" Rates of literacy in the United States depend on which of the various definitions of literacy is used."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
"According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. That's 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html
"Millions of adults living in the United States struggle with basic literacy skills. Literacy Partners believes that literacy is more than just reading and writing: literacy encompasses technological skills, as well as knowledge of health and personal finances."
http://www.literacypartners.org/literacy-in-america
Blogs, Syndicated
The Myth of the Myth…is it a myth?
by LunchTimeRandom •
" Rates of literacy in the United States depend on which of the various definitions of literacy is used."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
"According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. That's 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html
"Millions of adults living in the United States struggle with basic literacy skills. Literacy Partners believes that literacy is more than just reading and writing: literacy encompasses technological skills, as well as knowledge of health and personal finances."
http://www.literacypartners.org/literacy-in-america
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
"According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. That's 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html
"Millions of adults living in the United States struggle with basic literacy skills. Literacy Partners believes that literacy is more than just reading and writing: literacy encompasses technological skills, as well as knowledge of health and personal finances."
http://www.literacypartners.org/literacy-in-america
Blogs, Syndicated
Marked Literacy
by ahaydon1 •
“For literacy, as I hope to demonstrate, is the emblem that links racial alienation with economic alienation” (Gates, 6).
While reading the article”Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes” by Henry Louis Gates Jr., I found myself captivated by this sentence. I had never thought of literacy as a tool of oppression. However, I found myself agreeing with Gates’ analysis of how Western colonization and it’s influence on literary infrastructures and practices (even those exposed to these practices) perpetuated oppressive societal norms towards African-American’s. Not only this, but when Black writers did start emerging into the literary sphere, they were pushing against a societal ideology that essentially stripped African-American’s of their humanity. Gates states that “Blacks were ‘reasonable,’ and hence ‘men,’ if –and only if–they demonstrated mastery of ‘the arts and sciences,’ the eighteenth century’s formula for writing. So, while the Enlightenment is characterized by its foundation on man’s ability to reason, it simultaneously used the absences and presence of reason to delimit and circumscribe the very humanity of the cultures and people of color which Europeans had been ‘discovering’ since the Renaissance” (8). Literacy had become a tool to determine who held the ability to ‘reason’, and thus could be considered a human being.
As I continue to work through these articles each week, I find myself appreciating more and more the idea that we can not focus on literacy as just the ability to “read and write”, as this definition excludes so many important external factors (such as cultural, socioeconomic, religious, etc.) that play into our everyday literary practices. I have also found myself thinking about how we still use literacy within social hierarchies, power structures, class systems, and essentially to determine who “know’s” more. Will we ever be able to move past this idea that “if you can’t ‘read and write’ you can’t excel in life”? Is literacy the true culprit of the ever growing economic gap? How do we, as future educators, create new literary infrastructures that both inform our students of the past, but also prepares them for the future?
Blogs, Syndicated
Thinking Thoughts We Forgot To Think About
by LunchTimeRandom •
Little side note as I feel all of everything from this semester is blending together, but in Fosen’s class we just read Nelson’s “Reading Classrooms as Text”, which I find helpful as a student. It also makes me question if I am reading this classroom right and what we are to blog about. Initially I had the urge to just regurgitate the information, but I feel like sometimes in doing that, I don’t really remember the material than if I find how that reading is applicable to my classrooms or life in general. So, in saying that I will do a bit of both regurgitation and application, though I am still feeling out the dynamic of the class, so not sure what path I am on yet.
So we start with the myth that being literate is the key to being financially and socially successful, but that is not that case. Majority of social inequality stems from, “Class, ethnicity, race, and gender” (Graff, 641). If this is the case than the idea of being successful does not wholly require you to be literate. Though, as we mentioned in class, is there not some form of literacy that needs to be achieved, ie: reading signs, symbols, etc.? Which brings us back to where we started in what do we consider “literacy”. Jonny brought up in class a great point last week when he spoke about his culture and how his culture did not need the same literacy we in our American culture did. They could communicate with stories and spoken words, but his family understood the importance of an “American education” and the need to be “literate” to succeed. His culture has a different view on what success is and how being literate applies. As we see in in “Literacy Myth at Thirty”, it seems to be the culture that makes a person successful, not being literate in the “American” sense..
