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Cultural Literacies won the popular vote, but unfortunately lost.

Cultural Literacies won the popular vote, but unfortunately lost.

Ruben Mendoza

 

Ruben Mendoza

My name is Ruben Mendoza, and I am twenty-seven years old, probably one of the oldest students in our class (Laughing out Loud). This past fall, I transferred to California State University, Chico from De Anza Community College, and became the first person in my family to attend a major University (a huge accomplishment in my opinion). I come from a poverty stricken background, my family’s is considered to have, “ a low socioeconomic status,” and I never had access to education or sponsorship throughout my entire adolescents. Living in an impoverished environment, amid limited access to recourses, and having an unsupportive parent (a single mother), resulted in not graduating high school.

Entering community college, my intentions were to access enough education to pass the GED. However, as I started my academic career in 2009, I slowly started to realize education’s importance and became fascinated in General Education courses, specifically communications and English. As time continued, I became interested in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy.

During our course, my intentions and hopes are to have a concise understanding on how to provide sponsorship to real students, understand their multimodalities and assist them to translate that into written composition. I hope this course provides an essential amount of insight that will develop my skills, and provide the ability, for myself, to really understand composition in a broader and engaging way.

A day in my literate life is reading or responding to emails, reading the New Yorker, College text, and communicating daily through social media to interact with friends or family members. The insight for daily writing is broad and too difficult to simplify the meaning. Writing is a major form of communication in my life, communicating through text messaging, emailing, social media, and my physical weekly planner, is the written culture that partakes in my daily life.

Szwed’s academic journal is relative to Brian Street’s academic journal on Autonomous and Ideological methods of literacy. Understanding writing practices is needed and incorporating ideological methods, students or academic instructors will know the significant impacts by incorporating cultural representation or cultural literacy practices into the educational institution in specific regional areas.

For instance,

  • Szwed argues against providing an autonomous approach to literacy or forcing the educational methods to poverty stricken third world countries, which excludes cultural sensitive material, and reinforces western civilizations methods of standardize-testing, values, and etc. Autonomous defenders believe these methods will provide a “hypothetical” abundance of wealth and potentially increase or enhance an individual’s socioeconomic status. However, studies continue to show that American institutions are failing to meet literacy requirements, which ultimately proves this method is insufficient in providing proper literacy practices to pupils.
  • Szwed’s compelling argument on incorporating an ideological literacy environment, will allow students to become engaged with cultural material, which enhances their chances to succeed in reading and writing.

The article presents an outlook on writing and reading that I have understood for a period of time. And, I do believe that a providing cultural relative curriculum into an institution will enhance student’s capabilities of being focused, engaged, and interested. Allowing creative and diverse material will enhance student’s capabilities and further them in academic success.

I hope everyone enjoys this course and cannot wait to start my internship next week and get the ball rolling!

2 Replies to “Cultural Literacies won the popular vote, but unfortunately lost.”

  1. Ruben! Love the title of the blog. Well played sir. And you do such a great job with the Szwed text and the connections to Street’s work. We should take a moment in class to talk about autonomous and ideological conceptions of literacy: it could be helpful to have these frames as we think about supporting writers.

    I look forward to talking next steps in composition and literacy with you! Grad schools… and all that jazz.

    Thanks again for the thoughtful blog post.
    Kim

  2. Hey Ruben,
    I really enjoyed your post! Of course, being the first to attend an University from your family is a huge accomplishment. You really came a long way and I cannot wait to start working with you this semester once again, and excel in this course I also agree that allowing creative and diverse material will enhance a student’s capabilities and further help them. We both have great intentions and goals for the students we will be assisting during our internships and the eagerness to gain all these skills.
    I cannot wait and Good luck in your internship!

    See you tomorrow,
    Gaby

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