Humaira Zakaria
ENGL C0831
Professor Gleason
Summary
April 20, 2010
Social Justice Initiative for Basic Writing (Summary)
Students enrolled n Basic Writing courses are individuals who are identified as “people of color, poor, working class, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, documented and undocumented immigrants, and people with disabilities.” These individuals experience social injustice due to the current economic conditions in the United States, and decreased financial support from federal, state and local aids for public schools, adult education and ESL programs.
Funding comes from results from standardized tests that tests to track and measure academic progress and based on the results, reward with financial support. This strategy roadblocks students in their educational progress and limits their access to college, while also hindering students in basic writing courses. Basic writing is also usually referred to as a remedial class, which marginalizes resources needed for the courses. Usually these basic writing courses will not receive new content.
Through the ever decreasing access to funding causes conditions for education for our students to dwindle. These conditions keeps students from completing college. The “remedial” model that basic writing curriculum are centered around “isolates the student and the skill from real college contexts.” The unjust quality of education conditions disrupts students from “successful matriculation and retention.” Even the teachers are part of the unjust education structure. They are not paid enough they have large workloads, and there is no job security. By improving conditions of education for student will vicariously improve the conditions for teachers.
Students have “insufficient access top preparation for college-level courses based on systemic educational inequities in public schools: Insufficient Access to financial aid counseling: Insufficient access to academic advising and personal counseling: Insufficient access to disability services: and Insufficient access to academic and fine arts courses that foster and sustain students growth in areas related to progress in basic writing.”
To solve these insufficiencies, teachers must “re-commit” to the NCTE Resolution “On Support for Motivated but Inadequately Prepared College Students” goals of 1974. These goals are to have the education faculty to allocate funding for students who are motivated but not well prepared for college. Administrators, professors and legislators need to persuade college and university administrator and other stakeholders to allocate sustainable funding for programs that provide access to retention services: advocate for providing basic writing courses that include college level content: remove the label “remedial”: Educate students on obtaining equitable education: Promoting programs using all available means: and Linking basic writing to social justice so that communities gain economic and social wealth.
Bernstein, Susan Naomi. “Social Justice Initiative for Basic Writing.” Conference on Basic Writing. 7.1 (2008). Web. 12 April, 2010.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Paulo Freire Theories
Humaira Zakaria
ENGL C0831
Professor Gleason
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
April 6, 2010
Paulo Freire’s Key Concepts in Pedagogy of The Oppressed
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed examines and analyzes the education system based on the struggle for equality of social classes. Freire’s own struggle within a class-based society lead him to reject it, prompting a radical pedagogy. He proposes a form of pedagogy that exemplifies just treatment of all people. Some of his main concepts were focused on the dichotomy between the teacher and student relationship, the Banking Method vs. Problem posing, the true meaning behind dialogue and having a Dialogic Classroom, and what it means to have critical consciousness so that an individual may transform the world.
Freire’s childhood was the catalyst for his critical analysis of class-based systems and the education structure that perpetuated his rejection of such a system. Even facing his many struggles with poverty and hunger, he felt that his life was not predetermined. He did not believe that the best solution for him was to accept his struggles and circumstances as made apparent to him. Even from a young age he believed that there were flaws with the world, these flaws should not continue to exist, and that the world needed to be changed. (Freire, “Letters” 13). Paulo Friere came to two conclusions based on his childhood; 1. He never let himself fall into fatalism and 2. Due to his Christian beliefs, he never accepted his impoverish circumstances as an expression of God’s
Zakaria 2
wishes. He knew that there was something very wrong with the world he lived in, and that needed to be changed (Freire, “Letters” 14).
As a child, Paulo Freire was detached from his education. His main focus was of hunger. His hunger had disrupted his learning in school. In his education, his peers and his capacity to memorize texts meant that they were intelligent. He continuously failed to memorize information which “reflected” his ignorance (Freire, “Letters” 15). Due to his lack of food he had learning difficulties. But his circumstances were not taken into account by his educators (Freire, “Letters” 16). Instead, schools were elitist and did not consider
that difficult conditions, no matter how devastating, engender the kid who experience them the knowledge to survive… difficulties would diminish if the schools took into consideration the culture of the oppressed… From their own knowledge, students could move to the systematic knowledge taught by schools (Freire, “Letters” 16)
This can only be carried out by teachers that are willing to be progressive, void of a class-based system that does take into account the student and his experiences.
The teacher-student-relationship in a class-based education system reflects the relationship between an oppressor and the oppressed. This type of relationship between the students and teacher “involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)… The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable”(Freire, “Pedagogy” 71). The student does not think about what the teacher teaches; instead the student records the information, memorizes
Zakaria 3
the information and then repeats the information that the teacher has bestowed.
Students put merit in their oppressors and the education that is presented to them
because of the class-based institutional structure and lack of confidence and worth, thus developing students to become containers that the teacher fills with their own ideas, knowledge, and thoughts. This is known as the “banking concept of education.” This helps students to become managed individuals instead of thinking individuals because education has become
an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor… The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world (Freire, “Pedagogy” 72-73).
The danger to this type of education is because if students “accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 73). With the banking method
a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator, not re-creator… the person is not a conscious being… rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside (Freire, “Pedagogy” 75).
Education thus needs to help develop individuals into becoming critically
Zakaria 4
conscious individuals. To have critical consciousness “people develop their power to
perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 83). A classroom based around the banking-method cannot produce critically conscience students. An alternative to the banking-method is problem-posing.
The banking-method only makes students docile individuals, that are passive within their world, in contrast to problem-posing education which constantly introduces and strips away the masks of reality, “unveiling” the world for what it truly is. Students are continuously posed with issues and problems relating to themselves, whether it be political, social, or personal issues. Students faced with problems will feel challenged and in return will respond to the challenge with a solution (Freire, “Pedagogy” 81). As students try to come up with solutions their “response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understanding… Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 81). Through problem-posing, student do not simply just exist in the world where they do not contribute, instead through their understanding and consciousness of their world, they can transform the world by being active participants.
Within a problem-posing classroom, dialogue is necessary. Without dialogue, one cannot communicate with other individuals. The Banking-method is devoid of dialogue and communication. Two people cannot have a true dialogue unless they exchange critical thinking. The goal is to
Zakaria 5
perceive reality as a process, as transformation, rather than a static entity- thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved… Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. Education which is able to resolve the contradiction between teacher and student takes place in a situation in which both address their act of cognition to the object by which they are mediated (Freire, “Pedagogy” 92-92).
For Teachers and students alike to negotiate is the basis for a Dialogic classroom. A dialogic classroom allows the teacher to be a student and a student to also be a teacher. In a Dialogic classroom both teacher and student reflect
about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means of which people discover each other to be “in a situation.” Only as this situation ceases to present itself as a dense, enveloping reality or a tormenting blind alley, and they can come to perceive it as an objective-problematic situation- only then can commitment exist. Humankind emerge from their submersion and acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled (Freire, “Pedagogy“ 109).
To have a problem-posing curricula, teacher and student first need to dialogue. Dialogue leads to an exchange of critical ideas and problems. Once negotiating importance and facing challenges can an individual transform their world through developing meaning from communication. The goal of problem-posing in a dialogic classroom is to transform
Zakaria 6
an individual’s reality for the better.
Ira Shor’s Freire for the Classroom exemplifies the success of a problem-posing dialogical classroom that Nan Elsasser established as a literacy classroom for Bahamian women. Nan Elsasser’s students were the first generation of women who had gone to college and enter the business world. These women had problems with their writing. The goal was to have these women transcribe their inner speech to a finalized written product (Shor 91). Nan Elsessar had issues with her approach to the class, and turned to her students for help. Teacher and students selected three issues to write about, and then voted on a theme.
These women were raised in a two parent house-hold, 75% of these women were mothers and two-thirds of these women were single parents. The topic of marriage effected their lives in the social, economical and emotional realm (Shor 92). The teacher and students had a dialogue and negotiated on a topic that the students were to write about; Marriage. The topic of marriage was relative to the Bahamian women’s lives. Through the dialogic approach, the topic was given, and now the students are to explore that topic.
The women had broken up into groups. They discussed their ideas on what they wanted to explore. The women had come up with several subtopics that fell under the arena of marriage; housework: divorce: sexuality: and domestic violence.
The teacher in turn looks for additional reading sources for her students that bridged “the distance between students’ lives and society” (Shor 93). These readings were to prompt students to talk about their individual problems, common experiences and
Zakaria 7
the larger social world (Shor 93).
Nan Elsessar’s students were to pass through three phases of their writing process on the topic of marriage. First they are to “elaborate their own experience more skillfully, and they perceive stronger links between their own lives and the larger social context” (Shor 93). The women explored what marriage meant in the Bahamas, in which the husbands end up taking out his frustrations on his family, beating his wife, not contributing financially and leaving home for days at a time. The wife then has no support from her husband, but because divorce is taboo, the women deal with their ordeal as best as possible (Shor 94-95).
In phase two the students “reach outside their own experience more skillfully, and they perceive stronger links between their own lives and the larger sources of knowledge… They become more confident about gaining knowledge from class dialogues and reading (Shor 93- 95). In this phase, Nan posed a problem for the Bahamian women. The student debated on if women ask to be raped and asked for additional readings on the subject. Nan introduced the idea of rhetorical forms such as cause and effect, defining, and compare and contrast. Since wives are beaten by their husbands, Nan had the students compare and contrast the relationships between beatings and rape (Shor 96-97).
In Phase three the students “become critically conscious of the way society affects their lives, and they begin to use writing as a means of intervening in their own social environment (Shor 93). The women share their knowledge on the issues they experience within their personal lives on how the Bahamian men treat their wives and family. The
Zakaria 8
students wrote a manifesto titled “Letter to Bahamian Men” and had it published by Bahamian newspapers. Their manifesto comprised of various sections: an introduction in which they explain the role and oppression of women in the Bahamian society: Women a victims of men’s inconsiderate actions: Men financially neglecting the family: Men’s lack of help at home: Men’s lack of responsibility for their children: Men’s failure to satisfy women sexually: and a conclusion in which recommendations are given for the Bahamian men to be better (Shor 98). The Bahamian women became conscientious of their circumstances by examining their lives and through their writings are transforming their lives and their community (their world).
The Bahamian women were oppressed by their husbands and their society because they were to not leave their husbands (even if the women are being beat, and raped and neglected). They brought to fruition their problems through praxis by taking their lessons and applying their knowledge through action. They built upon through research and dialogue and presented their education in writing so that their circumstances will better. They took initiative to transform their lives. There are two stages of Freire’s proposed pedagogy. First
the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its transformation. In the second stage, in which the reality of oppression has already been transformed, this pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation (Freire, “Pedagogy” 54).
Education is to liberate people from their oppression so that they can be active
Zakaria 9
contributors to their own lives, instead of people that are being managed within their lives by others. Freire’s ideology on pedagogy is to transform the oppressed so that they may transform the world.
Zakaria 10
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work. Trans. Donaldo Macedo. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print
---. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Print.
Shor, Ira. Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Print.
