“Melting Snowflakes”
In my search for a definition for literacy, I began precisely where I was taught in school to look for the meanings of words I did not know: a dictionary. Mr. Webster offered me this…
Literate (adj. lit·er·ate): 1a. Educated, cultured; 1b. Able to read and write.
…which consequently led me to the following:
Educate (v. ed·u·cate): 3. To persuade or condition to feel, believe, or act in a desired way.
According to Mr. Webster, it seems, a literate person is educated, and an educated person is someone who has been persuaded to believe certain things. Now, I would consider myself to be a fairly literate and educated individual — surely, sixteen years of schooling must count for something, right? But were those sixteen years of being “educated” simply a conditioning, forcing me to believe and act in a desired way? Hundreds of scantrons were filled with marks from my lead, as I neatly filled in bubble after bubble, never thinking to veer outside the lines. Given four answer choices, I always chose the “correct” one, never wondering if there could be more than just four possibilities. Rewards were given to me in number form — 95, 99, 96, 100 — and more bubbles were filled in. Perhaps Mr. Webster was correct…
“But he can’t possibly be!” my mind screams at me. These definitions are far too constraining, far too limiting. I can’t possibly believe literacy is confined to a circle as neat and round as the bubbles on a scantron.
In the words of Kurt Vonnegut (1969), “so it goes” (p.26). My search for literacy continued.
Driving to Greenville the other morning, I listened to a podcast by Colin Wright that shed a little light on the definition of literacy. In “Grays,” Wright (2016) expresses concern over the growing tribalism of our world, which has led to the extremism seen in politics, religion, sports, brands, and nearly every other aspect of our lives. We have eliminated the grays, and, left only with black and white, we form what he calls “filter bubbles.” Within these bubbles, we are surrounded only by people who agree with us, leading us to “reinforce certain ideas… and keeping us from imagining how things might be [from other perspectives]” (Wright, 2016, 33:30). We begin to reject any ideas that challenge our own paradigms and lose our empathy for different paradigms. We trap ourselves into a single bubble “when ideas are written in stone with the certainty that we got it right” (Sousanis, 2015, p. 110). If our bubble is the “correct” bubble, why would we ever try to escape its boundaries? This is the problem with our current view of literacy — we are confined to a single definition that forces us to believe and act in a single, desired way. To be literate is not to narrow oneself, but rather to expand oneself.
The great Sir Ken Robinson (2010) addresses a model of convergent and divergent thinking, suggesting that our ability to see many possible answers to a question tends to deteriorate the longer we are in school (9:48). A longitudinal study was performed with 1,500 kindergarteners who were asked how many different uses they could come up with for a paper clip (pause for a moment and try to answer this question yourself — it’s much harder than you might think). Ninety-eight percent of the students came up with enough uses (over 100) to be considered “genius.” However, when tested five years later, only 32 percent of the students scored that high. I daresay Mr. Webster would certainly agree that these students were now educated, persuaded into a single view of a paper clip as a device merely used to hold papers together.
Bill Watterson echoes this idea of the narrowing effect of education in his sketch of Calvin presenting a snowflake to his classmates. Outside of the classroom, the snowflake is unique, an individual work of art, but inside, the snowflake turns into a boring drop of water, just like every other drop of water (Watterson). The diversity of snowflakes results from the environment surrounding their creation, including humidity and temperature (Griffin, 2011). An education that focuses only on convergent thinking and the “correct” answer results in a pool of melted snowflakes. How quickly we flatten our students, turning them into identical droplets of water, instead of appreciating the various dimensions and literacies each child brings.
In the words of Kahlil Gibran (1923), “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth’” (p. 54). So, how is it that our eyes can instinctively hold multiple views of a plate (as both an ellipse and a circle) in order to negotiate our experience and perception of that plate, but we are largely incapable of cognitively holding (or at least recognizing) multiple views? (Sousanis, 2015, p. 73). Why is it so difficult for us to accept that different people have different experiences that shape their different perceptions? My dad once taught me a very important lesson: “It is okay to agree to disagree.” We can, and we will, have different discourses — and that is okay! I fear that our generation, and those before us, are not nearly as literate as we might have once thought. We have merely been the receivers and transmitters of learning, confining ourselves to a single path (Gee, 2015, p. 46).
So, this is the part where I am finally able to answer the question of what it means to be literate, not with the “correct” answer, but with an answer, one of many: to be literate is to forever be in a dynamic dance between my own discourses and the discourses of others, always open to the incorporation of a new step or move and aware of the necessity of every different step (Sousanis, 2016, p. 38). A literate individual “openly and honestly acknowledges the values, ideologies, and worldviews” that color our perceptions and the perceptions of others (Gee, 2015, p. 46). A literate individual can not only move between their different views, but makes a real effort to understand the views seen by others. A literate individual is not conditioned to believe, act, and feel in one, desired way. A literate individual sees the beauty of many possibilities, many dimensions, and many snowflakes. A literate individual is unflattened.
Sources
Educate (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary online. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/educating
Gee, J.P. (2015). Literacy and education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Green, K. (1923). The Prophet. New York, NY: Alfred Knopf.
Griffin, J. (2011). The Science of Snowflakes, and Why No Two Are Alike. PBS NewsHour. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/the-science-of-snowflakes/
Literate. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary online. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literate#h1
RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms. (2010, Oct. 14). Video retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Sousanis, N. (2015). Unflattening. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse Five. New York, NY: Delacorte.
Watterson, B. Calvin and Hobbes. Image retrieved from http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lvq4K8ebNXk/T4uUhipq0YI/AAAAAAAACFQ/o13K4Y5nbEc/s640/CalvinSnowflake.gif
Wright, C. (2016, July 27). Grays. Let’s Know Things. Podcast retrieved from http://letsknowthings.com/episode8/
