Uses of Literacy

This question is posed in two parts. First, do you think it is possible to categorize literacy as learning stages? In development, there are so many facets of one’s life that are broken down into milestones which should be met in other to prove normal progression. Do you believe that learning to be literate has milestones such as these? Do children develop literacy skills or is each new skill separate from one another. Secondly, if you believe there are stages, what do you find the most crucial to be. Do stages allow for one to decide if someone is literate or not?

Thank you!

For my blog post, I am drawing from the Deborah Brandt reading, Sponsors of Literacy. I was particularly interested in the case of Dwayne Lowery. This man, who had no formal education beyond high school, went from a floor laborer in an automobile factory to a field staff representative in his local labor union only to be forced into early retirement when his job was replaced by a young college educated person.

This case is interesting to me because during this man’s career, a transformation of  important literacy skills occurred. The bargaining skills that were part of Mr. Lowery’s success as a union representative began to be outweighed by the  “essayist literacy” skills of the college graduates who replaced him and people like him. This change of literacy was a result of the increasingly levels of literacy, and the competitive advantage this brought, between union reps and the attorneys those reps negotiated with

In the state of the modern union, the years of experience and literacy skills developed by Mr. Lowery were not enough to for him to keep his job. I would like to for discussion, the perceived value of Mr. Lowery’s literacy skills. Would, by today’s standards, Mr. Lowery’s skills still be considered useful? I would also like to explore what brought upon those literary transformations. In the same vain, what kind of lessons can be learned from Mr. Lowery’s experience. Are there ways to predict and better prepare for literacy transformations like those experienced by Mr. Lowery?

 

My father is a very religious man. He is of Irish descent, and as a child was steeped in Roman Catholic tradition and culture. A few years ago, we were both reading in the same room, and I glanced over to see what he was reading… As it turns out, it was the Bible. I was slightly surprised; sure, I knew my dad was religious, but to me the idea of wading through a religious work such as the Bible is a daunting, and generally undesirable, expenditure.

I was genuinely curious as to why he was reading through it, so I asked! His answer was simple; he enjoyed it. He likes reading through the Bible just as much as I like reading a novel by Crichton or King. This intrigued me… I wanted to understand where his love for reading such religious works came from. I inquired more, and he explained to me that he was primarily exposed to religious works from a very young age due to his upbringing. His parents impressed upon him the importance of religious (specifically Catholic) literacy, and consequently, he became an avid reader of such literary works.

I reflected upon what he had said for a while. In essence, the religious culture that my grandparents impressed upon my father sculpted his literary proclivities for the rest of his life. Thinking back to my younger years, I wonder if my love for books such as those written by Stephen King or Michael Crichton derives its genesis from my parents enforcing certain beliefs upon me, whether it is a love that I created on my own, or if it is a healthy mix of the two… But I suppose I never will truly know!

On Thursday’s we discussed Sylvia Scribner’s three metaphors for literacy, which were, “literacy as adaptation, literacy as power, and literacy as a state of grace.” A short, easily understood explanation of these three ideas is that literacy is defined by functionality, power, and the status a society gives to the idea. Scribner says that these metaphors can not stand on their own, and must be said all together in order to give a complete definition of literacy, but for the sake of this discussion we can look at them separately.

As college students, we are in a different place in our lives than most. In the classroom we surpass functional language, and literature, and have moved onto theoretical ideas. We are on the verge of using our literacy as power, but can be stopped by our age and the time and place we are currently in. Lastly, we all believe that we are the elite of the gracefully literate because the emphasis our society puts on literacy and college education, but are we? If we think about each of these ideas, what is the literacy metaphor that is or should be the most relevant to us, right now? Does this change with age in our culture? Where will the relevance be after graduation? Am I correct in the statements I have made?

My most fond memory of literacy is when I started to actually appreciate it. In middle school, there were plenty of programs that promoted the development of reading and writing, and I hated 95% of them. It was not until I found a book that I adored, that I actually understood the emphasis the school was placing on these topics. Shamefully, this book is titled My Teacher is an Alien, and, needless to say, does not have very dense subject matter, but I guess one has to start somewhere. I will never forget that silly book, nor will I forget how meaningful literacy is, especially in our society.

