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#