Examining the Transformation of Literacy-It's a Never Ending Process

This week I have been reading Myers' Changing our Minds: Negotiating English and Literacy. I was really surprised by the vignette in chapter four of this book. Illiterate factory workers (early to mid 1800s) paid literate people $.25 to $.50 to a week to read aloud to them during working hours. I thought this was a fantastic idea and was immediately thinking of some places that even could use that today. (My own county's illiteracy rate is about 40%!) I was shocked when I read further and realized the factory owners put an end to this practice (for reasons unknown to me)! Why wouldn't you want your workers to be literate? Perhaps, there is something the owners didn't want the workers to know or understand?!? Could it have been a case of workers beginning to question authority?

I am amazed to read about the how the history of literacy has evolved over time. Families began to leave the home to work, first the father in search of a factory job, rather than just depending on a family farm. During what is referred to as the "signature and recording literature" period, ". . . schools taught student the alphabet and 'moral' behavior, but the basic introduction of young people to culture-to knowing about the world-was typically employed in or near the home and who taught their children discipline, the Bible, national culture, and some information about the world" (Myers, 1996, p. 63). Could this be considered an early form of family literacy?

Recitation literacy became prominent next. During this particular "literacy phase," children were required to memorize certain assigned pieces and often punished for errors. The teachers demanded respect from their students. According to Myers, the students were also expected to "toe-the-line" which meant that children literally stood on a line (correct posture and motionless) and read aloud. (This is where the commonly used phrase originates.) (p. 64). Sadly, ". . . one's intelligence was determined by how many written materials one could recite" (Myers, 1996, p. 66). Apparently you were in big trouble if you had difficulties memorizing things!!

Critics began to complain about the ". . . meaninglessness of recitations. . . " which began a change over towards learning to read "unfamiliar, unannounced materials using a new 'scientific' approach to reading" (Myers, 1996, p. 76). It was believed that ". . . defin[ing] English for 'all' students as sequential reading skills, grammar skills, and some the 'basic' cultural information usually found in literature" (Myers, 1996, p.84).

As the need for measurable student assessment became greater, eventually multiple-choice items, machine scoring and standardized tests came into the educational picture. Although there was (and still is) much debate over this type of assessment, it really doesn't seem like much has changed since this was implemented at the recommendation of Ellwood P. Cubberly. Cubberly saw the schools operating best as a "school-factory system," despite how others argued against his ideas (Myers, 1996, p. 95).

Included is a link to how critics and scholars, like John Taylor Gatto, have dealt with assessment in a more student-oriented way and steered clear of the "school-factory system". This is an excellent example of how teachers who go above and beyond can indeed, ". . . aim for a new standard of literacy for all students and that this new standard, like the others from the past, results from a convergence of new insights into texts, new models of learning, and new national needs. . . " (Myers, 1996, p. 117). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26DvPQ7EIQ4&feature=player_embedded#

Literacy is more than something ". . . solely located in people's heads as cognition" (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 20)

As I began to delve into Barton & Hamilton's Local Literacies, I find myself thinking about a much deeper meaning of "literacy." "Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text" (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 3). It is so interesting to see the different ways that ordinary people rely on and use literacy in everyday lives. So much of these literacy activities, we literate adults, take for granted.

This book has caused me to stop and analyze how much I use literacy in my own life, besides what I think of as more formalized reading and writing. Ironically, I never really thought of breaking down the different types of literacy we use in this world. Clearly different situations render different types of literacies. I don't talk the same at home as I do at work or when I am teaching. My use of "home literacy" is more relaxed, but often times I find myself modeling "proper literacy" examples to my own children. I definitely have a more formalized way of speaking, reading and writing while I am teaching or in class myself. ". . . literacies are coherent configurations of literacy practices; often these sets of practices are identifiable and named, as in academic literacy or work-place literacy, and they are associated with particular aspects of cultural life" (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 9).

It amazes me how the definitions of what it means to be a good writer has changed since the beginning of the early nineteenth century. It seems that the focus was more on the proper writing utensil positions as opposed to the quality, creativity and content of the actual writing. I cannot imagine being hit for not properly holding my pen! (Boy if that doesn't stifle creativity and motivation, I don't know what would!!)

It is hard for me to imagine what life would be like without the ability to read or write. Yet I have students who have just that problem. These adult students are what I refer to as "excellent pretenders" who are able to fool the world into thinking they are perfectly literate adults functioning in a high tech. world. I am baffled as to how they write grocery lists, read recipes, fill out applications, read prescriptions, follow written medical instructions, help with children's homework, etc. usually without letting the rest of the world know their secrets. (Sometimes their own families have been fooled!)