The first memory of literacy that came to mind when we were assigned this post was my freshman year journal. Since middle school, watching my brother leave for college, I was always envious of all he was learning there. So when I first arrived to Pitt in fall 2013, I was so excited to take in all that this school could offer me, educationally but even more so socially. I grew up in a very sheltered environment and never really got to find my own interests and meet too many people so coming to this massive school surrounded by culture was just what I wanted. I began to write in a journal of everything I was learning and seeing, knowing that I would want to preserve the memory of that precious year. Now that I look back to it, I can really sense different things I was feeling at the time and see myself grow over the course of the year in the ways I thought about things. When I first started, it felt odd and a little forced, but now I am very happy to have this log of my first year.

From the age of 6 my parents (like most parents I assume) urged me to read daily. My mother always says that she learned most of her English from reading each day! While I listened to their advice and read a lot, I do not think I grew to love reading until about middle school. It was not the middle school reading curriculum that caught my interest but instead it was the oh-so-hot series’ that came out at the time. Twilight, novels by Sarah Dessen, and Harry Potter (even though I never read the Potter books) were all anyone could talk about in the cafeteria and I think being apart of book pop culture or frankly any pop culture was important to me.  I can still picture large novels being glued to my hand each, Rory Gilmore style, so that I would never be left with nothing to do. I have since cracked open a few of those books and I can not help but laugh of what I once thought was literary genius. After studying adolescence more in college I think that my avid reading can be deemed a positive result of the need to ‘fit-in’.  Even though I do not get to read much for leisure now I often find myself connecting with students in college about books that we raved over in middle school.

My literacy memory is actually from this past Christmas break. After a few days of lounging around at home doing absolutely nothing, I found myself craving to read any book other than a textbook. My younger brother was working his way through the ‘Eragon’ series for the first time, so I decided to revisit that series as well! The last time I had read through the ‘Eragon’ was six or seven years ago, so I was curious to see how I would experience it differently this time around.

After finishing the series, I noticed quite a few differences in how I perceived the books. During my first read-through, I distinctly remember encountering words that were not in my vocabulary, which I had to either look up or rely on context clues to figure out. This time, however, I was able to make my way through the entire series without any vocabulary stumbles. In addition, the manner in which the author, Christopher Paolini, wrote now seems somewhat bulky. I remember thinking that his language and sentence flow was phenomenal back when I was younger, but after being exposed to a much larger reserve of literature, I can see that Paolini’s writing style is far from impeccable.

These were just two of the many differences I noticed on my second read-through of this particular series. It astounded me to see how my perception of an entire set of books could be augmented in such a way over a period of only a few years. I think that this instance is a solid exemplar of how literacy evolves with us as we are exposed to more and more sources of literature. It also makes me wonder if I would experience other books from my younger years, e.g. the Harry Potter series, in a different fashion as well, or if this is just a singular, specific case…

My memory of literacy just occurred over my winter break in between semesters. Despite the fact that it was a very short break, I found myself very bored at home and wanting something to do. So, I began to thumb through old projects from elementary and kindergarten school days. I began laughing to myself at such the weird things I wrote and how they did not make any sense at all. For example, there was a simple sheet from kindergarten that was just a list of my favorite things (food, music, hobbies, and so forth). Considering the fact I was very young, I wrote some things down that did not make any sense at all. For example, as my favorite sport, I wrote ‘Suker.” If you couldn’t decipher at what I was trying to say, it was “soccer.”

The idea of how we develop into literate beings caught my attention when I was reading this. It just perplexes me as to how we can develop our minds and mental ability to become literate beings. Returning to the ideas of the class discussions, I am curious as to whether literacy is learned better from a classroom setting or just the surrounding environment and the places kids grow up in. I have never really thought about it, but the word literacy is a lot more than it seems.

One of my earliest memories of literacy is from kindergarten.  In the morning every day, we had to write a sentence describing a picture that we were given.  One day after school, I asked my mom about commas in a book she was reading to me, and she explained that they indicated a pause in a sentence.  From that point on, I thought commas were really exciting and proceeded to use them in all of my morning sentences.  Later, I learned what apostrophes were and they were equally exciting!  I eventually found out that you can’t just use apostrophes and commas whenever you want, and that was pretty disappointing.  Even today, I have a tendency to overuse commas and I think it stems from that initial excitement I had about them back in kindergarten.