WEEK 2 Blog Posts, Comments, and Dialogue

I think about power with respect to my experiences with students at Parkway.I am supposed to be helping my students learn to write essays. Often the students I work with have wonderfully deep and compelling ideas they wish to write about.   Even the most articulate speakers among them struggle to write.  They find it challenging to put sentences together into a coherent paragraph, and the idea of composing an entire essay feels daunting to them.  When they’re willing to show me what they’ve written, I find prose that is plagued by grammatical errors and problems with fluent usage.  It’s hard to read.  I find myself frustrated by their inability to express themselves effectively in writing.  It’s not their fault.  English classes at Parkway do not teach students to think of themselves as writers.  Essay assignments are infrequent, and expectations are low.  By the time students reach reach their senior year, the teachers and administrators have already decided which students are capable of succeeding beyond high school, and which aren’t.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about this particular aspect of the school’s culture as one that perpetuates oppressive power dynamics.  Some students are told that they will never people able to succeed in an academic setting, that they will never be capable of contributing to the discourse of those in power.  They are told they won’t be  able to participate in this discourse because they are incapable of learning the correct language.  Perhaps they simply refuse to assimilate to the constraints of a dialect that has denied the validity of their voices.

I’ve been thinking about the way voice and validity were explored in the pieces by June Jordan and Laura Delpit.  Jordan, in her challenge to the idea that Black English is “incorrect,”  helps me to complicate my own understanding of the work I’m doing with Parkways students.  I have always questioned whether it ought to be my job to “correct” their grammar as a means of teaching them to participate as insiders in a dominant discourse.  I ask myself how I can provide them with a service that will be useful to them, without insisting that they ways of speaking and writing that I am comfortable with are more conducive to their “success.”  Similarly,  Delpit suggests that educators shouldn’t think of what they do as giving their students voice.  Voice, she argues is something students already have and use.  Educators must learn to hear.  I wonder whether I might be able to hear and appreciate my students’ voices, while giving them tools to participate in a dominant discourse when it would benefit them to do so.  

The Portlandia sketch emphasizes the degree to which people's access to the internet and the millions of resources it houses gives a sense of there being a body of knowledge that exists outside of people but is ready to be tapped into (and the more one taps into it, the more in tune one will be with a certain culture.) Transmitting data through SMS, however, feels different because all information is sent from one body to another, whether those bodies be organizations or individual people. Knowledge is gained through being “communicated to and from” instead of “seeking out information.” I hope I am not falling into any sort of simplistic trap of stating that people in developing countries are more connected and communicative with one another than people in the U.S., for instance, or that they do not actively seek out information from print or internet sources created by third parties. I simply wish to explore further how the differences in what kind of information and communication technology people use may affect how they view literacy as something that must be attained in relation to some external body of knowledge or in relation to other people and the institutions they create.

I’m very and interested in the way that “literacy as adaptation” varies across cultures and contexts—the standards of “literacy” required for survival vary greatly, depending upon the characteristics and institutions of a particular society or culture. In a small group discussion last week, my classmates and I suggested that the definition of “survival” varies, as well. What does it mean to survive, or to adapt? For example, we apparently consider writing checks, reading prescription labels, and paying bills essential for adaptation or survival in contemporary America. We’ve also placed reading newspapers into the “literacy as adaptation.” What happens to a person who cannot write checks or read prescription labels? Perhaps they cannot live safely or comfortably, and perhaps they struggle to navigate American legal and financial institutions. But what happens to a person who cannot read the newspaper? In this thought experiment, I’m imagining a person who can pay bills and read labels, but cannot read the newspaper, magazines, books, etc. Surely this person can live safely, and perhaps they manage to navigate American institutions. Somehow, though, we conclude that this person lacks certain adaptive or survival skills. Apparently survival or adaptation in American society requires more than mere existence.... We concluded that “literacy as adaptation” is a fluid and ever-changing category, depending on what you mean by “adaptation,” and what society or sphere you mean to consider.

Following our conversation, I was left with a question that, I am quite sure, will resurface throughout the semester: what is the role of the school? That is, what version of “survival” should schooling help to ensure? 

When discussing our journal entries in our journal groups, my peers and I made an interesting connection between neoliberalism and literacy. Neoliberalism promotes the idea of becoming independent and individual achievement where you just worry about yourself and those who stay behind just don't make it. When we were discussing we noticed that from our own personal experience, when it came to learning how to read, we just worried about ourselves and let the rest of our peers figure it out on their own, which is similar to the ideas behind neoliberalism. I thought this was interesting because it made me think just how effective is neoliberalism then? Because there are people across the nation who are struggling on how to read and its not even children but adults too. If we are so used to thinking about ourselves and our own gain then how are we going to help others and what's best for the country as a whole?