What is literacy?
Defining literacy is problematic in itself because there are a plethora of definitions to the meaning of literacy depending on who is asked, which I have discovered by reading various critics. The Webster dictionary states that literacy: is knowing how to read and write. I define literacy as not only knowing how to read and write, but being able to articulate what one reads and writes as one continues to gain knowledge and navigates in multiple societies. Robert Yagelski discuss the complexities of literacy by citing that students need to be able to “understand how language, especially written language, functions in different rhetorical, cultural, and social contexts” . . . and that this understanding may be different then the literacy they bring to the classroom, thereby causing students to feel like they are navigating through a maze of theories and a cultural society they are unfamiliar with or understand (31).
As I study the concepts of multigenre and multimodal writing my research has led me to search out such critics as Shirley Brice Heath, Brian Street, Carey Jewitt, Gunther Kress, and Theo Van Leeuwen. These critics discuss how one’s culture, ethnic background, educational opportunities, and social involvement impact an individual’s journey in literacy, as well. Heath and Street explore communities to see how the people communicate and navigate in their societies, all the while cognizant that being involved with the society may well change how the people communicate. Thereby imprinting their forms of literacy on said community and altering the community’s literacy path. By this I mean that one cannot help bringing one’s own literacy footprint into a community, even if briefly, hence altering how that community views their idea of learning and writing.
For example, in Oakland, California Yagelski states that “Ebonics” was accepted as a language in a local high school. The nation was in an uproar over allowing an African American community to have an official language that defined them. This was counter to the standard approved “English Language.” Even I, at the time, was appalled by the thought that we as an articulate nation would allow an obscure dialect to exist in a forward thinking society. What was their reasoning? I felt like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, shouting—“Off with their heads!” With that said, I did not search out the reasoning behind “Ebonics” because it did not pertain to me or my children’s literacy. But now as I am doing my grad work in teaching of writing, the various forms of literacy learned through one’s culture, ethnic background and educational opportunities is very important, so a second look at Ebonics to gain a better understanding of that society’s literary path may well be worth investigating.
Both Peter Roberts and Robert Yagelski bring to light interesting questions and problems with defining literacy. Ones that I had not considered until I took a class in Native American literature, and understood the damage that “whites” perpetuated against a society by having the audacity to inflict their perception of culture and literacy on another race. Not all the theories proposed by Roberts and Yagelski were discussed in my class but I have to say I did not consider any these ideas at all before the Native American Literature class, I just merrily road the “standard English language” path to literacy, without looking at the consequences that “standardizing” literacy may have on different cultures and/or societies.
Theresa,
ReplyDeleteI am not a fan of the way commenting is set up here, I feel as though I'm invading your privacy or playing teacher here by editing your post, but I couldn't resist considering the nature of your comment. Anyway, I feel like I can really relate to what Yagelski is saying in his piece, because I have watched literacy be gendered in its infiltration of academia by observing the sheer numbers in my own writing classes. There are never as many men as there are women in them. Specifically, on page 27, here refers to how the idea of his happily married sisters were, in essence a part of their own literary identities, but as some feminists would say, they were also forced back into the box. They were actively participating in their own literate education as wives and mothers, but they were reading texts that were specifically designed to educate the female masses on how to marry well. This went over well with his parents, because they were conventional in their education, it was considered institutionally proper for them to be interested in that text.
Make no mistake, I'm a huge Austin fan, but his point about how this was also a mechanism by which they were limited, is right on and I would argue Austin may agree. This is just an example of the many contradictions that literacy and the political and cultural underpinnings it has, that are present within the inherent power in its formation over time. I think one theorist that stands out as I read through this text is Edward Said and his coining the “self and the other” You have an identity that society creates which simultaneously attempts to coexist with the other that is inherently felt in a woman's, African American's, Native American's, Mexican American's, or anything that is other than an “anglo” American (if that's a term) identity. As a kid, even though his social status and race seemed to fall in line, his geekiness made him feel as though he didn't fit, that's the otherness Said refers to in Orientalism. Yagelski had a perpetual comparison making is otherness even more obvious to himself and his family members.
The reason I was drawn to your post Theresa, is because of the Native American aspect of the subject, and how a Westernized culture was forced upon them. We seen this evidence in the novel Ceremony in Bernie's class. I don't think I truly understood the brevity of what our Native brothers and sisters were subjected to, until I read that text. Tayo could possibly be said to be illiterate, but he was exposed to many Native rituals and ceremonies that made him perfectly literate in a culture that I am totally illiterate to. The relics that were utilized are multimodal artifacts that help his people tell a story. Thinking about this, and about the question that Dr. Tucker raised at the end of class made me think, are Tayo's people literate, and if so how? I think they are. I think he was quite literate of a world I would need much education about to understand. Would state standards consider Old Betonie literate? Probably not, because he doesn't quite fit the definition that the state maintains as literate, but he certainly fits Yagelski's. When you mentioned the Natives, it made me reconsider what I feel to be literate, because I think we've all been educated and constructed to think that only reading makes one literate, but now I see that possessing knowledge that is helpful to one or even a group of people makes one very literate. Anytime a person can educate another of something previously unknown, means that knowledge is being shared and passed on to others. If that's not literacy, I don't know what is