ENGL C0831
Professor Gleason
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
April 6, 2010
Paulo Freire’s Key Concepts in Pedagogy of The Oppressed
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed examines and analyzes the education system based on the struggle for equality of social classes. Freire’s own struggle within a class-based society lead him to reject it, prompting a radical pedagogy. He proposes a form of pedagogy that exemplifies just treatment of all people. Some of his main concepts were focused on the dichotomy between the teacher and student relationship, the Banking Method vs. Problem posing, the true meaning behind dialogue and having a Dialogic Classroom, and what it means to have critical consciousness so that an individual may transform the world.
Freire’s childhood was the catalyst for his critical analysis of class-based systems and the education structure that perpetuated his rejection of such a system. Even facing his many struggles with poverty and hunger, he felt that his life was not predetermined. He did not believe that the best solution for him was to accept his struggles and circumstances as made apparent to him. Even from a young age he believed that there were flaws with the world, these flaws should not continue to exist, and that the world needed to be changed. (Freire, “Letters” 13). Paulo Friere came to two conclusions based on his childhood; 1. He never let himself fall into fatalism and 2. Due to his Christian beliefs, he never accepted his impoverish circumstances as an expression of God’s
Zakaria 2
wishes. He knew that there was something very wrong with the world he lived in, and that needed to be changed (Freire, “Letters” 14).
As a child, Paulo Freire was detached from his education. His main focus was of hunger. His hunger had disrupted his learning in school. In his education, his peers and his capacity to memorize texts meant that they were intelligent. He continuously failed to memorize information which “reflected” his ignorance (Freire, “Letters” 15). Due to his lack of food he had learning difficulties. But his circumstances were not taken into account by his educators (Freire, “Letters” 16). Instead, schools were elitist and did not consider
that difficult conditions, no matter how devastating, engender the kid who experience them the knowledge to survive… difficulties would diminish if the schools took into consideration the culture of the oppressed… From their own knowledge, students could move to the systematic knowledge taught by schools (Freire, “Letters” 16)
This can only be carried out by teachers that are willing to be progressive, void of a class-based system that does take into account the student and his experiences.
The teacher-student-relationship in a class-based education system reflects the relationship between an oppressor and the oppressed. This type of relationship between the students and teacher “involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)… The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable”(Freire, “Pedagogy” 71). The student does not think about what the teacher teaches; instead the student records the information, memorizes
Zakaria 3
the information and then repeats the information that the teacher has bestowed.
Students put merit in their oppressors and the education that is presented to them
because of the class-based institutional structure and lack of confidence and worth, thus developing students to become containers that the teacher fills with their own ideas, knowledge, and thoughts. This is known as the “banking concept of education.” This helps students to become managed individuals instead of thinking individuals because education has become
an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor… The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world (Freire, “Pedagogy” 72-73).
The danger to this type of education is because if students “accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 73). With the banking method
a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator, not re-creator… the person is not a conscious being… rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside (Freire, “Pedagogy” 75).
Education thus needs to help develop individuals into becoming critically
Zakaria 4
conscious individuals. To have critical consciousness “people develop their power to
perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 83). A classroom based around the banking-method cannot produce critically conscience students. An alternative to the banking-method is problem-posing.
The banking-method only makes students docile individuals, that are passive within their world, in contrast to problem-posing education which constantly introduces and strips away the masks of reality, “unveiling” the world for what it truly is. Students are continuously posed with issues and problems relating to themselves, whether it be political, social, or personal issues. Students faced with problems will feel challenged and in return will respond to the challenge with a solution (Freire, “Pedagogy” 81). As students try to come up with solutions their “response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understanding… Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world” (Freire, “Pedagogy” 81). Through problem-posing, student do not simply just exist in the world where they do not contribute, instead through their understanding and consciousness of their world, they can transform the world by being active participants.
Within a problem-posing classroom, dialogue is necessary. Without dialogue, one cannot communicate with other individuals. The Banking-method is devoid of dialogue and communication. Two people cannot have a true dialogue unless they exchange critical thinking. The goal is to
Zakaria 5
perceive reality as a process, as transformation, rather than a static entity- thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved… Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. Education which is able to resolve the contradiction between teacher and student takes place in a situation in which both address their act of cognition to the object by which they are mediated (Freire, “Pedagogy” 92-92).
For Teachers and students alike to negotiate is the basis for a Dialogic classroom. A dialogic classroom allows the teacher to be a student and a student to also be a teacher. In a Dialogic classroom both teacher and student reflect
about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means of which people discover each other to be “in a situation.” Only as this situation ceases to present itself as a dense, enveloping reality or a tormenting blind alley, and they can come to perceive it as an objective-problematic situation- only then can commitment exist. Humankind emerge from their submersion and acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled (Freire, “Pedagogy“ 109).
To have a problem-posing curricula, teacher and student first need to dialogue. Dialogue leads to an exchange of critical ideas and problems. Once negotiating importance and facing challenges can an individual transform their world through developing meaning from communication. The goal of problem-posing in a dialogic classroom is to transform
Zakaria 6
an individual’s reality for the better.
Ira Shor’s Freire for the Classroom exemplifies the success of a problem-posing dialogical classroom that Nan Elsasser established as a literacy classroom for Bahamian women. Nan Elsasser’s students were the first generation of women who had gone to college and enter the business world. These women had problems with their writing. The goal was to have these women transcribe their inner speech to a finalized written product (Shor 91). Nan Elsessar had issues with her approach to the class, and turned to her students for help. Teacher and students selected three issues to write about, and then voted on a theme.
These women were raised in a two parent house-hold, 75% of these women were mothers and two-thirds of these women were single parents. The topic of marriage effected their lives in the social, economical and emotional realm (Shor 92). The teacher and students had a dialogue and negotiated on a topic that the students were to write about; Marriage. The topic of marriage was relative to the Bahamian women’s lives. Through the dialogic approach, the topic was given, and now the students are to explore that topic.
The women had broken up into groups. They discussed their ideas on what they wanted to explore. The women had come up with several subtopics that fell under the arena of marriage; housework: divorce: sexuality: and domestic violence.
The teacher in turn looks for additional reading sources for her students that bridged “the distance between students’ lives and society” (Shor 93). These readings were to prompt students to talk about their individual problems, common experiences and
Zakaria 7
the larger social world (Shor 93).
Nan Elsessar’s students were to pass through three phases of their writing process on the topic of marriage. First they are to “elaborate their own experience more skillfully, and they perceive stronger links between their own lives and the larger social context” (Shor 93). The women explored what marriage meant in the Bahamas, in which the husbands end up taking out his frustrations on his family, beating his wife, not contributing financially and leaving home for days at a time. The wife then has no support from her husband, but because divorce is taboo, the women deal with their ordeal as best as possible (Shor 94-95).
In phase two the students “reach outside their own experience more skillfully, and they perceive stronger links between their own lives and the larger sources of knowledge… They become more confident about gaining knowledge from class dialogues and reading (Shor 93- 95). In this phase, Nan posed a problem for the Bahamian women. The student debated on if women ask to be raped and asked for additional readings on the subject. Nan introduced the idea of rhetorical forms such as cause and effect, defining, and compare and contrast. Since wives are beaten by their husbands, Nan had the students compare and contrast the relationships between beatings and rape (Shor 96-97).
In Phase three the students “become critically conscious of the way society affects their lives, and they begin to use writing as a means of intervening in their own social environment (Shor 93). The women share their knowledge on the issues they experience within their personal lives on how the Bahamian men treat their wives and family. The
Zakaria 8
students wrote a manifesto titled “Letter to Bahamian Men” and had it published by Bahamian newspapers. Their manifesto comprised of various sections: an introduction in which they explain the role and oppression of women in the Bahamian society: Women a victims of men’s inconsiderate actions: Men financially neglecting the family: Men’s lack of help at home: Men’s lack of responsibility for their children: Men’s failure to satisfy women sexually: and a conclusion in which recommendations are given for the Bahamian men to be better (Shor 98). The Bahamian women became conscientious of their circumstances by examining their lives and through their writings are transforming their lives and their community (their world).
The Bahamian women were oppressed by their husbands and their society because they were to not leave their husbands (even if the women are being beat, and raped and neglected). They brought to fruition their problems through praxis by taking their lessons and applying their knowledge through action. They built upon through research and dialogue and presented their education in writing so that their circumstances will better. They took initiative to transform their lives. There are two stages of Freire’s proposed pedagogy. First
the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its transformation. In the second stage, in which the reality of oppression has already been transformed, this pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation (Freire, “Pedagogy” 54).
Education is to liberate people from their oppression so that they can be active
Zakaria 9
contributors to their own lives, instead of people that are being managed within their lives by others. Freire’s ideology on pedagogy is to transform the oppressed so that they may transform the world.
Zakaria 10
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work. Trans. Donaldo Macedo. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print
---. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Print.
Shor, Ira. Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Print.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Final Exam- Strong Text vs Process View/Convergence Literacy/Aurality and Multimodal composing
Humaira Zakaria
Professor Gleason
ENGL B6400
December 9, 2009
Final Exam
Strong-Text View of Literacy vs. A Process View of Literacy
Strong-text is written text, and our literacy is dependant of our involvement and coping skills with text. According to Deborah Brandt “literacy is culturally dependant on the invention and continued existence of the technology of text” (13). Literacy is shaped around social and cognitive relationships, but strong text is based on the relationship we have with actual writing. Brandt states that “people become literate by coming to terms with the unique demands of alphabetic writing, a technology that forces radical interpretive shifts away from oral discourse habits” (13).
This view of literacy however is different than the processing of literacy. With strong text it entails “ a suppression of ordinary social involvement as the basis of interpretation and a reinvestment in the logical, literal, message- focused conventions of language-on-its-own” (Brandt 13). From the process perspective “social involvement appears as a fundamental basis of orientation during the tenuous enterprises of writing and reading” (Brandt 13-14) which means that literacy isn’t only involved with a person’s ability to deal with text but also the “ability to deal with other people as a writer or a reader” (Brandt 14). Strong text is specifically referred to written text because print is unchanging and fixed onto a media.
Written language can stand alone, because “it exists, as inscription, independently from the physical presence and even living existence of its author” (Brandt 23). Text will outlive the author who had written the passages, for years and years on end, and will
Zakaria 2
surpass any of its readers. Language through strong text is able to be preserved. Due to this “written language comes to have its own status in the social context” (Brandt 23). Because written text is fixed, the grammar and syntax are stabilized and conventionalize meaning, “structure becomes meaning” (Brandt 23). Written language will always mean the same thing throughout time, regardless of where and who reads it.
The autonomy of written text leads to the anonymity of strong-text. Since text can stand alone, it does not matter as much who the author is. Strong-text “comes with the liberation of language from breath also brings liberation from the restricted capacity of oral speech merely to express or signal, that is, to remain affiliated with the speaker” (Brandt 24). Oral communication is based between speaker and listener, a social process. Meaning of the context of speech may shift between the speaker and listener or be completely forgotten in a short amount of time. Even so, text and social acts of language cannot be separated from each other. Strong-text sets the standards of literacy, while social acts help us develop our understanding to adhere to the standards that were set by strong-text.
