Stepping Outside the Box
Is there a direct definition of what it means to be literate? According to James Paul Gee in Literacy and Education, literacy has different effects in different contexts and cultures (Gee, 2015, p.48). Context would include the setting of where the literacy is whether it is in a classroom or on the internet, while culture would be influenced by someone’s background, where they come from, and their experiences. In Unflattening, Nick Sousanis suggests we all have frames of reference from which to see the same world differently (Sousanis, 2015, p.96). So can there be just one definition of being literate?
According to school standards the answer is yes. We fit students into a box by subjecting them to periodic examinations in order to determine how they measure up, and squeezing them into the same slots resulting in standardization (Sousanis, 2015, p.12–13). “The primary function of the school is to impart what are called “basic skills,” reading, writing, and arithmetic” (Olson, 1996, 1). Literacy in a school means that a student can read and write. However, reading and writing might not be the same in all subjects. English may require being able to read a book and do a book report, while science may require reading a lab report, analyzing data, and researching credible sources. Both subjects should have different standards for literacy. As teachers we should make sure students are literate in all the different forms of literacy.
Literacy can come in all different forms, not just writing. As we discussed in class, there are many forms of reading and writing. You can look at a picture of someone and read their body language to understand what they are saying. Movies, such as The Kid starring Charlie Chapin, started out as just picture shows without sound, and yet people would go to see them while understanding what the movie was communicating to them. This is a form of literacy in that it is communicating to an audience by reading body language, recognizing the setting, and pulling from our own experiences to understand. We extend our capacity for thought and give rise to more abstracted concepts primarily from experiences (Sousanis, 2015, p. 76). Words in text are given meaning through images, actions, goals, results, and interactive dialogue (Gee, 2015, p.90). In today’s world literacy has expanded into many forms beyond just being able to read and write.
Now days there are social media and the Internet that in each aspect has a different form of literacy then what you learn in school. Kids use short hand and made up abbreviations to text friends to communicate with each other.
If you do not know the short hand, like most adults, does that make you illiterate? To the next generation it does.
Even on social media there are different forms of literacy depending on the site. Facebook and Instagram are different in that Instagram is more about the picture and the clever caption to go with it, while Facebook is more a general post in writing. LinkedIn is a professional social media site where you would not post the same things as Facebook or Instagram. Pinterest is more pictures with links to a website and you post pins to a board that relate to you and your life. The Internet has brought unique dimensions to both the speed and the scale of change in the technology for literacy, driving society to directly confront the issue of new literacies (Corio, Knobel, Lankshear, Leu, 2014, p.2). So where do we go from here?
I believe in today’s time we must expanded our idea of what literacy means. In class we discussed how reading comprehension is influenced by characteristics of the reader, the text, and the content. This means that both the writer and the reader might have different understandings of words depending on their background. Social media sees this problem all the time with a variety of people being able to view the Internet all over the world. People have different interpretations of words, pictures, and videos shown on the Internet. Even though most people can read or understand what is trying to be told through a picture or video, people must remember that every reader brings different characteristics with them. When reading a fictional novel that is made into a movie the main characters might not be how you actually pictured them to be while reading. This is because everyone’s imagination is different. So if literacy uses your imagination, should it be put into a box based on what the standards are to be literate? “Dimensions curled up within us accessible only through imagination” (Sousanis, 2015, p.96). Sousanis, also, adds how imagination offers a different vantage point (Sousanis, 2015, p.93). In conclusion, I conceive that the definition of being literate is not a straight forward answer of being able to read and write, but yet looking outside of the box to where someone is able to communicate and understand whether it is through writing, pictures, or videos.
Sources:
Chaplin, C. (Director). (1921). The Kid [Video file]. USA: Charles Chaplin Productions. Retrieved September 4, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ox4Nb64TMg.
Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. J. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nc2oAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=internet+literacy&ots=CyI4Na6X0y&sig=uDzEJnLwAihcLN_1PylYjBCb9tk#v=onepage&q=internet%20literacy&f=false.
Gee, J. P. (2015). Literacy and Education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Olson, D. R. (1994). The world on paper. The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Ky6Dt-650rsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR10&dq=The+world+on+paper:+the+conceptual+and+cognitive+implications+of+writing+and+reading&ots=8VGxGA8seC&sig=NfbAFiUgqEXptM3Ur7jRQUKLC74#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Sousanis, N. (2015). Unflattening. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
