It is interesting to me how this high school student has internalized in a particular way what is literacy and what is not, and what is 'good' literacy and what is a 'decline' in literacy. It would be interesting to examine how those concepts developed. I suspect through the sytemic or institutionalized pressure of schools and standardized testing and the emphasis on English-only instruction and 'standard' English.
Email could be seen as a surge in literacy, but perhaps due to the addition or resurgence of graphic/iconic symbols coupled with literacy in the 'traditional' sense, along with the permissible attitudes towards form and typos, and its informality, many people might view the email form as a decline in literacy.
But if more and more people are participating in literacy events - whether they use a 'standard' form of language or not - isn't that a surge in literacy?
I would propose that this high school student read at least excerpts of or cases within the following which I think are accessible, maybe a bit of guidance is necessary:
Gallego, Margaret A. and Sandra Hollingsworth (Eds.) (2000). What counts as literacy? (ISBN:0-8077-3972-3)
Anzaldua, Gloria (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (2nd Ed) (ISBN: 1-879960-56-7).
I agree that we need to preserve what we regard as standard forms, but nourishing all forms allows us to have many different voices in a variety of contexts.
Karen
Peter Smagorinsky <smago@coe.uga.edu> wrote:I got this inquiry today from someone who attended a talk I gave last fall
in Atlanta. Can anyone help me recommend books or articles that are
accessible to a bright high school kid on what we might call new literacy
studies? thanks,Peter
>Hello Dr. Smagorinsky,
>
>I met you at the College Board conference last fall. I'm the son of a
>former language ed. member and I currently teach at Meadowcreek High School
>in Norcross.
>
> A student of mine just came in here asking some rather sophisticated
>questions about literacy. He wanted to know how come the letter-writing of
>the Civil War generation seemed to engender a surge in literacy, but the
>email craze of the current generation seemed to be leading to a decline in
>literacy. He cited the story of a girl in England who is supposed to have
>written an entire school essay in email lingo and was astonished when she
>got a poor grade.
>
>I cautioned him to be careful about assigning cause-effect relationships
>and started to talk about expanded definitions of literacy, but I assume he
>can find this stuff for himself. But I need to know where to send him,
>what names to look for. Can you alert me to some names and/or titles -
>stuff that would be accessible to a bright high school student - on the
>theme of literacy?
>
>I appreciate your help and I enjoyed your talk last fall. You had some
>traditionalist heads spinning, but they need to spun. My own view of the
>effect of technology on literacy is that we should both embrace the changes
>in literacy and expressive opportunities that new technologies bring, but
>we should also be careful to recognize what we're losing and try to
>preserve what is essential from older forms of literacy. A difficult
>trick to pull off.
>
>Thanks again!
>
>Jim l
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Apr 01 2003 - 01:00:07 PST