The question “what does it mean to be literate?” was the topic of discussion in my Teaching Adult Writers in Diverse Contexts class last night. The general consensus seemed to be that everyone is literate, including those that cannot actually read, as long as they can participate in the literary world in any way including being able to understand when one is reading. Then Barbara mentioned age, asking the class if a kindergartener is literate, leading some to ponder should literacy have to do with age. At what age is one considered literate? When we were asked to discuss with the person next to us, I mentioned to my classmate that it is important for one to be able to function in his or her society such as being able to read road signs, filling out applications and forms and being able to pay bills.
Truthfully, I was not convinced with my own argument. Yes I do believe that to be literate one has to be able to function in his or her society. (Today, there are still societies and tribes where reading and writing is not important). But in this society and others like it, being truly literate means more than being able to fill out job applications. It means being able to not just decode but understand complex texts. Otherwise, the types of work one can have is limited. Having a high level of literacy is not needed to flip burgers, to mop floors, or to provide care to the elderly but is vital to being able to participate in one’s society in other ways, to overcome disenfranchisement.
Education in this country is not set up so the whole population will be literate. It is set up to keep society as it is in order to have people that will flip burgers, mop floors and provide care to the elderly. That is why Johnny can’t read. Because if he could read, he would not be satisfied with his condition.
Slaves and former slaves understood the power of literacy which is why many risked their lives by learning how to read and teaching others to do the same. Fox reports:
Freedmen went to school to achieve practical power…Ex-slaves learned to read and write so that they could read their employment contracts and, for the lucky, their papers that allowed them to own property, so that they could participate in a newly opened political process, and so that they could foster collective race pride.
Unfortunately, the possibilities that literacy affords is not perceived by most people.
Horner and Parker provide the relatively short and albeit intricate history of English instruction at the university level. Things have truly changed but not quickly enough. We are still fighting some of the same battles such as how to teach grammar? how to teach writing?
As an English language learner, I ever struggled with English even though it is my third language. I credit my ferocious appetite for books when I was younger. I didn’t learn grammar, punctuation or sentence structure through drills, but through the books I was reading. Therefore, my belief had always been that to fix this writing problem, children, young adults, college students (traditional and especially nontraditional), ESL students at all levels should be required to read ample amounts of books accompanied with writing instruction.
Though I still believe in the power of books, all the debates surrounding this subject and the histories that Horner and Parker describe, show me that I do not have the answers.
As for at what age is one literate, in my last year of college, as an education major, I was a student teacher in a self-contained first grade class. Most of the students were not able to even identify all of the letters of the alphabet, let alone read. One child, D, could write his name but could not spell it as he was not able to identify any letter of the alphabet by name. He was seven, repeating first grade, and had behavior issues. Though D is able to sit on the rug for story time, understand what is being read and even answer and ask questions, that is not enough. He is not literate. While I hope that things have improved for him since I last saw him less than a year ago, D’s chance of achieving the type of literacy that will allow him to fully participate in this society, to be qualified for a skills required occupation, to be a producer and not just a consumer, is slim.
Meet Boo, not her real name. She is now seven, but in this video, she is four years old. At four years old, is she literate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp3OZJirFGE
Iris
ReplyDeleteMy only response to this interpretation is to agree that perhaps you (and even I) may not have all the answers - it seems your view of literacy might be a bit narrow. I've known several people in my life who could not read or write but were, in their own ways, brilliant; capable of doing things I could not do and living decent lives. Someone who was once very close to me couldn't read or write but could build houses! In fact, he made a bathroom for me in my family's semi-finished basement. Builders/construction workers can make a lot of money doing what they do. Was he the richest man in the world, no, but he ALWAYS had (has) work where my literate self has been unemployed 3 times in the last ten years! Would that I could know how to build a house! :D
Sofia
Sarah, that same part from Fox came to mind when I was reading Rhode-Elise's post. And my brain hurts, too.
I think part of the difficulty in defining literacy is the underlying assumption that it is somehow a fixed, final thing that a person can have or acquire. Since being in this program, I've begun to think of it more in terms a situational thing, something that we have or practice in specific situations (this is the social practices model, or the New Literacies approach that Gee discusses and Webb-Sunderhaus described, I think). For exampe, I'm literate in this school-based context and can process and comprehend and write about, sometimes with quite a bit of effort, complex scholarly work. It's a good thing, because I need to be able to do this for my job but also because it's personally fulfilling. Clearly, though, this is not the type of literacy that everyone needs to practice.
In Iris' example of the carpenter, while he might not have been able to read or writen in most senses, he probably practiced some level of literacy in terms of being able to read product labels for building materials, blueprints or project plans (even if these were visual). Maybe this also counts as literacy? So, maybe we need the type of literacy demanded by whatever situation we're in. And back to Sarah's point about equating literacy with humanness -- as a society, do we privilege some literacies, and thus some humans or professions, over others? I think we do.
And what I find really brain-pain-inducing is thinking about whether or not there is some basic level of literacy that is necessary to function in the world -- and how to define as well as support/develop it. In terms of combatting disenfranchisement, like Rhode-Elise spoke about, is there a level of literacy that all people need as members of this particular society? What happens when you don't have it? And in terms of participating in the world -- politically, socially, culturally rather than professionally -- is there a level of literacy that all people need?
Sofia
Rhode-Elise St. Jacques
Iris,
I do not equate literacy, or the ability to read and write, with cognitive ability. I don't even argue that reading and writing is necessary for every civilization. Literacy is vital in the American society and a lack of it can make life very difficult. Also, I don't think the purpose of literacy is to make everyone rich.
Ivan Lerner
Is young Boo, as delightful as she is, literate? Perhaps not in a way to textually analyze Dr. King's speech, but enough to sense that it is "important" to the people around her (perhaps that's why she's so exhuberant at the end?). I'm sure she can read at her "level" (I'm not an expert on four-year-olds, but she was able to speak the words written wiith speed), and can navigate the texts a four-year-old is supposed to in North America (on average).