Case in point is, “Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes”. There are great points mentioned that literacy has become a tool to oppress others. In using literacy that way, it was an excuse to feel both superior while continuing to make others feel inferior, contributing to the continuing bias of those who were “illiterate” or “incapable” of formal writing. In a way do we not still do that? In no child left behind, it promised to keep everyone on the same page, but if you spoke a second language and your writing was weak, you were not set up for success, but rather “weeded out” for your “illiteracy”. We will always find a way to use literature (not necessarily education, as Dani pointed out in her notes, both have been used to oppress others, but we are using literacy as a separate variable) to benefit those who have already the benefit of being a fluent speaker and writer. Just as we as a society will always use whatever means we can to find superiority.
To continue this argument beyond the reading, as teachers, do we then find ourselves forgetting the legacy of other cultures and pushing things like grammar and well-structured sentences and forget what it is the students are really saying? Do we push so hard for this “literacy” that we forget to look beyond that and look for what is really being said? And in saying that, if we let loose on the grammar and sentence structure, etc, do we lose value in what literacy really is? Or maybe, just maybe, I myself have no idea what literacy is and am reading the readings wrong. That is a total possibility...
Blogs, Syndicated
Thinking Thoughts We Forgot To Think About
by LunchTimeRandom •
Little side note as I feel all of everything from this semester is blending together, but in Fosen’s class we just read Nelson’s “Reading Classrooms as Text”, which I find helpful as a student. It also makes me question if I am reading this classroom right and what we are to blog about. Initially I had the urge to just regurgitate the information, but I feel like sometimes in doing that, I don’t really remember the material than if I find how that reading is applicable to my classrooms or life in general. So, in saying that I will do a bit of both regurgitation and application, though I am still feeling out the dynamic of the class, so not sure what path I am on yet.
So we start with the myth that being literate is the key to being financially and socially successful, but that is not that case. Majority of social inequality stems from, “Class, ethnicity, race, and gender” (Graff, 641). If this is the case than the idea of being successful does not wholly require you to be literate. Though, as we mentioned in class, is there not some form of literacy that needs to be achieved, ie: reading signs, symbols, etc.? Which brings us back to where we started in what do we consider “literacy”. Jonny brought up in class a great point last week when he spoke about his culture and how his culture did not need the same literacy we in our American culture did. They could communicate with stories and spoken words, but his family understood the importance of an “American education” and the need to be “literate” to succeed. His culture has a different view on what success is and how being literate applies. As we see in in “Literacy Myth at Thirty”, it seems to be the culture that makes a person successful, not being literate in the “American” sense..
Case in point is, “Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes”. There are great points mentioned that literacy has become a tool to oppress others. In using literacy that way, it was an excuse to feel both superior while continuing to make others feel inferior, contributing to the continuing bias of those who were “illiterate” or “incapable” of formal writing. In a way do we not still do that? In no child left behind, it promised to keep everyone on the same page, but if you spoke a second language and your writing was weak, you were not set up for success, but rather “weeded out” for your “illiteracy”. We will always find a way to use literature (not necessarily education, as Dani pointed out in her notes, both have been used to oppress others, but we are using literacy as a separate variable) to benefit those who have already the benefit of being a fluent speaker and writer. Just as we as a society will always use whatever means we can to find superiority.
To continue this argument beyond the reading, as teachers, do we then find ourselves forgetting the legacy of other cultures and pushing things like grammar and well-structured sentences and forget what it is the students are really saying? Do we push so hard for this “literacy” that we forget to look beyond that and look for what is really being said? And in saying that, if we let loose on the grammar and sentence structure, etc, do we lose value in what literacy really is? Or maybe, just maybe, I myself have no idea what literacy is and am reading the readings wrong. That is a total possibility...
