I think that the idea of social literacy comes from the idea of functional literacy. It is the literacy that we need in our everyday lives in order to function without causing problems. In comparison to a solely individual pursuit of literacy in which the reader/writer’s academic literacy is the only gain, a social literacy is one that includes everyone’s literacy goals and constantly changes with the new and upcoming changes in our social literature. For example, being an English major, I can mostly get away with simply being able to read words on a page which is what I learned in my first few years of school. However, inside the real world, outside of school, I have to be literate in more than just text and knowledge. In order to get my job I had to know how to navigate a computer, the internet, and also know the social literacy of a face-to-face interview. All of these social literacies build on one another to make me a functional human in this time and place, which will most definitely be different in even a few years time. I gained most of these social skills from interacting with my friends and navigating my way through my education using the internet and connections and many different things in order to achieve my goals. My social environment is what shaped my literacy in all of these mediums and without it, I don’t think I would be able to function the same way I do now.

What I found most interesting in our reading was Williams’ idea that what really fuels the “literacy crisis” is middle class fear of losing their status. Swved talks about the literacy gap and how we shouldn’t be surprised to see such a gap between minorities, those with disabilities and people of lower socioeconomic status because of the way literacy is tested. In these times the gap between the middle class and lower class seems to be closing in and the line is getting thinner everyday(at least that is what it feels like). Without access to certain privileges, the middle class fear that they will drop into that lower slot and that everything they “have worked so hard to achieve” will come crumbling down, including their upper hand in academic literacy. What we have to question is whether we should be testing functional/social literacy or academic literacy because either could drastically effect the future of the kids being tested.  It makes me wonder how much my own socioeconomic status affected my education and how things might have been different if I had been tested and leveled differently.

My name is Ruby Ocampo and I have lived my whole life in Chico. I graduated high school early through an Independent Study program here and started taking college classes full time when I was 16. I got married a year and a half ago and my husband and I are looking forward to not being in school anymore and moving away somewhere else. This is my last year and I definitely have a case of “senior-itis” but I am determined to finish out strong.

As of late, I only do reading for school. Since I work almost full-time and I have my husband and home to worry about I don’t really find time for personal reading. Most of what I read are academic articles and non-fiction books on teaching and literature in my classes which has definitely made me like reading less. That kind of reading really doesn’t do much for me, but I hope that will change when I graduate and I can read things that I choose. As for writing, I have officially lost my taste for it with all the academic papers I have written, but I hope that someday I can encourage my students to separate academic from personal writing and try to still enjoy it.

With that being said, Szwed’s article was interesting because he defined literacy in a way I had never thought of before. I really liked how he emphasized how much people are actually reading and that even if the reading isn’t “academy” approved literature it is still considered reading and plays a part in literacy. What I wonder is whether or not a film or television show would be considered literature in this context. Since some people are more audio learners, maybe hearing people speak the language makes it come to life more for them. Szwed briefly mentions television and radio listening and how these are the biggest competitors of books but he is unsure what they are actually used for since it has to be “more than just simple entertainment.”(pg. 428) Is it possible that film and television are the future of literature? There are still plenty of people who love to read but I just wonder if maybe film and other kinds of entertainment are going to be the only way we tell stories someday and if books will become outdated and only used by scholars. It probably won’t happen, but it’s interesting to consider.