Graduate students from our Theories of Literacy course are sharing insights from our weekly sessions in weekly blog posts. They’ll rotate the responsibility throughout the fall 2025 semester, sharing how we’re making sense of the ideas that emerge in our time together.
In Buddhist and Islamic traditions, there is the old parable of “The Blind men and an Elephant.” In the story, a group of blind men, sometimes noted as philosophers, are brought to examine an elephant. They begin to touch the creature and then to describe it. One of the men, the one touching the tusk says “the elephant is like a spear, smooth and sharp.” Another, who is touching the tale says “no, you are wrong, the elephant is like a rope.” A third, touching the elephant’s leg cries out “you are both wrong! The elephant is like a pillar!” 
They are all correct.
The moral of the story has been interpreted in various contexts, but is widely taken to mean that one’s experience is subjective and may only be part of the truth, not the totality of it.
I thought of this story a lot while reading through Sylvia Scribner’s “Literacy in Three Metaphors.” There is a seeming fixation on creating a monolith of literacy. The purpose of which seems to be to develop strategies to promote literacy. But what kind of literacy should be promoted? How? To whom? “It’s turtles all the way down,” as Sel would say.
So to try and solve this problem (I mean, it’s already week four guys… we haven’t solved this yet?) I thought we might see just how fitting a metaphor this story really is. Scribner breaks up literacy into three metaphors: literacy as adaptation, literacy as power, and literacy as a state of grace. These will serve as the pieces of our elephant, and hopefully by the end of this twisted little thought experiment we can take a step back and see the whole shebang.
Okay… so maybe an elephant doesn’t work exactly. Last time I checked, it actually has a lot more than three parts. Is that it then? Are we done? Defeated? Have I wasted hours of my life and copious amounts of caffeine sitting in an office with no windows slowly going insane? … Probably, but that has not shaken my belief in the power of a good metaphor. So how about this… literacy is an office lamp.
Alright people, let’s wrap it up! Case closed. We figured it out. I’ll await the nobel prize in the mail… But yes, of course, the math teacher’s old adage: show your work.
Well, off we go then.
Three blind men are walking in the forest and they stumble upon a literacy lamp. Like many scholars before them, their first instinct is to try and define it, so they reach their hands out to touch it, only they all reach for different parts.
The first man feels literacy as adaptation, a concept of literacy “that emphasizes its survival or pragmatic value” (9). This portion of literacy feels foundational, the base of the lamp, and the man describes it as such. In his understanding, literacy is not a practice, but a tool for survival, a way to succeed in a particular space. It’s not too flashy. It’s realistic, functional, and it can very easily become a problem, which the other men are more than happy to point out.
Its practicality seems like an easy sell. There’s a built in “commonsense appeal” (9), but that raises even more questions. Common to who? The other men pose Scribner’s question: “Is it realistic to try to specify some uniform set of skills as constituting functional literacy for all adults?” (9).
“Well,” the man sputters… no, not really. There’s simply too many factors that come into play. You might be able to specify “functional literacies” for specific groups that are accurate for their needs in a given moment, but even that presents issues by keeping these groups at their “survivable” state of literacy, limiting upward mobility and social growth. As Julian pointed out in our class discussion, it’s incredibly limiting. “Okay, since I don’t do that,” that being a particular literacy practice, “then I don’t fit in that box,” and there’s a feeling that the boxes are set, leaving no room for literacy osmosis.
This system is doubly flawed as a result of how it places value on certain literacies. It makes the assumption that individuals within a community will value the same literacies, or at least value them to similar extents, but this is not always the case and when you are trying to integrate a program to increase literacy rates, or simply achieve a misconceived notion of “functional” literacy in a community, the reaction to that program will be entirely based on how the individuals value the literacies that it offers, not how outside forces have judged the perceived need for those literacies.
So, the first man is ignored. This cannot be what literacy is, his colleagues argue. It’s far too problematic and variable. “Well what is it then?” he asks them, and the next man offers his thoughts.
The second man feels literacy as power, which “emphasizes a relationship between literacy and group or community advancement” (11). This, he describes as the rod of the lamp, with the wires inside carrying power upwards. To him, literacy is more than the simple ability to read and write, and instead an “instrument for human liberation and social change” (12). So he explains to the first man that literacy is not just a tool for survival, but one that helps communities work towards thriving. It is a method for advancement and growth.