Blogs, Syndicated
Thinking Thoughts We Forgot To Think About
by LunchTimeRandom •
Little side note as I feel all of everything from this semester is blending together, but in Fosen’s class we just read Nelson’s “Reading Classrooms as Text”, which I find helpful as a student. It also makes me question if I am reading this classroom right and what we are to blog about. Initially I had the urge to just regurgitate the information, but I feel like sometimes in doing that, I don’t really remember the material than if I find how that reading is applicable to my classrooms or life in general. So, in saying that I will do a bit of both regurgitation and application, though I am still feeling out the dynamic of the class, so not sure what path I am on yet.
So we start with the myth that being literate is the key to being financially and socially successful, but that is not that case. Majority of social inequality stems from, “Class, ethnicity, race, and gender” (Graff, 641). If this is the case than the idea of being successful does not wholly require you to be literate. Though, as we mentioned in class, is there not some form of literacy that needs to be achieved, ie: reading signs, symbols, etc.? Which brings us back to where we started in what do we consider “literacy”. Jonny brought up in class a great point last week when he spoke about his culture and how his culture did not need the same literacy we in our American culture did. They could communicate with stories and spoken words, but his family understood the importance of an “American education” and the need to be “literate” to succeed. His culture has a different view on what success is and how being literate applies. As we see in in “Literacy Myth at Thirty”, it seems to be the culture that makes a person successful, not being literate in the “American” sense..
Case in point is, “Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes”. There are great points mentioned that literacy has become a tool to oppress others. In using literacy that way, it was an excuse to feel both superior while continuing to make others feel inferior, contributing to the continuing bias of those who were “illiterate” or “incapable” of formal writing. In a way do we not still do that? In no child left behind, it promised to keep everyone on the same page, but if you spoke a second language and your writing was weak, you were not set up for success, but rather “weeded out” for your “illiteracy”. We will always find a way to use literature (not necessarily education, as Dani pointed out in her notes, both have been used to oppress others, but we are using literacy as a separate variable) to benefit those who have already the benefit of being a fluent speaker and writer. Just as we as a society will always use whatever means we can to find superiority.
To continue this argument beyond the reading, as teachers, do we then find ourselves forgetting the legacy of other cultures and pushing things like grammar and well-structured sentences and forget what it is the students are really saying? Do we push so hard for this “literacy” that we forget to look beyond that and look for what is really being said? And in saying that, if we let loose on the grammar and sentence structure, etc, do we lose value in what literacy really is? Or maybe, just maybe, I myself have no idea what literacy is and am reading the readings wrong. That is a total possibility...
Blogs, Syndicated
Thinking Thoughts We Forgot To Think About
by LunchTimeRandom •
Little side note as I feel all of everything from this semester is blending together, but in Fosen’s class we just read Nelson’s “Reading Classrooms as Text”, which I find helpful as a student. It also makes me question if I am reading this classroom right and what we are to blog about. Initially I had the urge to just regurgitate the information, but I feel like sometimes in doing that, I don’t really remember the material than if I find how that reading is applicable to my classrooms or life in general. So, in saying that I will do a bit of both regurgitation and application, though I am still feeling out the dynamic of the class, so not sure what path I am on yet.
So we start with the myth that being literate is the key to being financially and socially successful, but that is not that case. Majority of social inequality stems from, “Class, ethnicity, race, and gender” (Graff, 641). If this is the case than the idea of being successful does not wholly require you to be literate. Though, as we mentioned in class, is there not some form of literacy that needs to be achieved, ie: reading signs, symbols, etc.? Which brings us back to where we started in what do we consider “literacy”. Jonny brought up in class a great point last week when he spoke about his culture and how his culture did not need the same literacy we in our American culture did. They could communicate with stories and spoken words, but his family understood the importance of an “American education” and the need to be “literate” to succeed. His culture has a different view on what success is and how being literate applies. As we see in in “Literacy Myth at Thirty”, it seems to be the culture that makes a person successful, not being literate in the “American” sense..