Literacy is based on the simple idea that one knows how to read and write. Reading sets the standard through strong-text and writing can be used as a representation of one’s literacy. But instead of focusing on the final written product, Brandt believes that literacy should be based on the process of writing rather than the final product. Writing is a process, in where people write several drafts and make revisions leading to the final product because there is a cognitive process theory of writing “that depicts writing as a goal-directed and highly dynamic thinking process consisting of recursive cycles of
Zakaria 3
planning, drafting, and reviewing” (Brandt 33).
This process “treats the individual, isolated writer as the originator of goals and plans for writing,“ but the writer fails to link the structures that they develop mentally for their written work to the wider discourse of community or even to the public language” (Brandt 34). By recognizing and understanding the writer’s process of writing “requires a wider view of both writers’ social identities and the cultural resources and constraints that they contend with” (Brandt 34).
By focusing on the process view of literacy it requires the “growing ability to see a kind of double meaning in written language: and ability to see not merely what a text is saying but what it is saying about you… what is saying about what you need to be doing next as a writer or a reader” (Brandt 35). Expert writers can make the distinction of this ability for metacommunicative meaning while weaker writers completely miss this.
Instead of reading text and finding meaning (strong-text approach), individuals need to also know how to develop a process so that they are also creating context. People who are considered skilled readers and writers “pull together and maintain situated meaning… writers make the decisions that keep writing going” (Brandt 38). By being a strong writer, one can make the necessary adjustments to continue the process that leads to the final work. Writing is not just for the writer, once the text is written or typed on a form of media (paper or digital), the writing becomes a shared experience for others to make meaning out of.
The development of the writing process to be shared
“plays a central role is making and maintaining context… writers and
Zakaria 4
readers do not have to keep a whole process going, they have to understand how textual language refers to what they are in the act of doing- how it refers to the processes of writing and reading that are underway (Brandt 45).
The process view of literacy focuses on the writer’s steps in achieving the final work of text. By writing text does not mean an individual is literate. By creating meaning and context through structuring and restructuring individual writing, the author reflects his literacy skills. By developing meaning on papers this process creates a relationship between author and reader to explore meaning. This is the opposite of strong-text view of literacy, in which text stands alone without the author and “meaning is arbitrated out of abstract conventions, such as generic structures and dictionary definitions” (Brandt 57-58).
Zakaria 5
Strong-Text View of Literacy vs. A Process View of Literacy Reflection
The strong-text approach is heavily focused on within the high school I teach at. The protocol for teachers is to have students be able to analyze the text that is assigned to them via short stories or novels. It’s a challenge for most teachers at my school to develop students into being “strong-text” literate since most of the readings assigned to them are not specifically socially connected to their background.
There is an argument amongst the English teachers within the department on editing the book list. Should we keep the classics written by Shakespeare, Bronte, and Salinger if the students cannot make meaning out of the text? Or, should we create a new book list that caters to the background experience of the student, so that they already have meaning out of what they read?
I was torn over the conflict within our department. Strong-text sets the standards of expectations within the English curriculum for our students. Usually, when students read books that reflect their inner city life-style; with the plot demonstrating gang violence and lewd acts, and the language is entwined with profanity, the student cannot switch themselves into a mode of academia. They ask “if the books writes like that, why can’t I do it?” The strong-text that these students need are to be carefully selected, since the book that they are given is their example. Stories that aren’t based on what the students experience gives them a different perspective of the world outside of which they live, which is also a perspective of writing that is not what they are use to either.
Writing is a huge issue within our school too. Our students do not perform so well on standardized testing. There is a resistance of academia within our school, but this is
Zakaria 6
also because most of our weaker writers cannot seem to grasp the concept on how to write an essay.
Reading The Processes of Involvement had me realize that as a teacher I shouldn’t only focus on the final complete paper. There have been essays that were given to me that failed to meet standards. This isn’t specifically the fault of the student. This is also the fault of the teacher. If I were to monitor the process that the student takes, I would be able to aid the student in producing a better paper. I had started the approach in one of my writing classes on having students submit brainstorming drafts into me, and an outline of the paper that they are going write. What I found shocking is that the students couldn’t make an outline, they were stuck.
I had to teach students how to a write an outline and what an outline should consist of. For the students, it went from them not knowing what they are going to write about to them having a formula to follow. Even though these pedagogical approaches are in the trial stages for me, I do see improvement. Students were able to form a four paragraph essay, the structure had changed. The next step is to take these rough drafts and have multiple peers edit each other’s work. They are to write a second draft, and I am to read it before I hand it back to them so that they will write their final edit.
I hope by the end of next semester that these students will be editing, processing and making meaning of their writing simultaneously. Even though this is a tall order to fill, my main goal is for them to be skilled enough to perform well on the English Regents. With these skills, I would want these strategies to be carried over in their post secondary education.
Zakaria 7
Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online
The media in which text is written upon has changed over the course of literate history. In this generation, most of the reading and writing that adolescents partake in are online or digitally based. The internet is “filled with popular culture content that attracts high school and college students” (Williams 1) which has them sit at the computer for hours on end.
Due to the increasing rate of use of online, adolescents are developing multiple literacies and skills to multitask. Adolescents listen to music, surf the web, read news articles, look up information, update their social networks, talk to their friends on AIM (Aol Instant Messenger), text their friends through their cell phone while finding a way to study for school all in-between (Williams 1-2). Adults may object to the heavy online use, but we need to closely look at the appeal of online use and its impact on literacy.
The use of online technology attracts students to become more involved with popular culture by having individual adolescents to become interactive with their interests.
Because of online use students learn “rhetorical concepts such as audience, genre, and authorship” (Williams 4). Online use has “individuals use discussion forums and webpages to comment publicly on or rewrite mass popular culture such as television, films, music, and computer games” (Williams 5). When the creators and producers of these forms of entertainment read what their fans have to say, they shape and reform popular culture.
The internet also provides multimodal content to users, “language and print literacy cannot provide the full meaning of the multimodal content that is obvious to
Zakaria 8
anyone within moments of connecting to the Internet” (Williams 7). When a user logs onto the internet, they are not just faced with text on the screen. Users also have images, sounds and video in conjunction to text. The use of other modes to enhance literacy influences the way content is created and understood. With access to the internet, users who are literate in Internet technologies have the ability to express themselves and create their own forums, which showcases their literacy in online use.
The convergence culture is when “computers and online technologies have transformed the era of mass popular culture into one of the participatory popular culture where the boundaries have been blurred between media and between producer and audience” (Williams 6). Williams believes that we “should focus on how the convergence of media and the interactive nature of online communications are changing the roles of both producer and audience member to those of participants in a social phenomenon” (6). This is when opportunities are presented to individuals who are the audience to become the producers.
By blogging, individuals who were first just a member of the Internet audience becomes an author (a producer). Individuals who create a blog creates a
“Web site in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. A blog consists of text, hypertext, images, and links to other Web pages and to video, audio, and other files. Blogging is an easy way of publishing your thoughts and ideas to the web” (Bell 75).
Blogs are like an empty book on the Internet. The user fills in the “empty pages”
Zakaria 9
with whatever content that they feel like showcasing. Blogs express the users ideas, emotions, thoughts, opinions, conversations they may have with other users and are continuously and regularly updated. Blogs are not only for the author to write what they want, but it encourages the readers of the blog to engage by commenting on the authors writing, or asking questions (Bell 75). Users also have a sense of ownership over their work too because “by writing about the text and reading and responding to ideas of others” individuals “take ownership for their meaning of the text” (Williams 40).
On a daily basis, adolescents are engaging in social interactions on the web through blogging. Because students are “reading and “writing” texts with print, images and video and sound” they “are learning about multimodal literacy through working with it day after day” (Williams 7-8). Multimodal media has changed the way young people read and write by having allowed “individuals to easily appropriate, reproduce, mix, and reconstruct any kind of popular culture material that is either online or that can be changed to digital form” (Williams 8).
Through this interaction with the Internet, adolescent’s skills in literacy has been shifting and changing. Williams defines literacy as “the way humans communicate ideas, concepts, and emotions to one another” because :humans are meaning-making creatures and we have learned to do so by creating representations of our ideas that can be interpreted by others when we are not present” (18).
When adolescents use the Internet they are expressing themselves through text, graphics, images, posting videos, arrangements of all of these medias on a webpage. Each aspect of their webpage “illustrates the arrangement of signs or symbols or images to
Zakaria 10
represent ideas” (Williams 18). The media in which individuals are literate has shifted because the “ability to use sign systems to compose and interpret texts that communicate ideas from one person to another” is most certainly represented through the internet. As adolescents move more towards the internet they are “employing across genres and technologies… mixing and matching different practices and skills to the variety of rhetorical contexts they encounter online” (Williams 19).
Adolescents have the options to choose between “print, image, video, sound, and all the potential combinations they could create to make a particular point with a specific audience“ (Williams 19). Therefore adolescents can still maintain their “rhetorical abilities of an individual to find a purpose, correctly analyze an audience, and communicate to that audience in a tone that audience will find persuasive, engaging, and intelligent” (Williams 19).
Zakaria 11
Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online Reflection
In New York City the same amount of funding is not distributed amongst every single school equally. What generally determines this is student achievement rates. The three factors that the school is judged on are graduation rates, scores on state standardized tests and the grades the students receive on their transcripts. With higher funding, certain schools receive various types of technologies to incorporate into their classroom. Smart boards are given to every single classroom, and computers and access to the Internet are readily available. Since most students have access to a computer and the Internet at home, they connect more to the lessons that are infused with technology.
Adolescents are used to dealing with technology at home for several hours, and when they enter their classroom, they can continue on with this form of media. And judging from my experience in observing classrooms that have technology incorporated, students seem more engaged and active in class.
Paper bound books, notebooks, pens and writing by hand seems so arbitrary for students. It’s hard to cope as a teacher, since students are moving forward with technology and the classroom that they are in seems to “hold them back.” My students always complain on why they cannot have a laptop in class, or why do they have to carry their books around with them. They have evolved passed the forms of media that I used frequently when I was in high school.
It also seems as if they feel like they are not worthy enough to receive privileges like the use of technology because the state did not deem the school worthy enough to invest technology into. I feel that student achievement rates really can increase through
Zakaria 12
the use of technology. I have been trying to somehow have students use technology at home so that they can receive credit in my class.
I give the students an option to type their essays to me and e-mail me their work. My students are not fans of handwriting their essays or most of their home-works. When I enforced (strictly) for students to give me hand written work they had resisted, and complained that they would do the work if they were allowed to type it at home. After weeks of having abysmal rates of completed work, I conceded. I told the students that they can type the work and e-mail it to me. I was skeptical at first. I believed that these students were just giving me another type of excuse, and even if I gave them the option to actually type the work and e-mail me their assignments, I still won’t have work handed in.
