Author: Pag

By the end of this post you will see fairly apparently that I really, really, really enjoyed the Fish article. Firstly, Fish makes a number of apt criticisms on the assumptions people make with regards to the way people are taught to write. My favorite was his subtle mockery of the notion that somehow reading the “classics” over and over again would somehow teach people how to write sufficiently well as if by means of osmosis or absorption. I find this to be especially true because I have always considered writing my personal strong suit, but somehow simultaneously always managed to fall asleep in 7th grade Lit classes.

However, I found the strongest point made to be the one regarding whether or not it is “correct” to teach grammar in a universal fashion. Fish acknowledges that while the notion of a fundamentally more correct way of speaking/writing is inherently discriminatory, it does not follow that we should abandon any hope of a universal standard of teaching grammar. He argues that this truth actually makes a strong case for adopting such standards, not a weaker one.

Fish writes: “You’re not going to be able to change the world if you are not equipped with the tools that speak to its present condition. You don’t strike a blow against a power structure by making yourself vulnerable to its prejudices.” Basically, if you want to defeat your enemy, you have to be able to at least communicate in their terms, and principled abstention from the already existing processes won’t do any good for anyone who hopes to reform it.

What do you think? Is the idea of a universal standard of teaching so inherently discriminatory that we should abstain from even propagating it, or do “the ends justify the means” in this sense?

I didn’t quite know what to expect from the Ito article when I first read the title. Part of me expected a sort of dry, academic piece on “kids and the media” viewed from the lens of someone who sort of understands but still misses the mark. Suffice to say I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed the section on “Geeking Out”, which is the type of new media engagement defined by Ito as “…an intense commitment to or engagement with media or technology, often one particular media property, genre, or type of technology.”

I would say this sort of behavior describes much of my childhood through adolescence: I would find some sort of community (gaming, politics, and the vast expanses of YouTube channels to name a few), attach myself to it, and learn as much as I could related to that subject. While someone from any other generation would likely look at this behavior of being glued to your computer screen as a purely negative thing, I can’t help but look back on those communities fondly and think that they were largely responsible for shaping my interests and personality as an adult today. I learned how to become an expert in a field (given one of little relative consequence) and from there, I developed larger obsessions that still carry on to this day.

Ultimately, I feel as though  the rapid and frequent process of large sums of information via “geeking out” is surely defined as literary activity, and the interactive portion only confounds this, and is a reflection of how “new media” is affecting our literacy capacities later in life.

My question then is this: How much of your childhood was spent “Geeking out” in online communities, and how do you think it has impacted the way you view and utilize literacy today?

Much of what we understand about the current state of the world at the time we are living in it is often taken for granted, or assumed that this was always the case without giving it much thought, even if we know its not the case, we often forget. I believe Resnick’s article on the history of literacy (as well as this class in general) touches on that nicely. Literacy has had an interesting development over the years, starting as an almost homer-like memorizing of certain stories via text for the sheer purpose of reciting and moving to a more “sophisticated” tool applicable to only an privileged few.

The article seems to conclude that there is somewhat of a disparity between our current institutional understanding of literacy, i.e. “functional literacy” and the fact that the needs of the everyday American worker from this point of few are exceeding what is current emphasized/actually provided (especially among school districts)

My question is then: Do we, as a society, need to redefine/refocus our understanding of literacy to one that provides a more holistic benefit (critical thinking, etc) or one that emphasizes the more basic skills we often take for granted?

I found last week’s reading by Akinnaso on how the context in which someone develops Literacy affects them and how sometimes it may even isolate one from their surroundings if is not already perceived as a cultural norm or ideal. Akinnasso mentions “becoming literate in a non-literate society”, and how this affected him. He also mentions how the questions he received from his father with regards to the Youruba people and how it could be the case that they would not be written in the Bible if they were active worshippers of the Christian Deity. Akinasso quips that he wished he could explain to his father at the time that every culture has its creation mythos and how this varies based on the times they were conceived.

That seemed very awkward to me. Not awkward in the way that it was written but awkward in the sense that it divides father and son in the way that it does. Between “literate” and non-literate individuals, value systems seem to change. It got me thinking about literacy as a cultural norm in our society versus others that do not value it in the sort of high-minded manner we do. I’m wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience to Akinasso in the sense that the more knowledgable they became via literacy, maybe it isolated them from family members?

I really enjoyed Delpit’s piece on language diversity and the notion that someone’s race can influence the way a person speaks. Race, as Delpit notes, is also highly correlative with a person’s socioeconomic class/background. African-Americans and Latinos, for example, are disproportionately located among lower-income neighborhoods and thus school-systems. As the little boy in the beginning of the passage notes, there is a communicative dissonance between members of these “inner-city” communities, as we refer to them and those who “talk white” (even perceivable by children!).  Now, this seems obvious to most people who are not completely sheltered (much like those from my hometown) but it raises an interesting question: Is there a “correct” way to speak?

What I mean by “correct” is not necessarily “best” or “optimal”, and certainly not “most intelligent” but simply right by objective standards and rules of a language i.e. certain pronouns correspond to certain groups in English like “he”, “she”, “they”, etc. Does it matter if someone who talks “white” and someone who does not are able to nonetheless have a conversation and communicate with the same ease as two people who engage in the same dialect, as Delpit defines it? Curious as to what everyone here thinks on this matter, given most of us share in a relatively diverse series of backgrounds and experiences, and as such may have different experiences with different “dialects’, as it were.

I also am aware I use a frustrating amount of “quotations” in my writing, thank you ahead of time for bearing with me on that.

My fondest memory involving “literacy” (or at least as we have attempted to loosely define it in our class discussions) was actually not so much from my childhood but was around a year ago. I was studying abroad in London and strange enough, what affected me most culturally speaking when I was living there was not so much the accents or the architecture or the people (though I loved all of these things), but instead, it was books. Almost everyone over there reads at least somewhat casually, and they do this all..the..time.

As such, I found a new appreciation for reading as an intrinsically worthwhile activity; I started reading a lot of relatively dense literature (most of it philosophy) that I would normally only read in a classroom setting. I wanted to see if I could read it without having someone more knowledgable than me pointing to which parts “mattered”, per se.

I picked up a book called “Meditations” by Marcus Aurellius and without carrying on for too much longer in this post, it truly changed my life. It was the first time in recent memory where I had read something not just attention grabbing or well-written, but almost absurdly practical for my everyday life. I always considered my self “good” at reading (whatever that means) but for the first time in a long time, I was doing it for me.

Though somewhat late in to the game in my life, that moment has sharply and powerfully molded my perspective on what literacy “is for”… Yes, some things are worth reading because they are well-written. Others simply because its important to know them as “citizens” or “humans”. And yes, some things are just plain fun to read. However, in my view, it is the passages, books, etc. that directly mold you and improve you as a person that make literacy truly worth it.