Is it Literate to be Illiterate?

https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown/details#t-12089

What does it really mean to be literate in today’s society where hundreds of languages are spread across billions of people, where video games, television shows and movies have created languages of their own, where sports have their own language and symbolism in their own right and along with so many other language spectrums that new technology has brought into our world today. However the online Marriam-Webster Dictionary would define literate as being “able to read and write; versed literature in creative writing.” (Literate, Marriam-Webster) This in today’s day and age and the complexity of what students pick up on versus what they do not pick up on is a very limited definition. Zachary Nicol states in his video that “Students are already creators, innovators, and engineers of social media in their time.” (Nicol, YouTube what is Literacy?) The truth is that the majority of the academic world sees this as a very black and white answer, however this era of technology and academia is displaying that being literate can be a very gray area.
If we continue to judge students simply on their ability to read write then we will continue to have students that firmly believe that they are ‘not smart enough’ to fit into the classroom or into society. Personally, I have experienced and witnessed this first hand with the high school and middle schools I attended. My friends and I were not as good of readers or test takers (hated to be called to read during class) as some of the other students during our time at these schools. We just assumed that we were just not all that smart because we did not read as well, test as well, or especially score as well on standardized tests as these other kids. Also as result of this notion, we just simply did not try all that hard on things that had to do with or even sound academic. Now I am not placing 100 percent blame on society and these schools, a lot of it was just that we should have been motivating ourselves to do simple tasks and that was at the fault of our own accords. The statement that should be made here is, if there were more teachers telling students that each student has their own kind of specialty of what they are good at, maybe there would be more students that tried harder. If teachers would tell students “Well, you may not be able to solve a scientific equation as well as this kid, but I would bet that this kid does not understand how and why a football play unfolds the way that it does.” Gee even says that “We have also seen that early non-cognitive skills correlate with school success as well.” (Gee, 70) This statement means that sometimes early on, students may not seem smart but later on if the student will develop skills if the culture around them allows them to do so. Each student is good or passionate about something, which is why society has got to stop telling them that being literate is only black and white.
There are so many different platforms for what being literate and understanding someone who is using that same platform in today that we could not even begin to think how many unalike concepts there are out there. Gee states that “There are regional and ethnic dialects, academic varieties of language and varieties used by gangs, lawyers and bankers.” (Gee, 83) Now how often are gangs and lawyers used in the same sentence when it comes to being literate? What Gee is saying that though they come from different backgrounds and diverse academic levels, they still have a language within their own group that the majority of others would not understand? Does that make the lawyer illiterate because he does not understand how a gang operates? No, he is simply not literate within that context. This is the way that we must begin to think.
Sousanis states in his book that “We can’t help but see in relation.” (Sousanis, 74) This is showing that there are somethings that would be a lot easier to comprehend if we had it laid out in terms that related to us. Gee takes this idea a step further by saying “When I say to a baseball fan it was a ‘foul tip,’ the fan sees the meaning in his or her mind thanks to his or her experience with the game. The fan does not think it means a foul piece of advice.” (Gee, 84) Everybody has different experiences and these experiences give them different meanings. Sousanis goes into this by saying “Rather than funneling our time here down narrow paths, following a series of prescribed steps, let us open this out . . . and see what possibilities emerge when we author paths as uniquely our own as our feet themselves, in shoe sizes determined by the wearer.” (Sousanis, 147–148) Sunni Brown talks in her TED Talks video about how doodling is perceived as this off-task idiotic thing throughout history but if we took a step back looked at studies, it shows that doodling can very beneficial to learning if the doodling is on task. (Brown, TED Talks) She also says that “. . . doodling has a profound impact on the way that we can process information and the way that we can solve problems.” (Brown, TED Talks) This is just one of the many examples of something that is perceived at ‘not smart’ can have a very big impact on how kids process information.
Kids today can pick up on so many different languages, whether it is body language, sport lingo, video or card game language, or even simply English. Teachers must celebrate that there is no longer a black and white version of being literate. Rather as teachers, we must incorporate these different variations of being literate into our classrooms in order to capture the attention of the student’s mind.

Works Cited
Brown, Sunni. (March 2011). Doodlers, Unite!. Long Beach, California. Accessed September 6, 2017. https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown/details#t-12089.
Gee, James Paul. (2015). Literacy and education. New York: Routledge
Literate. (n.d.). Retrieved September 7, 2017 from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literate.
Nicol, Zachary. (2014, August 10). What is Literacy in the 21st Century?. Boston, Massachusetts. Accessed September 6, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0poR8zfAls.
Sousanis, Nick. (2015). Unflattening. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.