To my surprise, I opened up my e-mail and had about 75% of my student e-mail me their work. I was flabbergasted and stood corrected. I continued to let my students e-mail me their work. Their grades drastically improved for something as minute as having them e-mail me their work. But I had also realized that reading the e-mailed work was easier for me, since I am not spending an allotted amount of time deciphering the various handwritings.
Since the high school I work in has low achievement rates, with only about 50% of students graduating on time, it will take a long while (or never) for us to receive funding for technology to be used in every classroom. I most certainly can see the difference in student participation when it comes to the use of technology. I am trying to figure out other ways that I can incorporate technology so that my students can continue to do better in class.
Zakaria 13
Aurality and Multimodal Composing
In classrooms, the focus of most teachers is based around the mode of writing for their students. Many students are subjected to conform themselves to print literacy, while within the classroom many other modes of composing are ignored. Cynthia Selfe states that “print literacy works against the interests of individuals whose cultures and communities have managed to maintain a value on multiple modalities of expression, multiple and hybrid ways of knowing, communicating, and establishing identity” (618).
Everyday students are engaged in other ways of expressing their identity, style, ideas and interests, but these other outlets of expression are stifled in the classroom. A single mode of composing “deprive students of valuable semiotic resources for making meaning” (Selfe 617). Teachers ignore “the importance of aurality and other composing modalities for making meaning and understanding the world” (Selfe 617-618). English composition teachers not only limit their students, but their own ability as being effective teachers.
Aurality is perceiving through the ear. Aurality is a “complexly web of communicative practices that are received or perceived by the ear, including speech, sound, and music” (Self 646). Selfe states that “Anyone who has spent time on a college or university campus over the past few decades knows how fundamentally important students consider their sonic environments- the songs, music, and pod casts they produce and listen to” (617) even though in a classroom, teachers expect total silence from students when they are composing assignments in class.
It’s only been since the late 19th century that the focus within academia was on
Zakaria 14
writing. But in the 18th century and prior to that, most of the pedagogical focus was on oratorical education. Students learned how to “read, speak, and write both classical language and English through recitation… as well as oratorical performances, debates, orations, and declamations, both inside formal classes and in extracurricular settings” (Selfe 620). The goal of this was to prepare students for public speaking, which is mostly engaged in outside of the classroom now.
Teachers expect their students to write with a voice. Although voice naturally is direct link with aurality, writing has adopted the term to mean a “metaphorical language that remediate voice as a characteristic of written prose” (Selfe 630). But aurality was used in other ways in the classroom. Teachers had taped their comments to student works. By giving oral feedback to student’s written work this “allowed for a cleared acknowledgment of the “rhetorical nature” of response to a piece of writing because remarks could be “more detailed and expansive” and unfold across time” (Selfe 633). Teachers also give their lessons as lectures, very rarely in written form. Through the teacher’s aurality, they express their position of power over the students because authority is expressed through how much one is allowed to talk (Selfe 634).
Aurality is still one mode of composing. There needs to a combination of modalities within the classroom to have students express and make meaning. There needs to be a vaster range than speech and written text. People need other outlets. The Internet, digital audio, video scope, audio tracks, blogs, e-mails, social networks, and other digital environments and softwares are being used as other media as forms of expressions (Selfe 638- 639).
Zakaria 15
These other outlets are multimodal which indicates “the range of modalities- printed words, still and moving images, sound, speech, and music, color- that authors combine as they design texts” (Selfe 646). These other forms of modalities are looked down upon because for one’s ability to write equates to their intelligence and “those who do not privilege writing above all other forms of expression-those individuals and groups who have “other ways of knowing,” learning, and expressing themselves- may somehow lack intelligence (Selfe 644). Usually oppressed groups within America retained aurality as a means of expression. Since Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans were first persecuted for adopting skills to read and write, they kept oral traditions through storytelling (Selfe 623-625). Since Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans had other modalities of literacy, they were perceived as individuals who lacked intelligence.
Other forms of literacy and expression need to be incorporated into the classroom. A teacher’s responsibility is “to teach students effective, rhetorically based strategies for taking advantage of all available means of communicating effectively and productively as literate citizens” (Selfe 644).
The task for teachers to incorporate multimodal lessons and assignments are constrained. Due to school budget and lack of resources it’s difficult to incorporate forms of modalities of literacy. Even so, the standards are based around a students writing skill, even though students have many other means of self expression, reflection, and making meaning.
Zakaria 16
Aurality and Multimodal Composing Reflection
Many of my students are African Americans, and within their community and family, oral traditions are held in high esteem. Many of my students are able to express themselves through speech more comfortably than they are able to express themselves through writing on paper. I’ve asked my students before, “why don’t you put what you have to say on paper?” and they would respond with “because I won’t be heard.”
They feel as if their ideas and thoughts would have more of an impact when they speak up in class during group discussions because it’s effecting everyone in the room. When they write, it’s silent, and they feel as if they are not having an impact on anyone. As the teacher, they do not believe that they can have an impact on me because I am already knowledgeable about the lessons taught in class.
They are resistant to writing, partly because it’s cultural. Education is seen as stepping away from being African American. These students are trying to be white by being silent and compliant within a seat. By introducing aurality into the classroom, overtime students became less resistant in writing compositions.
During the beginning weeks of the semester, I had students give speeches about themselves, express themselves through poetry, or a rap, or artwork. By showing appreciation of their expression in which they are comfortable with, over the next few weeks, they started to take on assignments that they weren’t comfortable with, like writing essays.
Writing essays is a standard that each student has to master on some level, because their English Regents is based around writing four different types of essays. To have them
Zakaria 17
develop writing I had to improvise since my school does not have the budget to support multimodal compositions. I taught structure by having students draw out visual story boards on what they wanted to say in each essay, and have them translate the picture into paragraphs.
We centered a few essays around the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Before the students can read aloud the play, I played the first few pages on tape so they understood how they were supposed to read the text. For the students who could not visualize the play entirely, at the end of the play we had watched the movie.
The student’s skill levels in writing progressed because they had other modes of learning. They learned through audio and visuals, and produced compositions which was the standard. Even though for teachers who lack resources, there are ways to adapt multimodal composing into the classroom to help students express themselves more effectively.
Zakaria 18
Works Cited
Bell, Anne. “Blogging.” Exploring Web 2.0: Second Generation Interactive Tools- Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, Networking, Virtual Worlds, and More. Georgetown:Texas, 2009. 75-93. Print.
Brandt, Deborah. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Illinois, 1990. 13- 58. Print.
Self, Cynthia. “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multi-Modal
Composing.” College Composition and Communication, 60. (2009): 616-663.
Print.
Williams, Bronwyn T. “Everyone Gets a Say: Changes in Audience.” Shimmering Literacies: Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online. New York: New York, 2009. 1-61. Print.
Professor Gleason
ENGL B6400
December 9, 2009
Final Exam
Strong-Text View of Literacy vs. A Process View of Literacy
Strong-text is written text, and our literacy is dependant of our involvement and coping skills with text. According to Deborah Brandt “literacy is culturally dependant on the invention and continued existence of the technology of text” (13). Literacy is shaped around social and cognitive relationships, but strong text is based on the relationship we have with actual writing. Brandt states that “people become literate by coming to terms with the unique demands of alphabetic writing, a technology that forces radical interpretive shifts away from oral discourse habits” (13).
This view of literacy however is different than the processing of literacy. With strong text it entails “ a suppression of ordinary social involvement as the basis of interpretation and a reinvestment in the logical, literal, message- focused conventions of language-on-its-own” (Brandt 13). From the process perspective “social involvement appears as a fundamental basis of orientation during the tenuous enterprises of writing and reading” (Brandt 13-14) which means that literacy isn’t only involved with a person’s ability to deal with text but also the “ability to deal with other people as a writer or a reader” (Brandt 14). Strong text is specifically referred to written text because print is unchanging and fixed onto a media.
Written language can stand alone, because “it exists, as inscription, independently from the physical presence and even living existence of its author” (Brandt 23). Text will outlive the author who had written the passages, for years and years on end, and will
Zakaria 2
surpass any of its readers. Language through strong text is able to be preserved. Due to this “written language comes to have its own status in the social context” (Brandt 23). Because written text is fixed, the grammar and syntax are stabilized and conventionalize meaning, “structure becomes meaning” (Brandt 23). Written language will always mean the same thing throughout time, regardless of where and who reads it.
The autonomy of written text leads to the anonymity of strong-text. Since text can stand alone, it does not matter as much who the author is. Strong-text “comes with the liberation of language from breath also brings liberation from the restricted capacity of oral speech merely to express or signal, that is, to remain affiliated with the speaker” (Brandt 24). Oral communication is based between speaker and listener, a social process. Meaning of the context of speech may shift between the speaker and listener or be completely forgotten in a short amount of time. Even so, text and social acts of language cannot be separated from each other. Strong-text sets the standards of literacy, while social acts help us develop our understanding to adhere to the standards that were set by strong-text.
Literacy is based on the simple idea that one knows how to read and write. Reading sets the standard through strong-text and writing can be used as a representation of one’s literacy. But instead of focusing on the final written product, Brandt believes that literacy should be based on the process of writing rather than the final product. Writing is a process, in where people write several drafts and make revisions leading to the final product because there is a cognitive process theory of writing “that depicts writing as a goal-directed and highly dynamic thinking process consisting of recursive cycles of
Zakaria 3
planning, drafting, and reviewing” (Brandt 33).
This process “treats the individual, isolated writer as the originator of goals and plans for writing,“ but the writer fails to link the structures that they develop mentally for their written work to the wider discourse of community or even to the public language” (Brandt 34). By recognizing and understanding the writer’s process of writing “requires a wider view of both writers’ social identities and the cultural resources and constraints that they contend with” (Brandt 34).
By focusing on the process view of literacy it requires the “growing ability to see a kind of double meaning in written language: and ability to see not merely what a text is saying but what it is saying about you… what is saying about what you need to be doing next as a writer or a reader” (Brandt 35). Expert writers can make the distinction of this ability for metacommunicative meaning while weaker writers completely miss this.
Instead of reading text and finding meaning (strong-text approach), individuals need to also know how to develop a process so that they are also creating context. People who are considered skilled readers and writers “pull together and maintain situated meaning… writers make the decisions that keep writing going” (Brandt 38). By being a strong writer, one can make the necessary adjustments to continue the process that leads to the final work. Writing is not just for the writer, once the text is written or typed on a form of media (paper or digital), the writing becomes a shared experience for others to make meaning out of.
The development of the writing process to be shared
“plays a central role is making and maintaining context… writers and
Zakaria 4
readers do not have to keep a whole process going, they have to understand how textual language refers to what they are in the act of doing- how it refers to the processes of writing and reading that are underway (Brandt 45).
The process view of literacy focuses on the writer’s steps in achieving the final work of text. By writing text does not mean an individual is literate. By creating meaning and context through structuring and restructuring individual writing, the author reflects his literacy skills. By developing meaning on papers this process creates a relationship between author and reader to explore meaning. This is the opposite of strong-text view of literacy, in which text stands alone without the author and “meaning is arbitrated out of abstract conventions, such as generic structures and dictionary definitions” (Brandt 57-58).
