Week 9: Teaching Literacies

Deborah Brandt Literacy in American Lives
As I was reading through this book, one particularly fresh idea struck me and then stuck with me, overshadowing how I read the rest of the chapters. Brandt poses a question early on: “What might we gain by approaching learning disturbances in reading and writing not as individual difficulties but as the perpetual condition in which all of us are forced to function?” (p.44). This made me consider multiple dimensions to literacy that seem so natural now, and yet had never occurred to me. I think this represents a very important shift from blaming the individual who has not acquired literacy to placing the fault on society, as literacy or illiteracy become social responsibilities. Obviously literacy is a personal endeavor; however, people become literate in any sense of the meaning in order to keep up with and contribute to society. Naturally, society should pick up the slack and provide additional resources to help teach the people struggling to read or write. Not only does this take the spotlight of the person attempting to learn, who is often ostracized for their lack of literate abilities, but also it more actively incorporates the social pressures that are shaping the meaning of literacy anyway.

I believe this means there must be significant changes to the way literacy is currently taught, enabling a closer final learning of literacy to what society will demand of the individual when they are considered literate. In a world of constant technological development, the practicality of individual literacy is also constantly shifting. However, the social institutions in place, like schools and their curricula, are not being correspondingly updated to address the new demands society will place on younger generations to handle new problems. The idea of illiteracy/literacy as a social function is very interesting, and has serious yet very sensible ramifications for society as a whole. We will be able to reap the benefits of more members actively contributing to the direction our society takes if we could increase the level of practical, relevant literacy amongst those currently marginalize by their traditional or technological illiteracy; but, these benefits will need to be cultivated first through new social programs or realignment of current social institutions to meet the changing demands people will be forced to confront in the working, real world.