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?
T.A.--
ReplyDeleteIt seems you're touching on one of the fundamental issues of comp studies as a whole: the theories are great, interesting, fascinating, etc., but what practical uses do they have in the classroom? In thinking about literacies of power from the Daniell article, I can't help but wonder if we can truly exercise a equal power structure in the classroom. We can tell our students all about the importance to recognize minority societies' rights to literacy, but if we don't somehow allow our students to have a voice in our curriculum, to rise up to power against what we or the university suggests we teach...then aren't we being hypocritical in a way? I suppose that's why they're called theories though--they're not necessarily meant to be effective...
I do agree with you that it's often good to unwind and unplug. That's why I think Scribner and Cole's claim that writing operations are inconsequential to literate modes of thought. I think technology can impair our thinking; even serving as a barrier to other forms of literacy. The great teacher can strike a good balance in the classroom with the use of technology to enhance the strengths of her learners.
At any rate, I like the pragmatism in this response. Thanks for your insight.
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ReplyDeleteI appreciated your nostalgic view of education and literacy. As an Education student, everything you said made me question the way I’ve been taught to teach and test English. All of our Education classes are pushing technology, technology, technology, but I agree with you when you said, “I wonder if we’ll be losing something meaningful by getting caught up in the technology boom and new media craze.” I remember how one article for this week said something to the effect of years and years ago, just being able to print (write) your name meant you were literate. However, an elementary school teacher friend of mine told me last week that most schools are no longer teaching students how to write in cursive. Why only print? She said that the administration said that with technology being so prevalent in the classrooms of today, there was no need for the students to learn how to write in print and cursive, “they’ve got computers for that now.” So while we’re all debating on what literacy is, is the definition keeping up with what and how we’re teaching?
ReplyDeleteThank you both for your posts. I really appreciate your thoughts and enjoy reading them.
ReplyDeletePearl: As teachers, it's very important that we allow our students to express their ideas and be accountable for their words. Teaching an understanding of academic discourse and why it's used can equip our students with an effective weapon against the power structure. In the classroom itself, considering what you said about equal relations between student and instructor, de-centering power can be tricky but can work. I think of it like this truism that I've heard about communism: it works with a small group.
Kelly: I have terrible handwriting, so I'm glad to be done with cursive! Really though, it goes to show not only how approaches to education are changing but also aesthetics. Do you know anyone who practices calligraphy--I do, and it's amazing that someone's handwriting is so ornate. That fine handwriting has been evacuated and replaced with typing skills. The void but familiar font of Times New Romans seems like the tight business uniform of written communication.
Anyway, responding to your ending questions, I would have to say that there will never be a final word on literacy and how we should teach it, but we need to have these debates in order to develop effective curriculums and policies to educate people.
I find Kelly's comment fascinating because I remember in elementary school, I was told that I had to learn cursive because that's what was used exclusively in middle school and (the implication was) in the "real" world. If I didn't learn cursive, I was doomed to be a failure, unable to write or communicate effectively. Now (no, wait, I won't say how many years later), cursive isn't being taught? That's ridiculous! I agree with T.A. that calligraphy and other "fancy," specialized writing practices will be missed. There are some things computers can't truly replicate. A computer may be able to make a fancy, calligraphy-esque font, but the time and skills required will still be lost.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I find TA's comments and questions about teaching interesting considering I have yet to teach my own composition class. I hope to learn a great deal from the teaching experiences of my classmates this semester!
I have similar concerns about my definition and perception of literacy. As I have said in my blog, my education and understanding of literacy is predominantly Western influenced. It is hard for me to thoroughly understand the implications the word "literacy" has because, although progressive and admirable, my education is a construct of a white, patriarchal view of what literacy is. The paradigm is changing, though, I think. It is not that Western academia is ignorant, but it is evolving and trying to fit into the 21st century. This has been a difficult transition, but progress is being made. Understanding literacy now is different than it was less than a decade ago. Discourse is flourishing, though. Being in education, I feel that I also have to evolve and be progressive.
ReplyDeleteI think the questions that we have about literacy, in all its "unpackaging" are good questions. And I don't see anything wrong with us holding on to some of the structures that have shaped academic writing instruction. However, I think the problem that writers like Yancey, Daniel, and Scribner and Cole bring to the forefront are that the ideology that informs most of traditional academic training can calcify. If we aren't prepared to undertake the task of imagining the writers of the future, their needs, the skills they already possess, the possibilities of writing tasks we've yet to encounter, then we risk alienating our students. Worse, we demonstrate to them that we don't wholly value their role in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThere will always be some resistance to new technology, new methods, but that resistance is good; it helps us to determine what practices to modify, pare down, fortify, adopt, eliminate... I'm not as technologically skilled as I'd like to be, but (and maybe this comes from my dad and me watching so much sci-fi when I was a kid) I think that if we aren't preparing for the classrooms of the future, we will be handing those classrooms over to someone else.