Case in point is, “Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes”. There are great points mentioned that literacy has become a tool to oppress others. In using literacy that way, it was an excuse to feel both superior while continuing to make others feel inferior, contributing to the continuing bias of those who were “illiterate” or “incapable” of formal writing. In a way do we not still do that? In no child left behind, it promised to keep everyone on the same page, but if you spoke a second language and your writing was weak, you were not set up for success, but rather “weeded out” for your “illiteracy”. We will always find a way to use literature (not necessarily education, as Dani pointed out in her notes, both have been used to oppress others, but we are using literacy as a separate variable) to benefit those who have already the benefit of being a fluent speaker and writer. Just as we as a society will always use whatever means we can to find superiority.
To continue this argument beyond the reading, as teachers, do we then find ourselves forgetting the legacy of other cultures and pushing things like grammar and well-structured sentences and forget what it is the students are really saying? Do we push so hard for this “literacy” that we forget to look beyond that and look for what is really being said? And in saying that, if we let loose on the grammar and sentence structure, etc, do we lose value in what literacy really is? Or maybe, just maybe, I myself have no idea what literacy is and am reading the readings wrong. That is a total possibility...
Blogs, Syndicated
And That Upsets Me.
by danifernandez8 •
So I know Kim asked us to stray away from thinking about literacy and its links to schooling, but once again I found myself reading the word “literacy” and thinking about the word “education.” I can’t help it. I see what Graff refers to as these “reductive dichotomies” of oral vs. literate, literate vs. pre-literate, literate vs. illiterate, whatever you want to call it, and I realize that whether you are talking about literacy or education, it all comes down to access (639). Who gets to be literate? Who gets an education? The fact that, even today, the answer to these questions isn’t “anyone” upsets me.
But even if “anyone” has the option/opportunity to become literate/educated, what does that do for people? Like all change, mass literacy/education led to new problems. According to Graff, mass literacy required proper texts, proper tutelage, and proper environments (644). Hence the assumption that “real” learning only happens at school. That “real” learning comes from an approved textbook, which is carefully read under the supervision of a qualified teacher, in a classroom filled with thirty students who are all learning the same thing at the same time. But we know that’s not how learning happens. We know that taking subjects out of context does little to help students learn anything. We know that standardized testing is not proof of individual ability. And yet it feels as though so little has changed in education. And that upsets me.
Graff goes on to say that “school literacy, in particular, is neither unbiased nor the expression of universal norms of reading and writing. It reflects the structures of authority that govern schools and their societies” (645). This (to me) explains some of the biggest problems I have with education today. School literacy reflects the structures of authority that govern schools and their societies. This explains the incredible obsession students have with earning “all the points.” And yet, Graff goes on to say that “there is no single road to developing literacy” and I reply, “tell that to the American public school system” (646). Can you tell this topic upsets me?
Here’s a reason why this discussion of “who gets to [insert privilege here]” upsets me. Last week, I worked with a group of incredible educators from all over the world who were given the opportunity to come to Chico State and participate in a six week program designed to help them make the transition to becoming a “connected educator.” Cool, right? Out of thousands of applicants, these twenty people got to participate in this program. My job was to teach them how to use the tools I use every day (Google Drive, Twitter, WordPress, TED Talks, etc) and show them how to use these tools in their own classrooms back home.
So here’s a question: How do you explain the subtle art of the hashtag to someone who just made their very first gmail account in a class taught the week before?
No, seriously. How? How do I show these highly educated educators how to use tools that are available to them here, but not necessarily available to them back home? How do I teach these people how to be computer literate when they take attendance for their third grade class by hand every day? I left each class feeling a little bit sad. Like I just spent three hours teaching people how to use tools that are out of their reach back home. Once again, it comes back to access. Who gets to…..? The answer still is not “anybody.” And that upsets me.