He tells him to think of societies where people are subjugated. Do the groups in power not purposefully limit the literacies of the people they are trying to suppress? He reminds them of the southern United States, where it was illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write out of fear of rebellion. He speaks too of the fascist regimes where education is doctored by the state, for the state, to enforce their goals and principles.
But, despite his examples, the other men aren’t satisfied with this definition.
“How do you know,” they ask him, “that literacy causes the change and not that the change causes an increase in traditional literacy practices?”
The man is stumped by this. Huh, he hadn’t thought of that. It turns out, when people aren’t struggling to survive, when they have access to more technologies and live relatively free of oppression, they have a lot more time to think about and engage with different kinds of literacy practices and thus appear more traditionally literate. Can it lead to upward mobility? Yes. Can it also be the result of upward mobility? Yes again.
Finally the third man speaks.
“You’re both wrong!” he says, triumphantly. The third man feels literacy as a state of grace. He explains that it is not a tool for survival, or even for advancement, but rather, it is the experience of enlightenment. Not a religious or spiritual enlightenment, but an intellectual enlightenment. This, he describes as the lamp’s bulb, shedding light on the world around it. He tries to explain to them that literacy “endow[s] the literate person with special virtues” (13).
The literate man is free to live the life of a carefree philosopher, sleeping in an empty wine jug on the streets of Athens and asking Alexander the Great if he wouldn’t mind getting out of his light. The literate man “derives [his] meaning and significance from intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual participation in the accumulated knowledge of mankind, made available through the written word” (14). No door is closed to him, and he has no concerns other than those of expanding his mind. To be literate is to be intellectually superior in both the ability to think and in the thoughts produced.
“Hold on a moment,” calls the first man, who’s still upset over being ignored earlier in the story. “But didn’t some of those philosophers this man aspires to be, hate writing? Didn’t they think it would make us dumb? And wasn’t it those same anti-writing philosophers who came up with the systems of logical reasoning and critical thinking that we still use to this day?”
Not to mention that this metaphor seems to assume that literacies are only valuable when the pursuit is classically intellectual in nature. But as Julian pointed out, just because something isn’t syntactically complex doesn’t mean that it can’t explore deep and meaningful themes. Look at Dogman! Or as Mitchell brought up, Captain Underpants absolutely counts as reading. Because… well, because of course it does. Because there is no grand arbiter of what does and does not count. But this metaphor appears to be trying to enforce a stereotype of pseudointellectualism that seems elitist and offputing at best.
The third man, who had already climbed into the saddle of his high horse, stepped down off the stirrups to join his colleagues and admit defeat.
“I give up,” he says. “There is no answer. In all the definitions we’ve come up with there’s been something wrong.”
Then SUDDENLY in deus ex machina fashion Sylvia Scribner poofs into existence out of a cloud made from academic integrity and small quantities of glitter, smacking all three men on the head with a roundhouse *THWAP* and then–looking directly into camera–explains…
“These metaphors are often urged on us as competitive; some choice of one or the other does in fact seem a necessary starting point for a definitional enterprise. But for purposes of social and educational planning, none need necessarily become paramount at the expense of the others; all may have validity” (14-15).
“But that’s not satisfying!” the men complain. “It’s not an easy answer!”
“Welcome to academia, boys!” Scribner says and with a wave of her hand she poofs away with a slightly greater quantity of glitter.
I wish I could say I felt any less lost than these weirdos hanging out in a forest touching a lamp, but alas I also found myself frustrated this week with the lack of concreteness surrounding literacy. I think Lourdes put it best in a comment she made on the class Perusall about keeping the focus “not on the limitations of literacy, but what it allows for.” That being said, I’m still left with the following questions:
- How do we work these metaphors for literacy into an actionable model? Is that even necessary? Is it helpful?
- Do literacy scholars need to come to an agreement? What are the consequences/pitfalls of dissonance within a scholarly community? Based on my forest philosophers, I’m assuming it’s a bit difficult to navigate…
- A question posed by Scribner herself: “What is an ideal literacy in our society?” Which in-and-of-itself has the issue of “What society?” and “Whose ideal?”
Hailey Murphy is currently pursuing a masters in English from California State University, Chico with an emphasis in creative writing. When they’re not writing weird sci-fi stories about fatalism and the inevitable heat death of the universe, odds are they’re reading weird sci-fi stories and the inevitable heat death of a different universe! Although, for the remainder of the free-trial, their primary goal is binging the first two seasons of Severance on Apple TV.