The Road So Far

I wasn’t sure what to expect in this class. Normally, before the semester starts, I check the BlackBoard pages of all my classes to see what I should expect for the next few months. This class- along with one other class- had nothing on the page. I knew that this class was required for English Lit majors, so I would have to take it eventually. With a name like Intro to Literacy Studies, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t really know what “Literacy Studies” entailed, and to be honest, I’m still unsure. When I thought of literacy, I thought of books and school and writing and Shakespeare. After our readings and our time spent in class, I no longer know quite what I think. I never thought much about literacy sponsors or different types of literacy before. All I know is that literacy is far broader than I originally thought.

From going to school and taking so many English classes, I just assumed that academic literacy was the only type that we would ever talk about in a classroom setting. I had never really even thought of street signs and magazines and blogs as a type of literacy. I always thought they were valuable in their own ways, but I never attached the word “literacy” to them. It’s kind of comforting to know that things that I enjoy doing, while they are not considered valuable in many classes, are not worthless. Twitter and Instagram and other social media never seemed like literacy to me, partially because I have heard so many older generations speaking negatively about all social media and digital technology. It is refreshing to heard things like that TED talk and listening to people in older generations saying positive things about teenagers. I’m so accustomed to having people bash and dismiss my generation.

Literacy sponsors are also something I had not considered very much before. I guess this could be because that when you are privileged in something, tat thing becomes less of an issue in your life. I was very lucky in terms of literacy sponsors. My entire extended family is full of very well-educated and very encouraging people, and I went to a high school that had a lot of teachers who were very kind and willing to see other forms of literacy. I never really thought about how one’s literacy sponsors could stifle or limit someone’s literacy, or how sponsors who opposed each other could be difficult. It was very interesting to hear in class and in discussion the different types of sponsors people had.

I don’t really know what literacy is. I don’t even really know what it isn’t. I know that any limits put on it are arbitrary, and people ranking the worth of various types of literacy is arbitrary. People can be computer literate, baking literate, book literate, and so on. So far, I’ve learned that there is no way to dismiss any type of literacy as worse or praise any type of literacy as better.