usually social degenerates who waste their time smoking pot on the job and sleeping with their students. While that is an extreme example, writers as represented in popular culture seem to always be on the outside looking in, with an occasional revelation worth imparting to the average person.

Brandt shows us that idea of a writer is mostly fiction, yet the misconception that ordinary people can’t write still exists. Mostly everyone writes, but their writing isn’t “belle lettres” or literary material. And even then, a close look at the lives of most literary writers show people—with a few exceptions—deeply involved in discourses of their times. They weren’t removed but drawn to their cultures, whither by fascination, disgust, or something in between is relative to the writer.

I imagine that our students have the idea of good writing as literary writing produced by the lonely writer in the garret. As a writing teacher, I think it’s helpful to confront that fiction and tear it apart. While the lonely writer will stay in our cultural imagination, he has no real place in the classroom.

Still, as I think about Brandt’s glimpse into the literate lives of everyday people, I can’t help but think of Berlin’s Marxist agenda where composition and rhetoric are trying to take down the oppressive grip of literary studies. Although I enjoy following these testimonials and challenging the man to a certain extent, I remain somewhat suspicion of what writerly identities these theorists are trying to conceive and produce. If history holds true, the identities of writers have been too far constrained, and we have some way to go before people comfortably identify as writers.

Executive Summary 5: Chapter 5 of Deborah Brandt's Literacy in American Lives

In this chapter, Brandt describes how reading has been culturally valued and writing disdained. Currently, we are seeing a new focus put onto writing as it has gained value in our commercial market.

Brandt indicates reading is associated with pleasant memories and social interaction. Families gather together and read texts aloud. By extension, these people were taught to revere printed materials. While relations to reading varied among families, public schools—and to some extent the church—focused on reading instruction because it was easier to monitor and control than writing.

On the other hand, Brandt’s subjects trace their writing histories with more difficulty than their reading history. Memories of writing invoked thoughts of isolation, ridicule, and hard labor. Parents were far less involved—if involved at all—in their children’s writerly education. Some subjects remarked that writing hardly ever took place at home, but their notion of writing was directly connected with “belle lettres” and not quotidian writing practices like balancing a checkbook.

People also shared a conflicted relationship with writing for school. Although a written document could bring praise from authority figures, often school writing caused anxiety brought from bad grades and noisy peers. Moreover, writing was also used to criticize or satirized those same authority figures in the subjects’ lives.

Brandt ends by addressing the “sacredness” of reading and the “profanity” of writing. Protestant churches, Brandt explains in the beginning, promoted reading so the faithful could understand the Bible, but writing was viewed with suspicion because writing was a socially stratified practice. This idea, of course, has changed. Brandt seems to suggest that today writing is valued as commercial product and output, and this idea is changing what we consider as literacy.

Quotes

148: "The new literacy is often characterized as an ability to go beyond rote skills of deciphering text into the more mentally challenging levels of interpretation and critical reasoning."

148: "Writing is the productive member of the pair, and with literacy now a key productive force in the information economy, writing not only documents work but also increasingly comprises the work that many people do."

151: "Nevertheless, reading and the teaching of reading were widely considered as a normal part of responsible care of young children in many households. The heavy hand of mothers in organizing book-based activities indicates the close association between reading and child rearing."

153: "There was a reverence expressed for books and their value and sometimes a connection between reading and refinement or good breeding."

154: "Compared to reading, writing seemed to have a less coherent status in collective family life, and much early writing was remembered as occurring in lonely, secret, or rebellious circumstances."

157: "For Ames's grandmother, writing was just a necessity for her job and not thought of as a separate activity or skill to be passed along for its own sake."

158: "It is interesting to note how a cultural ideal that could have derived from literary reading--the romantic writer as natural genius--plays out in parents' hands-off attitude toward children's writing development."

162: "[Writing as a purge or vent] tended to occur at times of crisis: death, divorce, romantic loss, incarceration, war.

166: "If writing in school was more associated than reading with emotional conflict, surveillance, and punishment, it also could be associated with sharper pride and individual accomplishment."

166: "Sub rosa writing was used to comment on school authority."

167: "Though parents do not hesitate to endorse and promote reading, their involvement with children's writing seems more restricted and circumspect."