Literacy Has Layers
In the past literacy has been used to divide those who can read text on a page from those that cannot, becoming a way societies uphold a standard of competence that rewards those who follow suit and adopt a certain mindset. Over time the modes of communicating written text have multiplied and specialized, resulting in the evolution of a different kind of literacy in today’s world; and as our world becomes increasingly interconnected, our definition of what it means to be literate becomes multifaceted and interdependent.
The problem that is birthed by the increasing specialization in modes of presenting text is the tunnel vision one naturally fields when interacting with different types of media. This dilemma is compounded by the rigid beliefs held by those who wish to label others’ literacy. Troubles in ascribing literacy to others stems from the belief held by many that literacy is still just learning how to read and write in some standardized fashion. For example, in Gee’s book Literacy and Education (2015) there is an elementary school teacher who requires the kids to give a report during show and tell, with the educator looking for a specific framework for a response. One child, an African-American girl named Leona, gave an answer that reflected the influence of her culture on how she portrays events happening, but differed from what the teacher proscribed as the correct answer. Although while I was reading her rendition I was also listening to rap music, which paved the way for my mind to follow and even silently praise Leona’s unappreciated use of bars and rhymes. But in proscribing her tale as illiterate and wrong, the teacher reinforced a fixed view of what literacy means instead of looking at the cultural perspective (p. 5–7). Our society mirrors that fixed view by throwing around negative labels and proscribing infamous traits to the literary expression of rap music. Rhythm and poetry, as a means to recreating a story, has been passed down through the generations ever since spoken language sought to remember events. Today, rap music is as undervalued for its literary devices and perspective shifts as the little girl was in her retelling of events. In the song “Accordion” by Madvillain, the MC gives the lines “Slip like Freudian, your first and last step to playing yourself like accordion”.
In these lines he makes the connection between a Freudian slip, or when your brain out plays you by letting some knowledge slip, and playing an accordion, where the musician has to move it back and forth against their hands to produce a sound. Naturally the music playing in the background is an accordion and gives the sense of a rise and fall or back and forth motion throughout the song. This layering of media and literary devices mirrors how society presents material and text to the population. Wide lenses are needed to gather and observe all of the components acting on each other, in contrast to a fixed view that doesn’t account for interaction between media.
Enforcing fixed views over a wider perception on what literacy is and what it can be applied to hinders the development of one’s literary and creative self. In Ken Robinson’s TED talk on whether schools kill creativity, he reiterates the idea that if one “is not prepared to be wrong, then they won’t come up with anything original”.
Originality needs pioneer thinking to proliferate; and that pioneer thinking needs the mind to stretch the bounds of the normal thought processes and consider different perspectives. Similar to how our eyes refresh our view as we move around in our environment, so must we be able to change our perspectives and ways of thinking in order to fully understand our experiences and learn from them (Sousanis 2015, p. 150–151). There is a reason why it takes frontal binary vision to generate depth; multiple perspectives are needed in order to map the environment that an object is in. Another line of Madvillain’s song “Accordion” reads “Just keep ya eye out, like ‘Aye, aye captain’”, with the obvious play on words from “eye” to “aye, aye”. But delving deeper into the meaning of the use of homophones in this line yields a third “eye” sound, alluding to the use of the third eye or inner eye, which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. Our understanding and perceptions of text are may not be limited to how we physically see something, rather it is interdependent on other modes of vision.
Once we understand that reading text and interacting with text requires us to read and interact with the world, we can begin to understand just how our own discourses affect our coloring of reality and how we interpret text. Freire (1985) expounds on that idea when he states, “reading is a matter of studying reality that is alive, reality that we are living inside of, reality as history being made and also making us” (p. 5) Identifying the different ways text is shared and how the motives behind the varying mediums will help develop and teach our mind to become more fluid and adapting of the changing media. By identifying the dimensionality of being literate in multiple contexts, we can better achieve literary proficiency and truly be able to see the world.
Dumile, D. (2004). Accordian [Recorded by Madlib]. On Madvillainy [CD.]. Los Angeles, CA: Stones Throw Records.
Freire, P. (1985). Reading the World and Reading the Word: An Interview with Paulo Freire. Language Arts, 62(1), 15–21. Retrieved April 29, 2017.
Gee, J. P. (2015). Literacy and education. New York: Routledge.
Sousanis, N. (2015). Unflattening. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
TEDTalks: Sir Ken Robinson — Do Schools Kill Creativity? [Video file]. (2006, February). Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
