What are we doing wrong when it comes to adolescent literacy?
The concept of teaching the world how to read is not new. In 1960, Cuba committed itself to teaching every citizen how to read. In 2001, the United States (or rather the George W. Bush administration) implemented No Child Left Behind legislation to recognize the importance of literacy education. However, many argue that it hasn’t helped. In fact, the legislation has been critiqued heavily for manifesting more problems than it aimed to solve. We have also seen literacy campaigns such as #ReadOutLoud, D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read), Project Literacy, and many, many more over the last 50 years. While it’s hard to knock the ambitions of these campaigns, there isn’t much evidence to suggest that any of them have been successful. Depending on how you define literacy, the number of illiterate Americans ranges from 32 million to 40 million.
So, what’s the problem? We clearly recognize the importance of being able to read and write. We clearly have both the motivation and the resources to combat illiteracy in the United States (and arguably the world). Or do we?
Based on the way in which our model of education in the United States operates, most Americans learn to read and write successfully in their early adolescent years. Research tells us this time period is extremely formative when it comes to mastering lifelong skills. Thus, it should be pretty simple to make the connection between literacy campaigns and the education of adolescents. But are we doing that? In my view, the problem (especially in the United States) with illiteracy is two-fold relating to how we (mis)use our resources: 1) we aren’t focusing enough on the illiterate population in adolescence and 2) we have an outdated conceptualization of literacy. To prove the importance of combining these two points — or the danger of not combining them — take a look at the video below (especially around the 2:50 mark).
Julianne Moore, who plays President Coin in The Hunger Games series, should be praised for her involvement with Project Literacy. Adolescents will surely recognize her from the dystopian series they love. She has clout with the adolescent crowd, so I can see how she/Project Literacy thinks this might be enough to encourage adolescents to be interested in literacy (i.e. to read). I, however, disagree. From what I can tell from their website, Project Literacy focuses primarily on reading and writing. Their main investor is the British-owned textbook and assessment giant, Pearson. I have to wonder if Moore has read Curwood’s article (2013), which points out the importance of multimodality on adolescent literacy through analyzing a young boy’s use of a Hunger Games website. Based on the approach taken by Project Literacy, I’m going to assume that she hasn’t, but I can’t help but think that if she did read it, her approach to Project Literacy would be much different. I find it ironic that Moore/President Coin is a multimodal character who, as it appears, does not recognize the impact of said multimodality on young readers/consumers of information.
It seems to me that the best hope for the future in teaching literacy comes down to how we view adolescent literacy. Sousanis’ Unflattening (2015) is a first step in getting us away from the traditional Western way of thinking that words take precedence over other forms of media. The book’s claim that we must be willing to examine differing perspectives along with varying forms of discourse to access new modes of understanding and knowledge seems paramount to teaching adolescent literacy. In a less abstract way, Rosewell and Burke (2009) demonstrate this principle through the literacy practices of Peter and Patty. I believe strongly (and Sousanis, Rosewell and Burke’s research echos this idea) that the question of literacy and adolescents comes down to one answer: Adolescents will successfully internalize what they learn from the texts that interest them, and they will interact with those texts in the ways that interest them if we simply provide them with the opportunitues to do so.
References
(2016, September 8). Julianne Moore On Project Literacy, Her Children’s Books And More | TODAY. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6uicmOUrLQ
Illiteracy statistics. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read
Curwood, J. S. (2013). The Hunger Games: Literature, literacy, and online affinity spaces. Language Arts, 90(6).
Jackson, A. (2015 3). 3 big ways No Child Left Behind failed. Business Insider.
Latin lessons: What can we learn from the world’s most ambitious literacy campaign? (2010, June 10). Independent.
Rosewell, J., & Burke, A. (2009). Reading by design: Two case studies of digital literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(2). doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.2.2
Sousanis, N. (2016). Unflattening. Boston: Harvard University Press.
