History of Literacy Volume I

"Stranger in Strange Lands"

"In each new class Dave believed that the writing he was doing was totally unlike anything he had ever done before" (234). That seems to sum it up for me. We have discussed writing across the curriculum to some degree in class and I find this article supporting what I figured to be true. Students don't understand writing as language, but only as a skill applied for particular instances. "Although the writing tasks in the three classes were in many ways similar, Dave interpreted them as being totally different from each other and totally different from anything he had ever done before" (243). She mentions this particular trait of Dave's a third time as well later on. I suppose my point in discussing this aspect of the article is the astounding surprise this finding seems to carry. Writing teachers are consistently flabbergasted by how students a) can't write a paper and b) can't write a paper outside of class. This is because, I would argue, we still hold tight to our imbedded beliefs about writing, beliefs many of us aren't even aware we carry. We teach English because it came easy and we've never stopped to think why writing might be difficult for someone else. Furthermore, we are consistently looking for the mathematical breakdown of how to teach writing better. "Fifty-four percent of his expressed concerns were for coherence of thesis and subpoints...Forty-four percent of his concerns focused on accurately interpreting...Seventy-two percent of Dave's concerns deal with the new rules of use..." (245). Wow. His concerns by percentage breakdown. That's really helpful.

This article is useful in recognizing why writing across the curriculum needs to be addressed and realizing what's going on outside of freshman composition, but what do you want me to do with the percentage breakdown? Really?

"Protean Shapes in Literacy Events"

Moral of this story: No Child Left Behind is a Bad Idea.

I kinda just want to leave my response at that. But, since I can't, here's my favorite quote: "in large complex societies such as the United States, the national state of technological development and the extent of intrusion of governmental agencies in the daily lives of citizens may have combined to set up conditions in which literacy no longer has many of the traditional uses associated with it" (465). The government messes with people. People don't live up to impossible standards. The government/media makes a big deal about how much we are all failing as a people, we do our best to fix our problems, education suffers. Furthermore, I sense a lot of Bakhtin in here, specifically the bit about interanimation of discourses--students move from discourse to discourse and their comfort with one does preclude the loss of literacy in another. Furthermore, literacy is not simply a skill like crocheting that we can just teach in a session and move on. That seems to be the gist of most of what's being said here. I do believe we're back to the writing as art vs. science debate.

"Hearing Other Voices"

I cannot help but hear the voice (text) of Foucault as I read Hull's article. I am thinking specifically of History of Sexuality and the way he traces the economic responsibility of citizens and their sexuality. As Hull discusses the "responsibility" of workers in terms of literacy it appears to me to be much of the same discussion. Workers are ill-prepared and thus cost the economy money. Your illiteracy is a failure not only in education, but also as a citizen. It is because of you this economy is failing. It is because of you we can't do anything right.

The scariest thing is that I see much of this rhetoric repeated by my students. It is each individual's responsibility to be a good citizen. If you fail you have no one to blame but yourself. If your particular skill set is not what is required by your employer then it is no one's fault but your own. Oh the sweet American Dream. "The popular discourse of workplace literacy sets up a we/they dichotomy. It stresses the apparent failures of large numbers of people--disproportionately the poor and people of color--to be competent at what are considered run-of-the-mill daily tasks. Exaggerated an influenced by race and class prejudice, this dichotomy has the effect of separating the literate readers of magazines, newspaper articles, and scholarly reports on the literacy crisis from the masses who, we unthinkingly assume, are barely getting through the day" (669). It's not my fault it is someone else's. If you can't participate in society the way society demands you are a failure and not really trying. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this rhetoric is the way we as teachers accept it whole without question and instead of asking what we should be teaching or why it is worth teaching, we imagine our jobs only in relationship to what will be "required" of them in the workplace. We also rarely stop to question whether those skills are actually what will be required in the workplace or if how we are teaching them best develops those skills. It is our responsibility as citizens to behave a certain way. It is our responsibility as teachers to teach a certain skill set. We are not only bad citizens if we fail in this, but also bad people, immoral people.

This is the rhetoric of so many aspects of our lives (hence my reference to Foucault) and reading Hull's article makes me want to revisit the question of why are we teaching and what are we teaching?

"Sponsors of Literacy"

Ah-ha! How we have debated in class the question of what we are teaching and why and how we have danced around the question of power and literacy--those who would teach it only to control it vs. those who would teach it provide freedom. "Although the interests of the sponsor and the sponsored do not have to converge...sponsors nevertheless set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty." (166-167) Not every student who comes to college is looking for "enlightenment" or some other higher meaning, but does that mean we as teachers shouldn't teach to a higher goal than what the sponsors dictate? I think again of No Child Left Behind here; there isn't much an individual teacher can do to fight that dreaded beast, but what happens when all teachers go along with it? What happens when college instructors criticize it but unthinkingly perpetuate it in the classroom by only teaching to what the "employer" wants? What does the employer want? Is it worth teaching? Can we even teach it? These are my questions to this discussion of literacy. Finally, Brandt begins the important task of questioning the sponsors, not only the literacy of readers, and what is our job as teachers in teaching awareness of the sponsor as well as how to read the text they produce?