Local Literacies is definitely providing a unique lens into viewing reading and writing in our everyday lives!

Writing NOT as Important as Reading???--I DON'T Think So!

I find it ironic that reading and writing are so intermingled, yet they are often still looked at as separate subjects in our American schools. It seems to me that one does not exist without the other. Monaghan & Saul's article, "The Reader, The Scribe, The Thinker: A Critical Look at the History of American Reading and Writing Instruction" discusses the way reading and writing have evolved over the course of our educational history. It is amazing how writing for girls was not as important as sewing in the early days (1640s) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I guess home is where the girls stayed and education was only for the males, unless you were of a high social status.

Defining writing is not an easy task. It seems that reading is much easier to define with its many various subcategories and therefore ". . . reading has been and continues to be clearly defined and therefore better able to define itself and its assumptions tot he pedagogical community at large" (Monaghon & Saul, 1987, p., 91).

When I read, " in most contemporary classrooms, composition is still deferred until reading instruction is well under way" (Monaghan & Saul, 1987, p. 87), it made me think of how very young children (even under age 2) will grab a crayon or whatever they can get their little fingers on to "write" something somewhere even walls (and believe me they can tell you exactly what they wrote about). They young children do not grab a book and start reading; although they make some really good attempts at it. (They will pick up a book and start babbling about its pictures and tell the story that way, but they really want to write.) So why do we wait to introduce writing?

Monaghan & Saul talk about reading as a receptive skill and writing is more of a productive skill. Although I agree that writing seems to be more productive on the surface, I think of reading as having the potential of engaging an active reader. To me, receptive skill sounds more like you are a passive reader. Even if you are listening to a story, there are plenty of opportunities to take an active part in the story.

I was somewhat offended by the information about how basal reader publishers are expanding the teachers' manuals in an effort to combat what they feel is a problem that teachers know less and less even though they have had more and more training. I can remember my own new whole language teaching manual having actual sentences that were to be recited by the teacher. Wow-what nerve!!

To end on a better note, I liked the idea of the school in Chicago that allowed children to create their own stories for instruction. I wonder how long this idea lasted. It seems like the students would really benefit from it, especially since it was so student oriented. I wonder what the negative sides to this would be, assuming there must have been some or it would used more frequently today.

A Colloquium Visit & Writing as a Way to Preserve Knowledge

I attended my first colloquium on Feb. 1. It actually seemed pretty "friendly" despite all the pressures. The thought of it seemed very scary, but the audience was very supportive during the process. The questions asked did not seem to harsh. The presenter was an assistant professor of early childhood education in a southern state. Her work in early childhood education includes using the visual arts in the classroom on a regular basis. Her study that she reported on included the use of an actual artist within the classroom and the impacts that it had on both the students and teachers involved. She reported using small groups; extended work time; non-traditional art media such as India ink; art viewing and targeted aims that related to artistic skills and dispositions. She says that a teacher should know their students at a deep level. Another point she made is that she feels you should not tell people what to think; rather, tell people how to think. Overall, she was a very enthusiastic, dynamic educator with an impressive presentation.

Bazerman and Rogers' "Writing and Secular Knowledge Outside Modern European Institutions" was an interesting look at the history of the invention of writing. It is amazing to me how the world has found writing as a means to record knowledge referred to as ". . . concepts and information shared with other people. . . " (Bazerman & Rogers, p. 143). Early writing uses include recording secular knowledge and knowledge about particular laws of a region. Reading about how only the elite, wealthy, educated (especially male) people had access to print makes me think how luckily we are to have the freedom to read what we wish (for the most part!). If only illiterate individuals would begin to realize the power of literacy and its potential to unlock doors. What a privilege to be able to read what others (themselves included) have written!

I found it rather fascinating that "in Vedas, education was defined as the transmission of life from life to life: 'Every literary man of ancient Indian was himself a living library, so to speak each man a book' (Mookerji, 1969, p. 78)" (Bazerman & Rogers, 2008, p. 148). What a great way to look at the knowledge of man. . . perhaps we should interview and record more elderly people's stories in our world today before it is too late to hear their stories. There's probably a lot of interesting, historical information to be written!

This also makes me wonder how certain publications came to be so popular and survive for long periods of time, compared to others that did not seem to withstand the hands of time. Some are reportedly still being used today such as the Bible, farmer's calendars and even Needham's Science and Civilization. Certainly writing has evolved over time and still continues to serve as a way to share information across the world.