everyday literacy demands (eating at MacDonald's in New York City)

Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Sat, 13 Apr 1996 20:02:07 -0400 (EDT)

Hi fellow xmca-ers,

Before throwing myself back to my work world on Monday (when i'll fly
back to Hong Kong from Toronto), I'll indulge myself for a bit longer in
doing xmca e-mail-- and some musings on some mundane events... the
object of my reflection is this question:

What is literacy? And what is leteracy, say, for an immigrant adolescent
in the U.S.?

* * *
I was having my lunch alone at the MacDonald's last Sunday in Manhattan,
New York City. It was raining outside and I was a total stranger in
town. Luckily, I always feel comfortable at the MacDonald's, as usually no
one will bother you even if you're sitting alone. I had a medium coke,
and there's this strip-and-scratch game: you strip off the question paper
from the cup of your drink, and scratch one box which contains an answer
to a question asked about some factual details of a Walt Disney family
vidieo (e.g., the Jungle Book). You get a prize (e.g., a free small
drink) if your scratch the box that contains the correct answer. I haven't
watched any of these videos, but by guessing from my "common sense"
knowledge, I scratched the right box and on which, it was printed:
"wn free small drink".

Sitting at a table next to me were three Asian girls, who looked like 15 or
16 years old, chatting livelily in a language that sounded familiar and
yet not intelligible to me. ... well,
obviously having noticed me scratching on the question paper, one girl
suddenly jumped close to me and showed me all the three question papers,
on which all boxes had been scratched, and asked me if they all had won
the prizes. I rthat since they had scratched all the boxes,
there would not be any prizes for them, as they could scratch only ONE box.
She looked bewildered, and reached for my question paper, gesturing to me
that I should scratch all the boxes instead of only one. She almost
started scratching them for me! :-) I smiled and explained again that
ONLY ONE box could be scratched, this time reading out the instruction on
the qeustion paper to them: "void if more than one box scratched". The girl
still looked incredulous; drew even closer to me, and almost grabbed my
question paper to start scratching the other boxes... She did not seem
to understand the "instruction" at all, and could not reconcile herself
with this rule of the game, even if she seemed to understand my words
"ONLY ONE" and my gestures.

I wished there were some way of explaining to her, but English wasn't the
right tool at all at that time; luckily, one of the girls started to
speak in Cantonese (which happens to be my first language), asking
whether I meant only one box can be scratched. I immediately switched to
Cantonese to say yes, and explained the meaning of the
sentence "void if...." to them. They looked VERY DISAPPOINTEDbut this
time seemed better able to reconcile themeselves with this rule of the
game, and said goodbye to me.

* * *
I realize that what seems so taken-for-grantedly easy for some of us
actually
presupposes a lot of linguistic/cultural capital: the rules of such a simple
game are by no means transparent; the short instruction sentence can
appear to be difficult, e.g., the word "void" may pose difficulties to
the girl, and of course, to play well in the game, you have to have a lot of
"common sense" which
is culturally-specific (e.g., having watched Walt Disney home videos),
and is "common sense" to SOME people only.

I wonder if many of the intelligence tests, learning aptitude tests are
not like that. I was trained to administer these tests in some of my
graduate school studies back in OISE. Interestingly, this incident at
the MacDonald's brought back to me memories of those sessions in which I
administered these tests to some immigrant children who had studied in
Canada for 4-6 years.

Everyday literacy or "common sense" is not that "common" really. It must
be extremely difficult and bewildering for immigrant children to move
around, to conduct their daily lives in their host countries. I guess it
would be extremely helpful for us to design some similar "foreign
experience" games in teacher-education programmes for monolingual
teachers who may need to teach immigrant or linguistic minority children,
if it is just to heighten our understanding, not just COGNITIVELY,
FACTUALLY, but AFFECTIVELY and EXPERIENTIALLY of the anxiety,
bewilderment, "out-of-place-ness" or whatever feelings that we will
experience if we are to be put into a similar context that these children
are put into day in day out...

Angel

(Angel Mei Yi Lin, recent OISE doctoral graduate; e-mail:
enangel who-is-at cityu.edu.hk)