I Have No Idea Why I Didn’t Post This Earlier…

A social view of literacy can be summed up as simple as reading and writing. I mean that is how I thought of literacy before truly dug into these authors and had our discussions in class. Literacy is everything around us that takes reading and writing and putting a perspective on it. Commercials, ads, essays, assigned readings, discussions; these are all forms of literacy. I think this is different than the individual pursuit because literacy from a social aspect is pushed onto the audience, whereas intrinsic motivation to read or write is different. Me writing this blog is extrinsic because Ms. Jaxon assigned it. Yet my response is a form of individualistic literacy because, well, I can write whatever I want on the topic. Outside of school, I have a more extrinsically motivated literary “jobs.” I am an assistant coach for the Women’s basketball team here at Chico, and I probably read and write more for that job than I do for my three English classes combined. With recruiting, emails, practice plans and setting up clinics, I have a lot of documents that I have written. I also have to read a ton of recruiting letters a week, and with assigned school readings, I unfortunately don’t have time to individually pursuit my own literary interests. I learn how to do each of these literary tasks by learning from the experts in each different environment. In class, it is the professor that guides me to write properly and to read with a certain analytic perspective in mind. When I go into the coaches office, it is the head coach that teaches me how to respond to a recruit’s email and how to be political with outside persons. I think that a individual pursuit of literacy is rare to actually achieve, at least for me. I have so many outside sources of literacy that I must attend to, that I don’t have time for my own individual desires. I cannot say if there truly is an individual pursuit of literacy when so many outside sources influence what we read and write.