> There is also some evidence that it is much more difficult to control,
> manipulate, and manage illiterate than literate people by totalitarian
> regimes.
What evidence, just curious. It seems a culture would exploit the sign
systems they initiate it members into, and it would not make a difference
if that is oral, iconic, or text. We need to remember it is not only
literacy but denial of it in which societies use to control. The poor,
women and others were denied access to books as a way to control. This is
ocurring today through the literacy of the telivision and the internet. If
I remember correctly in German, I believe, literacy means to censor. In
this context who is someone who is illiterate? Some forms of literacy are
valued and others are not, but as Freire told us in Teachers as Cultural
Workers:
"What I have actually said and for which I am beaten is that the educated
norm should be taught to lower class children but in so doing it should be
stressed that, their language is as rich and beutiful as the educated norm
and that therefore they do not have to be ashamed of the way they talk;
even so, it is fundemental that they learn the standard systax and
intonation so that
a) they diminish the disadvantages in their struggle to live their lives;
b) they gain a fundamental tool for the fight they must wage against the
injustice and discrimination targeted against them."
In this sense Phil is right it would be foolish especially in a culture
such as ours that defines and organizes power around a particular form of
literacy. As foolish as denying an oral or iconic form of literacy in a
culture which were organized around those sign systems. I do however feel
we need to be careful of terms such as illiteracy because it implies
literacy as something naturalized which it is definately not. New technolo
gies are changing how literacy is being defined which again has an ideology
and or form of censorship of what it means to be literate. That literacy,
like all others has its positive and negative characteristics which can not
be abstracted from power.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Eugene
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ricardo Ottoni [mailto:rjapias@ibm.net]
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 3:56 PM
> > To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> > Subject: Re: Campaign Against Public Schools
> >
> >
> > You wrote:
> > "An illiterate society will be no more well equipped to protect itself
> > from the violence of ideologues than will a literate one. To argue to
> > the contrary is crazy."
> >
> > Well,
> > Recently I give a look in a book published under Valsiner and Oliveira
> > responsability in with there are very interesting articles on Literacy.
> > The book name is LITERACY IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, by Ablex Publishing
> > Corp., Stamford, Connecticut and London, England, 1998.
> >
> > The articles "Schooling, Literacy, and Social Change: Elements for a
> > Critical Approach to the Study of Literacy" by Angela Kleiman (pgs.
> > 183-225)and "Conceptual Organization and Schooling" by Marta Kohl de
> > Oliveira (pgs. 227-245)sign "larger and more complex structures, and
> > cultural differences" - and not so stable relations between Literacy
and
> > one's awareness/consciousness of ideologies violence action.
> >
> >
> > Ricardo.
> >
>