Zakaria 5
Strong-Text View of Literacy vs. A Process View of Literacy Reflection
The strong-text approach is heavily focused on within the high school I teach at. The protocol for teachers is to have students be able to analyze the text that is assigned to them via short stories or novels. It’s a challenge for most teachers at my school to develop students into being “strong-text” literate since most of the readings assigned to them are not specifically socially connected to their background.
There is an argument amongst the English teachers within the department on editing the book list. Should we keep the classics written by Shakespeare, Bronte, and Salinger if the students cannot make meaning out of the text? Or, should we create a new book list that caters to the background experience of the student, so that they already have meaning out of what they read?
I was torn over the conflict within our department. Strong-text sets the standards of expectations within the English curriculum for our students. Usually, when students read books that reflect their inner city life-style; with the plot demonstrating gang violence and lewd acts, and the language is entwined with profanity, the student cannot switch themselves into a mode of academia. They ask “if the books writes like that, why can’t I do it?” The strong-text that these students need are to be carefully selected, since the book that they are given is their example. Stories that aren’t based on what the students experience gives them a different perspective of the world outside of which they live, which is also a perspective of writing that is not what they are use to either.
Writing is a huge issue within our school too. Our students do not perform so well on standardized testing. There is a resistance of academia within our school, but this is
Zakaria 6
also because most of our weaker writers cannot seem to grasp the concept on how to write an essay.
Reading The Processes of Involvement had me realize that as a teacher I shouldn’t only focus on the final complete paper. There have been essays that were given to me that failed to meet standards. This isn’t specifically the fault of the student. This is also the fault of the teacher. If I were to monitor the process that the student takes, I would be able to aid the student in producing a better paper. I had started the approach in one of my writing classes on having students submit brainstorming drafts into me, and an outline of the paper that they are going write. What I found shocking is that the students couldn’t make an outline, they were stuck.
I had to teach students how to a write an outline and what an outline should consist of. For the students, it went from them not knowing what they are going to write about to them having a formula to follow. Even though these pedagogical approaches are in the trial stages for me, I do see improvement. Students were able to form a four paragraph essay, the structure had changed. The next step is to take these rough drafts and have multiple peers edit each other’s work. They are to write a second draft, and I am to read it before I hand it back to them so that they will write their final edit.
I hope by the end of next semester that these students will be editing, processing and making meaning of their writing simultaneously. Even though this is a tall order to fill, my main goal is for them to be skilled enough to perform well on the English Regents. With these skills, I would want these strategies to be carried over in their post secondary education.
Zakaria 7
Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online
The media in which text is written upon has changed over the course of literate history. In this generation, most of the reading and writing that adolescents partake in are online or digitally based. The internet is “filled with popular culture content that attracts high school and college students” (Williams 1) which has them sit at the computer for hours on end.
Due to the increasing rate of use of online, adolescents are developing multiple literacies and skills to multitask. Adolescents listen to music, surf the web, read news articles, look up information, update their social networks, talk to their friends on AIM (Aol Instant Messenger), text their friends through their cell phone while finding a way to study for school all in-between (Williams 1-2). Adults may object to the heavy online use, but we need to closely look at the appeal of online use and its impact on literacy.
The use of online technology attracts students to become more involved with popular culture by having individual adolescents to become interactive with their interests.
Because of online use students learn “rhetorical concepts such as audience, genre, and authorship” (Williams 4). Online use has “individuals use discussion forums and webpages to comment publicly on or rewrite mass popular culture such as television, films, music, and computer games” (Williams 5). When the creators and producers of these forms of entertainment read what their fans have to say, they shape and reform popular culture.
The internet also provides multimodal content to users, “language and print literacy cannot provide the full meaning of the multimodal content that is obvious to
Zakaria 8
anyone within moments of connecting to the Internet” (Williams 7). When a user logs onto the internet, they are not just faced with text on the screen. Users also have images, sounds and video in conjunction to text. The use of other modes to enhance literacy influences the way content is created and understood. With access to the internet, users who are literate in Internet technologies have the ability to express themselves and create their own forums, which showcases their literacy in online use.
The convergence culture is when “computers and online technologies have transformed the era of mass popular culture into one of the participatory popular culture where the boundaries have been blurred between media and between producer and audience” (Williams 6). Williams believes that we “should focus on how the convergence of media and the interactive nature of online communications are changing the roles of both producer and audience member to those of participants in a social phenomenon” (6). This is when opportunities are presented to individuals who are the audience to become the producers.
By blogging, individuals who were first just a member of the Internet audience becomes an author (a producer). Individuals who create a blog creates a
“Web site in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. A blog consists of text, hypertext, images, and links to other Web pages and to video, audio, and other files. Blogging is an easy way of publishing your thoughts and ideas to the web” (Bell 75).
Blogs are like an empty book on the Internet. The user fills in the “empty pages”
Zakaria 9
with whatever content that they feel like showcasing. Blogs express the users ideas, emotions, thoughts, opinions, conversations they may have with other users and are continuously and regularly updated. Blogs are not only for the author to write what they want, but it encourages the readers of the blog to engage by commenting on the authors writing, or asking questions (Bell 75). Users also have a sense of ownership over their work too because “by writing about the text and reading and responding to ideas of others” individuals “take ownership for their meaning of the text” (Williams 40).
On a daily basis, adolescents are engaging in social interactions on the web through blogging. Because students are “reading and “writing” texts with print, images and video and sound” they “are learning about multimodal literacy through working with it day after day” (Williams 7-8). Multimodal media has changed the way young people read and write by having allowed “individuals to easily appropriate, reproduce, mix, and reconstruct any kind of popular culture material that is either online or that can be changed to digital form” (Williams 8).
Through this interaction with the Internet, adolescent’s skills in literacy has been shifting and changing. Williams defines literacy as “the way humans communicate ideas, concepts, and emotions to one another” because :humans are meaning-making creatures and we have learned to do so by creating representations of our ideas that can be interpreted by others when we are not present” (18).
When adolescents use the Internet they are expressing themselves through text, graphics, images, posting videos, arrangements of all of these medias on a webpage. Each aspect of their webpage “illustrates the arrangement of signs or symbols or images to
Zakaria 10
represent ideas” (Williams 18). The media in which individuals are literate has shifted because the “ability to use sign systems to compose and interpret texts that communicate ideas from one person to another” is most certainly represented through the internet. As adolescents move more towards the internet they are “employing across genres and technologies… mixing and matching different practices and skills to the variety of rhetorical contexts they encounter online” (Williams 19).
Adolescents have the options to choose between “print, image, video, sound, and all the potential combinations they could create to make a particular point with a specific audience“ (Williams 19). Therefore adolescents can still maintain their “rhetorical abilities of an individual to find a purpose, correctly analyze an audience, and communicate to that audience in a tone that audience will find persuasive, engaging, and intelligent” (Williams 19).
Zakaria 11
Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online Reflection
In New York City the same amount of funding is not distributed amongst every single school equally. What generally determines this is student achievement rates. The three factors that the school is judged on are graduation rates, scores on state standardized tests and the grades the students receive on their transcripts. With higher funding, certain schools receive various types of technologies to incorporate into their classroom. Smart boards are given to every single classroom, and computers and access to the Internet are readily available. Since most students have access to a computer and the Internet at home, they connect more to the lessons that are infused with technology.
Adolescents are used to dealing with technology at home for several hours, and when they enter their classroom, they can continue on with this form of media. And judging from my experience in observing classrooms that have technology incorporated, students seem more engaged and active in class.
Paper bound books, notebooks, pens and writing by hand seems so arbitrary for students. It’s hard to cope as a teacher, since students are moving forward with technology and the classroom that they are in seems to “hold them back.” My students always complain on why they cannot have a laptop in class, or why do they have to carry their books around with them. They have evolved passed the forms of media that I used frequently when I was in high school.
It also seems as if they feel like they are not worthy enough to receive privileges like the use of technology because the state did not deem the school worthy enough to invest technology into. I feel that student achievement rates really can increase through
Zakaria 12
the use of technology. I have been trying to somehow have students use technology at home so that they can receive credit in my class.
I give the students an option to type their essays to me and e-mail me their work. My students are not fans of handwriting their essays or most of their home-works. When I enforced (strictly) for students to give me hand written work they had resisted, and complained that they would do the work if they were allowed to type it at home. After weeks of having abysmal rates of completed work, I conceded. I told the students that they can type the work and e-mail it to me. I was skeptical at first. I believed that these students were just giving me another type of excuse, and even if I gave them the option to actually type the work and e-mail me their assignments, I still won’t have work handed in.
To my surprise, I opened up my e-mail and had about 75% of my student e-mail me their work. I was flabbergasted and stood corrected. I continued to let my students e-mail me their work. Their grades drastically improved for something as minute as having them e-mail me their work. But I had also realized that reading the e-mailed work was easier for me, since I am not spending an allotted amount of time deciphering the various handwritings.
Since the high school I work in has low achievement rates, with only about 50% of students graduating on time, it will take a long while (or never) for us to receive funding for technology to be used in every classroom. I most certainly can see the difference in student participation when it comes to the use of technology. I am trying to figure out other ways that I can incorporate technology so that my students can continue to do better in class.
Zakaria 13
Aurality and Multimodal Composing
In classrooms, the focus of most teachers is based around the mode of writing for their students. Many students are subjected to conform themselves to print literacy, while within the classroom many other modes of composing are ignored. Cynthia Selfe states that “print literacy works against the interests of individuals whose cultures and communities have managed to maintain a value on multiple modalities of expression, multiple and hybrid ways of knowing, communicating, and establishing identity” (618).
Everyday students are engaged in other ways of expressing their identity, style, ideas and interests, but these other outlets of expression are stifled in the classroom. A single mode of composing “deprive students of valuable semiotic resources for making meaning” (Selfe 617). Teachers ignore “the importance of aurality and other composing modalities for making meaning and understanding the world” (Selfe 617-618). English composition teachers not only limit their students, but their own ability as being effective teachers.
Aurality is perceiving through the ear. Aurality is a “complexly web of communicative practices that are received or perceived by the ear, including speech, sound, and music” (Self 646). Selfe states that “Anyone who has spent time on a college or university campus over the past few decades knows how fundamentally important students consider their sonic environments- the songs, music, and pod casts they produce and listen to” (617) even though in a classroom, teachers expect total silence from students when they are composing assignments in class.
It’s only been since the late 19th century that the focus within academia was on
Zakaria 14
writing. But in the 18th century and prior to that, most of the pedagogical focus was on oratorical education. Students learned how to “read, speak, and write both classical language and English through recitation… as well as oratorical performances, debates, orations, and declamations, both inside formal classes and in extracurricular settings” (Selfe 620). The goal of this was to prepare students for public speaking, which is mostly engaged in outside of the classroom now.
