What Counts as Literacy?

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Time photoOur course invites you to work with data collection and analysis, readings, and discussion around the field of literacy studies
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Lesson plans incorporating video games? Absurd! Or is it?

Maybe when I first started this class I would have thought it absurd to apply the literacy practices found in video games to a classroom setting, but not anymore!

“Our environment molds us into the people that we are today.”

I posted this in an earlier blog. It was a quick reflection on something that we had read in class previously. Do I still think this to be true? I think it holds a lot of truth, but I think that we are free to shape ourselves in more than one environment. Yeah, every environment that we are in could be considered “our environment.” Why shouldn’t it? Well, people like to think of our environment as strictly home and school when we are growing up. That’s just not true. Within each of those environments there are smaller environments that we can identify as things that mold us. Not just school, but classrooms, friend groups, lunch lines, things we hear in other people’s conversations, etc. Not just home, but all the things we do at home, the people we see, the trips we go on, etc. Also, sometimes these little environments mesh with the other big environments. Sometimes school will go home and then we have homework. Occasionally this can be difficult, but we don’t have to let it stress us out. Let our environments do their thing and we can live in a stress free world.

Literacy is a social practice; it has to be. How can we live in a world and be completely illiterate? Can we really even describe anyone as illiterate?

Illiterate: 

1 having little or no education; especially :  unable to read or write <an illiterate population>
2 a:  showing or marked by a lack of familiarity with language and literature<an illiterate magazine>
b:  violating approved patterns of speaking or writing
3:  showing or marked by a lack of acquaintance with the fundamentals of a particular field of knowledge <musically illiterate>
This is straight out of the dictionary. Can we really describe literacy this way though? We abuse the term “illiterate” to suit our needs of making fun of others completely at their expense and pretending like it isn’t a big deal. We are changing the meaning of the word; in a way, we are dumbing it down. How? We like to do this to words that are powerful and impactful. Take the word “literally” for an example. Here.
Let me google that for you.
Now how about that? You see the second definition? Completely contradicts the first! How can that be? It is just obnoxious but hey, language is ever changing.
I’ve learned a lot in this class, man. I learned all about how literacy is seriously not what I thought it would be. I still remember in the first class we had, Kim just came out and told us that we would take this class and be unsure what we learned at the end of the semester. The whole class was stunned.

My attitudes towards literacy are definitely a lot more positive now. English is here and it’s ready to stay!

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Composing Science


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