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.

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."

Executive Summary 4: Chapter 6 of Heath's Ways with Words

From Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.

In chapter 6, Heath looks at the literate practices in Trackton and Roadville with emphasis on children and women. Both communities differ in reading and writing behaviors. Trackton residents generally engage with written texts socially, making interpretations within a group and integrating texts into oral performances like worship. Roadville residents generally write only when necessary, mostly writing letters and notes, and value the act of reading more than they actually read.

The children of both communities come into their literacy traditions much differently. Heath explains that children and Trackton learn how to read by interacting with literate persons, like older friends and siblings, outside of school. Heath describes how Trackville children learn how to read price tags at the local store in order to get the best deal for their parents. Everything about print revolves around speech, or “talk” as Heath indicates. On the other hand, Roadville children learn to be passive listeners, hearing others read the text and then respond to it after they’ve finished. Adults in Roadville value reading above writing, so much of their children’s education comes from print text and instruction.

Heath describes how worship differs in each community, characterizing their nuanced relations to print text and oral performance. Roadville residents fuse printed materials, primarily Bible passages and hymns, with personal stories, prayers, into a group performance. For Trackville residents, passages are read quietly, and readers do not deviate from the scripture. Few people show willingness to read in public.

Each community tries preparing children for institutional education, but Heath asserts toward the end of the chapter that this instruction does not prepare kids for writing in school.

Quotes

194-195: “Trackton children had learned before school that they could read to learn, and they had developed expectancies of print. The graphic and everyday-life contexts of writing were often critical to their interpretation of the meaning of print, for print to them was not isolated bits and pieces of lines and circles, but messages with varying internal structures, purposes, and uses. For most of these, oral communication surrounded the print.”

196: “Certain types of talk describe, repeat, reinforce, frame, expand, and even contradict written materials, and children in Trackton learn not only how to read print, but also when and how to surround print in their lives with appropriate talk.”

199: “Adults and children read what they have to read to solve practical problems of daily life: price tags, traffic signs, house numbers, bills, checks. Other uses are perhaps not as critical to problem-solving, but social-interactional uses give information relevant to social reaitons and contacts with person not in Trackton’s primary group.”

205: “Indeed, these unique combinations out of the familiar gathering of the congregation make it possible for each member of the congregation to be at once creator and performer.”

211: “Throughout these habits and the shifts from oral to written language, there is an oral performance pattern of building a text which uses themes and repetitions with variations on these themes.”

213: "[In Roadville] Letters are conversations written down."

217: “Both men and women dislike reading aloud in public or having to speak formally.”

218: “The types and uses of writing by children in Roadville are far more restricted than those of adults. Their occasion and task for writing are largely motivated by others—parents forcing them to write thank you notes, teachers giving assignments, and coaches asking them to sign pledges of good behavior.”

220: “Two features stand out in the observation of reading habits in Roadville: everyone talks about reading, but few people do it; and of those who do read, few follow through on any action which might be suggested in reading material.”

227: “In Roadville, there is a concerted effort on the part of adults to initiate their children both into pre-scripted discourse around printed material and into passive listening behavior, and they believe book-reading to be both recreational and educational for children.”

230: “In general, however, the domains of school and home are kept separate by both child and parent once the child starts to school and certainly by the end of the primary years. Adults expect the school to teach, and the child to learn.”

234: “In both communities, women write and read more than men; and there are patterns of certain types of reading and writing takes only members of one or the other sex or indivals of a certain age are expected to do.”

Weekly Response 1

The readings for class this week seem to challenge commonly held notions of literacy and the trope of a literate person as a learned scholar with a slim, tweed jacket and varnished smoking pipe. All types of people write, and this fact should redefine literacy and redirect our efforts to understand writing practices. The central idea is that writing takes place outside of the classroom and outside of Western culture. To a varying degree, the readings also suggest popular and personal writing is valued and fun, and traditional writing in the classroom is dull and difficult.

I see great value in understanding different cultures and their respective writing practices, yet I feel remiss to discount the body of work put into standardizing education. Yes, I guess that I’m giving praise to “The Man” for subjecting me to one soul-crushing test after another and condemning me for the flowery prose that I used to enjoy writing. I have to give it to them though. It is hard to order a group of people—I’ve had a hard enough time leading a classroom. Still, there has to be a practical solution for testing writing and testing literacy without allowing for complete relativism.

At this point, I don’t have an answer to that problem since I only see more problems from a teaching perspective. If we adapt our writing instruction to the technologies of tomorrow as Scribner says in “Literacy in Metaphors” (74), I wonder if we’ll be losing something meaningful by getting caught up in the technology boom and new media craze. I’m not trying to sound like a nostalgic old-fogey or a Luddite, I am, but I do worry that with the escalation of technology will have a detrimental effect on how we learn, write, and understand the world around us and each other. Textscript is an eyesore even on a cell phone to me. I like to slow down and unplug sometimes, and usually that's when I enjoy studying and writing and reading the most. That's just me.

So, all right, if I am going to accept these multiple literacies and new technologies as a student as well as in my classroom, what do I do with them? What are the parameters for a “rich curriculum” (Yancey’s "Writing in the 21st Century" 3) and who dictates what they are? Also, how do I grade student writing? How should I write assignments? The questions are endless, but that's a good starting point for a class, isn't it?