Teachers expect their students to write with a voice. Although voice naturally is direct link with aurality, writing has adopted the term to mean a “metaphorical language that remediate voice as a characteristic of written prose” (Selfe 630). But aurality was used in other ways in the classroom. Teachers had taped their comments to student works. By giving oral feedback to student’s written work this “allowed for a cleared acknowledgment of the “rhetorical nature” of response to a piece of writing because remarks could be “more detailed and expansive” and unfold across time” (Selfe 633). Teachers also give their lessons as lectures, very rarely in written form. Through the teacher’s aurality, they express their position of power over the students because authority is expressed through how much one is allowed to talk (Selfe 634).
Aurality is still one mode of composing. There needs to a combination of modalities within the classroom to have students express and make meaning. There needs to be a vaster range than speech and written text. People need other outlets. The Internet, digital audio, video scope, audio tracks, blogs, e-mails, social networks, and other digital environments and softwares are being used as other media as forms of expressions (Selfe 638- 639).
Zakaria 15
These other outlets are multimodal which indicates “the range of modalities- printed words, still and moving images, sound, speech, and music, color- that authors combine as they design texts” (Selfe 646). These other forms of modalities are looked down upon because for one’s ability to write equates to their intelligence and “those who do not privilege writing above all other forms of expression-those individuals and groups who have “other ways of knowing,” learning, and expressing themselves- may somehow lack intelligence (Selfe 644). Usually oppressed groups within America retained aurality as a means of expression. Since Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans were first persecuted for adopting skills to read and write, they kept oral traditions through storytelling (Selfe 623-625). Since Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans had other modalities of literacy, they were perceived as individuals who lacked intelligence.
Other forms of literacy and expression need to be incorporated into the classroom. A teacher’s responsibility is “to teach students effective, rhetorically based strategies for taking advantage of all available means of communicating effectively and productively as literate citizens” (Selfe 644).
The task for teachers to incorporate multimodal lessons and assignments are constrained. Due to school budget and lack of resources it’s difficult to incorporate forms of modalities of literacy. Even so, the standards are based around a students writing skill, even though students have many other means of self expression, reflection, and making meaning.
Zakaria 16
Aurality and Multimodal Composing Reflection
Many of my students are African Americans, and within their community and family, oral traditions are held in high esteem. Many of my students are able to express themselves through speech more comfortably than they are able to express themselves through writing on paper. I’ve asked my students before, “why don’t you put what you have to say on paper?” and they would respond with “because I won’t be heard.”
They feel as if their ideas and thoughts would have more of an impact when they speak up in class during group discussions because it’s effecting everyone in the room. When they write, it’s silent, and they feel as if they are not having an impact on anyone. As the teacher, they do not believe that they can have an impact on me because I am already knowledgeable about the lessons taught in class.
They are resistant to writing, partly because it’s cultural. Education is seen as stepping away from being African American. These students are trying to be white by being silent and compliant within a seat. By introducing aurality into the classroom, overtime students became less resistant in writing compositions.
During the beginning weeks of the semester, I had students give speeches about themselves, express themselves through poetry, or a rap, or artwork. By showing appreciation of their expression in which they are comfortable with, over the next few weeks, they started to take on assignments that they weren’t comfortable with, like writing essays.
Writing essays is a standard that each student has to master on some level, because their English Regents is based around writing four different types of essays. To have them
Zakaria 17
develop writing I had to improvise since my school does not have the budget to support multimodal compositions. I taught structure by having students draw out visual story boards on what they wanted to say in each essay, and have them translate the picture into paragraphs.
We centered a few essays around the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Before the students can read aloud the play, I played the first few pages on tape so they understood how they were supposed to read the text. For the students who could not visualize the play entirely, at the end of the play we had watched the movie.
The student’s skill levels in writing progressed because they had other modes of learning. They learned through audio and visuals, and produced compositions which was the standard. Even though for teachers who lack resources, there are ways to adapt multimodal composing into the classroom to help students express themselves more effectively.
Zakaria 18
Works Cited
Bell, Anne. “Blogging.” Exploring Web 2.0: Second Generation Interactive Tools- Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, Networking, Virtual Worlds, and More. Georgetown:Texas, 2009. 75-93. Print.
Brandt, Deborah. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Illinois, 1990. 13- 58. Print.
Self, Cynthia. “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multi-Modal
Composing.” College Composition and Communication, 60. (2009): 616-663.
Print.
Williams, Bronwyn T. “Everyone Gets a Say: Changes in Audience.” Shimmering Literacies: Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online. New York: New York, 2009. 1-61. Print.
Just Girls Discussion Flyer
Humaira Zakaria
ENGL B6400
Just Girls
Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High By Margaret J. Finders
This study was based on the Northern Hills Community District
-The school observed is homogeneous: Euro-American, affluent students.
-Socioeconomic status is 70% professional, 15% working class, 15% trailer park (families living in trailer parks receiving government aid).
Sociocultural Perspectives on Literacy
“Since language is a social event, communications can be understood and explained only within their connections to a concrete situation.” p. 8
-Speech mediates thought; what one thinks is based on social interrelationships (self is created through community).
-When people speak or write, they engage in a dialogue that is socially situated with power.
-Social roles shift depending on who is present.
Adolescent Girls: Shifting Conceptions
-Adolescence is a period of “storm and stress” (time consisting of conflict and mood swings).
-If there is a lack of stress, then there is a reason to worry.
-There are three factors that separate adolescent peer culture and adult society.
(1) Teens concern themselves with youthful hedonism instead of societal contributions.
(2) Popularity criteria- devalues academic achievement.
(3) Parents and children have opposite views on friends and dating partners.
-Gender attitudes are based in language and social practice.
-The “hierarchical structure of schools works against girls.
-Roles for girls falls under two categories; good girl or bad girl.
-Social role of a child has to be unlearned. Child was always dependant, subordinate and socially asexual, when children become adolescents, they have to unlearn these characteristics and develop new characteristics to cope with oncoming adulthood.
“Just Regular Girls”: Presenting Social Roles
Margaret J. Finders enters a 6th grade classroom. She observes that desks are clustered together and each cluster of desks had a friend circle. Each friend circle had a common genre of books being read.
-Two “jock” tables were reading Sports Illustrated, The Guiness Book of World Records, Beckett’s Guide to Baseball, and local newspapers.
-Two “nice girls” tables were reading Green Gables, Otherwise known as Sheila the Great and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
-Two “popular girls” tables were reading The Babysitter’s Club and Goosebumps.
-one “techno trio” table were reading science fiction and fantasy books.
The nice girls were categorized as being quiet and complacent.
The popular girls were categorized as being outgoing and participated in school sponsored functions.
-Literacy events in and out of school are where girls learns to read and write their roles and relationships. This is a passage into adulthood. Girls use literacy to control, moderate and measure their growth into adulthood.
Social Queens vs. Tough Cookies
-Go to games -live in trailer parks
-go to dances -stands up for themselves
-go to social events -family has public assistance
-have sleepovers -spend their time at home
-have an outgoing nature -aware of social groupings
Their literate choices are declarations of cultural masculine and feminine identification.
Official Expectations and Literate Underlife
Two Literate Systems
(1) Sanctioned literacies- those literacies that are recognized, circulated and sanctioned by adults in authority.
(2) Literate Underlife- the practice that refuse to accept the official view, practices designed to and enacted to challenge and disrupt the official expectations (break away from authority).
-this provides playtime away from adults to try on adult roles.
Girls use literacies to entertain themselves and avoid boredom.
-Jokes and Puns
-Create Signs
-Parody adults
-Design symbols with multiple meanings.
-The tough cookies and queens are regarded as good girls (ideal if they are nice, kind and helpful). Literate underlife is a way for girls to counter expectations.
Language Arts at Northern Hills Junior High School
-Teachers have common collaboration periods.
-There is a Language Arts office.
-Language arts curriculum includes workshops and writing process pedagogy (all student centered philosophy).
-Connects reading and writing to one’s personal background. This causes students to be comfortable with who they are).
-Reading, writing and speech activities build appreciation for themselves and others.
“What Junior High is All About”: Social Roles and the discourse of Adolescence.
(1) Adolescents sever ties with adults.
(2)Peer groups become increasingly influential social networks.
(3)Resistance is a sign of normalcy.
(4)Romance and sexual drive govern interests and relationships.
Due to these four factors of discourse, teachers direct themselves to be less personal and more academic.
Adolescence creates a screen. Attention is taken away from the reality of what the students live.
-“Terministic Screen”- filters attention toward and away from a version of reality- causing behaviors not seen by school personels.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1)On page 26-27, an overview is given of the Language Arts program at Northern Hills Junior High School. The curriculum is “student centered” by connecting reading and writing to one’s background. Students are to “gain fluency” through the readings they choose and what they choose to write about. Teachers have noted that students are enjoying their writings and will eventually improve their skills and learn to appreciate themselves and others. How is this type of method both positive and limiting? What other approaches can a junior high school teacher take to help develop skills and appreciation within students?
2) On page 28- 29, Mr. Stone had “constrained the kinds of relationships that he had formed with his seventh graders in comparison to his sixth graders. With his seventh graders, he told fewer stories about himself and became more guarded. For instructors, what are the possible advantages and disadvantages maintaining professional (and emotional) distance from girls enrolled in their junior high school classes? What is gained and what might be lost when instructors maintain professional/emotional distance from young female students in junior high school classes?
ENGL B6400
Just Girls
Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High By Margaret J. Finders
This study was based on the Northern Hills Community District
-The school observed is homogeneous: Euro-American, affluent students.
-Socioeconomic status is 70% professional, 15% working class, 15% trailer park (families living in trailer parks receiving government aid).
Sociocultural Perspectives on Literacy
“Since language is a social event, communications can be understood and explained only within their connections to a concrete situation.” p. 8
-Speech mediates thought; what one thinks is based on social interrelationships (self is created through community).
-When people speak or write, they engage in a dialogue that is socially situated with power.
-Social roles shift depending on who is present.
Adolescent Girls: Shifting Conceptions
-Adolescence is a period of “storm and stress” (time consisting of conflict and mood swings).
-If there is a lack of stress, then there is a reason to worry.
-There are three factors that separate adolescent peer culture and adult society.
(1) Teens concern themselves with youthful hedonism instead of societal contributions.
(2) Popularity criteria- devalues academic achievement.
(3) Parents and children have opposite views on friends and dating partners.
-Gender attitudes are based in language and social practice.
-The “hierarchical structure of schools works against girls.
-Roles for girls falls under two categories; good girl or bad girl.
-Social role of a child has to be unlearned. Child was always dependant, subordinate and socially asexual, when children become adolescents, they have to unlearn these characteristics and develop new characteristics to cope with oncoming adulthood.
“Just Regular Girls”: Presenting Social Roles
Margaret J. Finders enters a 6th grade classroom. She observes that desks are clustered together and each cluster of desks had a friend circle. Each friend circle had a common genre of books being read.
-Two “jock” tables were reading Sports Illustrated, The Guiness Book of World Records, Beckett’s Guide to Baseball, and local newspapers.
-Two “nice girls” tables were reading Green Gables, Otherwise known as Sheila the Great and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
-Two “popular girls” tables were reading The Babysitter’s Club and Goosebumps.
-one “techno trio” table were reading science fiction and fantasy books.
The nice girls were categorized as being quiet and complacent.
The popular girls were categorized as being outgoing and participated in school sponsored functions.
-Literacy events in and out of school are where girls learns to read and write their roles and relationships. This is a passage into adulthood. Girls use literacy to control, moderate and measure their growth into adulthood.
Social Queens vs. Tough Cookies
-Go to games -live in trailer parks
-go to dances -stands up for themselves
-go to social events -family has public assistance
-have sleepovers -spend their time at home
-have an outgoing nature -aware of social groupings
Their literate choices are declarations of cultural masculine and feminine identification.
Official Expectations and Literate Underlife
Two Literate Systems
(1) Sanctioned literacies- those literacies that are recognized, circulated and sanctioned by adults in authority.
(2) Literate Underlife- the practice that refuse to accept the official view, practices designed to and enacted to challenge and disrupt the official expectations (break away from authority).
-this provides playtime away from adults to try on adult roles.
Girls use literacies to entertain themselves and avoid boredom.
-Jokes and Puns
-Create Signs
-Parody adults
-Design symbols with multiple meanings.
-The tough cookies and queens are regarded as good girls (ideal if they are nice, kind and helpful). Literate underlife is a way for girls to counter expectations.
Language Arts at Northern Hills Junior High School
-Teachers have common collaboration periods.
-There is a Language Arts office.
-Language arts curriculum includes workshops and writing process pedagogy (all student centered philosophy).
-Connects reading and writing to one’s personal background. This causes students to be comfortable with who they are).
-Reading, writing and speech activities build appreciation for themselves and others.
“What Junior High is All About”: Social Roles and the discourse of Adolescence.
(1) Adolescents sever ties with adults.
(2)Peer groups become increasingly influential social networks.
(3)Resistance is a sign of normalcy.
(4)Romance and sexual drive govern interests and relationships.
Due to these four factors of discourse, teachers direct themselves to be less personal and more academic.
Adolescence creates a screen. Attention is taken away from the reality of what the students live.
-“Terministic Screen”- filters attention toward and away from a version of reality- causing behaviors not seen by school personels.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1)On page 26-27, an overview is given of the Language Arts program at Northern Hills Junior High School. The curriculum is “student centered” by connecting reading and writing to one’s background. Students are to “gain fluency” through the readings they choose and what they choose to write about. Teachers have noted that students are enjoying their writings and will eventually improve their skills and learn to appreciate themselves and others. How is this type of method both positive and limiting? What other approaches can a junior high school teacher take to help develop skills and appreciation within students?
2) On page 28- 29, Mr. Stone had “constrained the kinds of relationships that he had formed with his seventh graders in comparison to his sixth graders. With his seventh graders, he told fewer stories about himself and became more guarded. For instructors, what are the possible advantages and disadvantages maintaining professional (and emotional) distance from girls enrolled in their junior high school classes? What is gained and what might be lost when instructors maintain professional/emotional distance from young female students in junior high school classes?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Basic Rubric for Adult Literacy
This following weblink gives information the different levels of Adult Literacy.
This article compares NY adult literacy with the nation and information on why the literacy rates are not progressing in NYC, and this site gives a list of programs available for adults.
http://www.lacnyc.org/about/pressreleases/media_tipsheet.htm
This article compares NY adult literacy with the nation and information on why the literacy rates are not progressing in NYC, and this site gives a list of programs available for adults.
http://www.lacnyc.org/about/pressreleases/media_tipsheet.htm
Functional Literacy
Humaira Zakaria
Professor Gleason
Engl B6400
Functional Literacy
Literacy is a concept that is defined by a multitude of theoretical approaches. In simple terms, “literacy” is defined as the ability to read and write.
For an individual to be considered literate “relates to the ability to read and write at a functional level rather than at a highly developed level” (Blake and Blake 2), so if a person cannot function on a basic level they would be deemed illiterate, these individuals are “totally lacking in the ability to read and write and for persons with no or little education” (Blake and Blake 2). What is unfortunate is that people who are considered illiterate are seen in a way as if they are poor, ignorant and “below average intelligence” (Blake and Blake 11), but what defines who is literate and who is illiterate is dependant on society.
The idea of what makes a person literate shifts and changes by the institution defining literacy. “Different people and different societies will be conscious of themselves as users of language in different ways, and will display their awareness in different media and with different skills, yet each may be called literate” (Pattison 5). According to Blake and Blake, literacy “encompasses a wide variety of attitudes, beliefs, and power relations between individuals and group individuals” (1).
“The United States Census Bureau has measured literacy in two ways- in one test by the ability to read and write simple messages in any language, in another by years of schooling” ( Pattison 4). Another “kind of literacy holds a commanding position, that which comprises the ways of using language valued by the academy and the upper social classes with which it is associated” (Bizzell 141). The United States army defines literacy as the ability for a person to “read and write well enough to understand written instruction” (Pattison 4).
These definitions of literacy is marginalizing, and still does not grasp the scope of the range literacy falls under. According to Robert Pattison “the uses of language is the foundation of literacy, but the literate person must also be able to express this consciousness in the ways evolved and sanctioned by the culture in which he lives. At present American culture anticipates that its members shall be able to read and write, for us these skills are an intimate part of any definition of literacy” (Pattison 6).
The ability to simply read and write doesn’t exemplify if the individual can analyze and comprehend written material. Going to school for a number of years does not mean an individual is literate either, since there are many people who have been in school for a number of years and still cannot pass the state standardized tests that is the minimum requirement to earn a high school diploma (that’s supposed to be an individual’s achievement of literacy). Just because the upper-class have their own prescribed language and the rest of society does not fit their standards, doesn’t mean that there is a lack of literacy amongst the lower classes either. For the military to only require the ability to comprehend instructions doesn’t mean a person is specifically literate, just someone who can understand enough to take orders, but these individuals who can understand instruction well enough to function within the military are “literate enough,” these individuals are deemed functionally literate within the military environment.
To be functional means to have a direct fulfillment of a primary need. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) defines functional literacy as “a minimal level in which an individual demonstrates the ability to read and write a simple prose message, and a functional level, in which a person achieves a level of literacy high enough to function in a social setting” ( Blake and Blake 15).
Functional literacy is to have adequate enough skills to cope with the demands of everyday life; through the basic forms of reading and writing, we are able to be sufficient for everyday life tasks, but being merely functional is devoid of being autonomous. “Conventional literacy,” “survival literacy,” “marginal literacy.” and “functional adult literacy,” are other terms “attached to the idea of functional literacy” (Blake and Blake 14).
Functional literacy is determined by the society one lives in. Each society has their own standards on what a person needs to do to compensate and execute daily tasks. “A crucial element in an adequate definition of functional literacy is one’s performance in society” (Blake and Blake 15).
Since the society deems what is expectant of one’s literacy, a child is not capable of being functionally literate. “If functional literacy means success in various situations, individuals cannot be held accountable until they are able to practice these skills, at least until they near adulthood” (Blake and Blake 15). As children, we are learning to be literate; how to make references to the tangible and intangible: learn the alphabet: how to speak in social situations: how to write; and children do not take on completing daily tasks
without the aid of a supervising adult.
The Division of Adult Basic Education of the U.S. Office of Education states that individuals at the age of sixteen are to be functionally literate (Blake and Blake 15). But a teen in The United States cannot receive certain rights until the age of eighteen; the ages of sixteen to eighteen is then identified as the range for functional literacy because by sixteen we can receive working papers, learner’s permit to drive and by the time we are eighteen we are to “drive responsibly, be successful in the workplace, to be conscious of local, regional, national and global politics and economics, to take part in social and recreational activities, and to make decisions about what educational paths to follow” (Blake and Blake 16). Literacy is then referred for “adult or near adult abilities…” functional literacy then means “an acceptable grasp of the skills of reading and writing for
functioning in society as a young adult” (Blake and Blake 16).
Functional literacy is strictly connected to who a society deems an adult. Since being an adult, we are to be responsible for ourselves. There are numerous programs that have been developed to help adults become functionally literate within their society. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the skills that are needed to be literate are for “occupational, civic, community, and personal functioning… reading, writing, numeracy and document processing” (Blake and Blake 16-17). To have numerate literacy is for one to have skills as “basic addition and subtraction, comparisons (greater then, less than), dates, times” (Blake and Blake18). Document Literacy is to have “the capacity to make sense of documents, such as tax forms, television schedules, advertisements, and product labels” (Blake and Blake 20).
Functional literacy is not to be mistaken with functional illiteracy. Functional illiterates are people who “are able to read a recipe, follow a map, and work the keys of a McDonald’s cash register. On the other hand, they have trouble filling out a job application, typing data into a computer, using standard punctuation in a paragraph, getting their checkbooks to balance, or taking a written test for a driver’s license”(Blake and Blake 6). With functional illiterates they have trouble completing the tasks of day to day life, in contrast to functional literates that can complete their everyday tasks.
The line between functional literacy and illiteracy is blurred through the various perceptions of what literacy is. There will always be standards set into place on literacy by each individual society, and within that society there will be people beneath that standard. The standards of literacy will continue to shift and expand and there will be continuous debates and no single definition or criteria to define literacy.
Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia. “Arguing about Literacy.” College English. 50: 2 (1988): October 24, 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/377639
Blake, Brett Elizabeth and Robert W. Blake. Literacy: Primer. New York: New York, 2005. Print.
Pattison, Robert. On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock.. New York: New York, 1982. Print.
Professor Gleason
Engl B6400
Functional Literacy
Literacy is a concept that is defined by a multitude of theoretical approaches. In simple terms, “literacy” is defined as the ability to read and write.
For an individual to be considered literate “relates to the ability to read and write at a functional level rather than at a highly developed level” (Blake and Blake 2), so if a person cannot function on a basic level they would be deemed illiterate, these individuals are “totally lacking in the ability to read and write and for persons with no or little education” (Blake and Blake 2). What is unfortunate is that people who are considered illiterate are seen in a way as if they are poor, ignorant and “below average intelligence” (Blake and Blake 11), but what defines who is literate and who is illiterate is dependant on society.
The idea of what makes a person literate shifts and changes by the institution defining literacy. “Different people and different societies will be conscious of themselves as users of language in different ways, and will display their awareness in different media and with different skills, yet each may be called literate” (Pattison 5). According to Blake and Blake, literacy “encompasses a wide variety of attitudes, beliefs, and power relations between individuals and group individuals” (1).
“The United States Census Bureau has measured literacy in two ways- in one test by the ability to read and write simple messages in any language, in another by years of schooling” ( Pattison 4). Another “kind of literacy holds a commanding position, that which comprises the ways of using language valued by the academy and the upper social classes with which it is associated” (Bizzell 141). The United States army defines literacy as the ability for a person to “read and write well enough to understand written instruction” (Pattison 4).
These definitions of literacy is marginalizing, and still does not grasp the scope of the range literacy falls under. According to Robert Pattison “the uses of language is the foundation of literacy, but the literate person must also be able to express this consciousness in the ways evolved and sanctioned by the culture in which he lives. At present American culture anticipates that its members shall be able to read and write, for us these skills are an intimate part of any definition of literacy” (Pattison 6).
The ability to simply read and write doesn’t exemplify if the individual can analyze and comprehend written material. Going to school for a number of years does not mean an individual is literate either, since there are many people who have been in school for a number of years and still cannot pass the state standardized tests that is the minimum requirement to earn a high school diploma (that’s supposed to be an individual’s achievement of literacy). Just because the upper-class have their own prescribed language and the rest of society does not fit their standards, doesn’t mean that there is a lack of literacy amongst the lower classes either. For the military to only require the ability to comprehend instructions doesn’t mean a person is specifically literate, just someone who can understand enough to take orders, but these individuals who can understand instruction well enough to function within the military are “literate enough,” these individuals are deemed functionally literate within the military environment.
To be functional means to have a direct fulfillment of a primary need. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) defines functional literacy as “a minimal level in which an individual demonstrates the ability to read and write a simple prose message, and a functional level, in which a person achieves a level of literacy high enough to function in a social setting” ( Blake and Blake 15).
Functional literacy is to have adequate enough skills to cope with the demands of everyday life; through the basic forms of reading and writing, we are able to be sufficient for everyday life tasks, but being merely functional is devoid of being autonomous. “Conventional literacy,” “survival literacy,” “marginal literacy.” and “functional adult literacy,” are other terms “attached to the idea of functional literacy” (Blake and Blake 14).
Functional literacy is determined by the society one lives in. Each society has their own standards on what a person needs to do to compensate and execute daily tasks. “A crucial element in an adequate definition of functional literacy is one’s performance in society” (Blake and Blake 15).
Since the society deems what is expectant of one’s literacy, a child is not capable of being functionally literate. “If functional literacy means success in various situations, individuals cannot be held accountable until they are able to practice these skills, at least until they near adulthood” (Blake and Blake 15). As children, we are learning to be literate; how to make references to the tangible and intangible: learn the alphabet: how to speak in social situations: how to write; and children do not take on completing daily tasks
without the aid of a supervising adult.
The Division of Adult Basic Education of the U.S. Office of Education states that individuals at the age of sixteen are to be functionally literate (Blake and Blake 15). But a teen in The United States cannot receive certain rights until the age of eighteen; the ages of sixteen to eighteen is then identified as the range for functional literacy because by sixteen we can receive working papers, learner’s permit to drive and by the time we are eighteen we are to “drive responsibly, be successful in the workplace, to be conscious of local, regional, national and global politics and economics, to take part in social and recreational activities, and to make decisions about what educational paths to follow” (Blake and Blake 16). Literacy is then referred for “adult or near adult abilities…” functional literacy then means “an acceptable grasp of the skills of reading and writing for
functioning in society as a young adult” (Blake and Blake 16).
Functional literacy is strictly connected to who a society deems an adult. Since being an adult, we are to be responsible for ourselves. There are numerous programs that have been developed to help adults become functionally literate within their society. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the skills that are needed to be literate are for “occupational, civic, community, and personal functioning… reading, writing, numeracy and document processing” (Blake and Blake 16-17). To have numerate literacy is for one to have skills as “basic addition and subtraction, comparisons (greater then, less than), dates, times” (Blake and Blake18). Document Literacy is to have “the capacity to make sense of documents, such as tax forms, television schedules, advertisements, and product labels” (Blake and Blake 20).
Functional literacy is not to be mistaken with functional illiteracy. Functional illiterates are people who “are able to read a recipe, follow a map, and work the keys of a McDonald’s cash register. On the other hand, they have trouble filling out a job application, typing data into a computer, using standard punctuation in a paragraph, getting their checkbooks to balance, or taking a written test for a driver’s license”(Blake and Blake 6). With functional illiterates they have trouble completing the tasks of day to day life, in contrast to functional literates that can complete their everyday tasks.
The line between functional literacy and illiteracy is blurred through the various perceptions of what literacy is. There will always be standards set into place on literacy by each individual society, and within that society there will be people beneath that standard. The standards of literacy will continue to shift and expand and there will be continuous debates and no single definition or criteria to define literacy.
Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia. “Arguing about Literacy.” College English. 50: 2 (1988): October 24, 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/377639
Blake, Brett Elizabeth and Robert W. Blake. Literacy: Primer. New York: New York, 2005. Print.
Pattison, Robert. On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock.. New York: New York, 1982. Print.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Response to NYC Drop Out rates
Professor Gleason had asked me to summarize what I know about high school graduation rates- as of right now, I believe the NYC rate for graduating seniors is 51%, which means 49% of the other students drop out, or they graduate the next year or year after.
NYC is scrambling right now to increase the graduation rate, not the literacy rate. It's one huge issue that makes me angry with the NYC Dept of Education. Teachers are held specifically accountable for student achievement, and if a teacher has a low level class and students are truents, the teacher is punished. So teachers are more concerned with just passing students who did not deserve the grade of a 65. There are many teachers that pass every single student, and are rewarded and praised for "their good job". If the student barely attended school, they are eligible for a program called "credit recovery." With credit recovery students sit in their guidance counselors office and take an online test of 50- 100 questions, and that is supposed to be equivalent to a whole class semester. If they pass this test, they recover a credit that they didn't receive for failing a specific class. This whole system unermine's a teacher's authority because many students are responding with "I don't need this class, I can get credit recovery, I don't need to listen to you."
The problem isn't that the students are getting their high school diploma, the problem is that these students cannot make it to college or if they do get into college, they drop out very quickly. Students do not have the discipline, stamina or skills that they need to keep up with college work. This issue has been brought up to the administrators in my school, and the way that it's being handled is "after high school, they aren't our problem."
If students literacy and skill rates aren't our problem, then why are we teachers?
NYC is scrambling right now to increase the graduation rate, not the literacy rate. It's one huge issue that makes me angry with the NYC Dept of Education. Teachers are held specifically accountable for student achievement, and if a teacher has a low level class and students are truents, the teacher is punished. So teachers are more concerned with just passing students who did not deserve the grade of a 65. There are many teachers that pass every single student, and are rewarded and praised for "their good job". If the student barely attended school, they are eligible for a program called "credit recovery." With credit recovery students sit in their guidance counselors office and take an online test of 50- 100 questions, and that is supposed to be equivalent to a whole class semester. If they pass this test, they recover a credit that they didn't receive for failing a specific class. This whole system unermine's a teacher's authority because many students are responding with "I don't need this class, I can get credit recovery, I don't need to listen to you."
The problem isn't that the students are getting their high school diploma, the problem is that these students cannot make it to college or if they do get into college, they drop out very quickly. Students do not have the discipline, stamina or skills that they need to keep up with college work. This issue has been brought up to the administrators in my school, and the way that it's being handled is "after high school, they aren't our problem."
If students literacy and skill rates aren't our problem, then why are we teachers?
Saturday, September 19, 2009
NYC drop out rate
The following article raises attention to NYC drop out rates, that even though the graduation rate is going up, there are more factors that need attention about the many students who are not accounted for.
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3482&_kk=new%20york%20city%20graduation%20rates&_kt=5b81c2e4-d4b2-4fec-8380-a2ad1673151c&gclid=CPC13M_x_ZwCFVRM5QodAUFhbg
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3482&_kk=new%20york%20city%20graduation%20rates&_kt=5b81c2e4-d4b2-4fec-8380-a2ad1673151c&gclid=CPC13M_x_ZwCFVRM5QodAUFhbg
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Response to 'Literacy Primer', p. 1-48
"functionally illiterate" persons is as follows: They are able to read a recipe. follow a map, and work the keys of a McDonald's cash register... It is no wonder that such individuals believe themselves to be inferior to those who can read, write, and do simple mathematics in a seemingly effortless manner... the term 'illiteracy' is commonly associated with poverty and ignorance, for people who are supposedly of below average intelligence... we need to emphasize that these individuals are not somehow less intelligent or less worthy as human beings than those who are able to read and write."- Blake and Blake p.6- 11
Today was my first day back for the start of my third school year, and what I had experienced with my first semester of teaching had been solidified through the bickering of my colleagues. Some of my colleagues have had the privilege of only teaching honors students since they first started teaching and have no idea what it is like to teach low level students. But their main complaint was when they receive their new batch of honor students that these students don't know anything, and that their previous teacher should have taught them... but what do these teachers end up teaching if the previous teacher before them is supposed to only teach them skills? What happened to their responsibility?
When I had first started teaching, I had a ninth grade class that was comprised of students that were deemed "functionally illiterate" and were treated that way when starting the new school year. The curriculum that was given to me exemplified that these students were not worthy of learning meaningful information, instead the curriculum that was given was so oversimplified, that the students in other classes with the same curriculum knew that the teachers thought less of them as actual students.
The common excuse that I have heard throughout today was "They should have learned this by now" and since they haven't no one wants to take responsibility to teach what they should know.
Just because these student should have been taught certain things by a certain point in their lives, doesn't mean that they have been, and I realized today, because certain people excuse away what they don't know and do not take action, these students stay functionally illiterate. It dawned on me that these students had been left behind, and they learned how to cope and go through the motions to barely get by in school.
If their teachers believe that their student's previous teacher should have taught them, then nothing gets taught to these students, and most student just give up. The student's are in a frustrating situation, they do not have the skills but then aren't helped in achieving, and are then punished by failing grades.
Today was my first day back for the start of my third school year, and what I had experienced with my first semester of teaching had been solidified through the bickering of my colleagues. Some of my colleagues have had the privilege of only teaching honors students since they first started teaching and have no idea what it is like to teach low level students. But their main complaint was when they receive their new batch of honor students that these students don't know anything, and that their previous teacher should have taught them... but what do these teachers end up teaching if the previous teacher before them is supposed to only teach them skills? What happened to their responsibility?
When I had first started teaching, I had a ninth grade class that was comprised of students that were deemed "functionally illiterate" and were treated that way when starting the new school year. The curriculum that was given to me exemplified that these students were not worthy of learning meaningful information, instead the curriculum that was given was so oversimplified, that the students in other classes with the same curriculum knew that the teachers thought less of them as actual students.
The common excuse that I have heard throughout today was "They should have learned this by now" and since they haven't no one wants to take responsibility to teach what they should know.
Just because these student should have been taught certain things by a certain point in their lives, doesn't mean that they have been, and I realized today, because certain people excuse away what they don't know and do not take action, these students stay functionally illiterate. It dawned on me that these students had been left behind, and they learned how to cope and go through the motions to barely get by in school.
If their teachers believe that their student's previous teacher should have taught them, then nothing gets taught to these students, and most student just give up. The student's are in a frustrating situation, they do not have the skills but then aren't helped in achieving, and are then punished by failing grades.
Learning is Power
Here is a video about an adult learning center and it's students. The adults in the video give their reasons on why they want to increase their literacy, and the problems that they faced from not being as literate. The video gives a real perspective on adult motivation on wanting to learn how to read and write better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PI2pFw5avc&feature=PlayList&p=05B3DEB1E0E9DE39&index=16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PI2pFw5avc&feature=PlayList&p=05B3DEB1E0E9DE39&index=16
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)