I feel generally conflicted about Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” because it is in parts relatable and hypocritical. I found it kind of interesting that Carr himself admits that he can’t keep focus after two of three pages of an article, and his is longer than that (I didn’t think it was too long by any means, I just found it interesting that he isn’t adjusting his writing to fit the needs he himself has). While I understand his grief over the decline of deep-reading focus, I also found it pretentious. Even before the internet, there were still people that couldn’t focus on reading enough to eat through War and Peace, or just didn’t want to. The ability to sit and read and block things out doesn’t make one better than anyone else.

Still, my general attitude problem doesn’t detract from the parts of this article that I really related to. I also lose focus easily now, especially if my reading is on the internet. At one point a few weeks ago, I found myself reading a Buzzfeed listicle, with a show on Netflix playing in a background tab, checking twitter on my phone, all while the article I was supposed  to be reading sat “forgotten” in yet another background tab. So much for productivity. My attention span is shot, to be sure. I’m also afraid of artificial intelligence, like HAL or almost any other sci-fi example. I don’t necessarily fear it because I think I will change that shape of human existence, but I think it’s pretty creepy, so I related to Carr on that too.

In retrospect, I don’t really have a question, I just find that lately with the articles we’ve been reading about technology and literacy, I get defensive and confused. I feel like the general tone people take when writing about the modern advances and how they relate to literacy are very “woe is us” or “the future is here”, either way, both of these reactions are too dramatic for me. Is anyone else feeling this way, or am I just turning into a grouchy old person who is annoyed by the influence of newer technological advances?

I wanted to take this time to talk a bit more about the other article that we read for class on Thursday, but didn’t get to, Beverly Moss’s study of “alternative ‘sista’ spaces”. I really enjoyed this article, and thought that it tied in nicely to Becky’s talk about clients at the GPLC who were American-born, focusing on their literacy for a variety of reasons. While the women in PW, Inc. are by no means illiterate, it’s really interesting to see how a women’s club has plenty of literacy exercises, whether on purpose or not, for the benefit of learning about one’s cultural history. What I mean by that is, the readings of Obama’s book and the passages about important Blacks in history weren’t intended for literacy purposes, but it still became a literate “safe space” where people can gather and talk about their culture while exploring it through various texts and forms of literacy. Additionally, PW, Inc., is very involved with the literacy community in Columbus, doing a lot of volunteer work for the Columbus Metropolitan Library and its other urban branches, so not only do they foster literacy within their club, they spread it out into the community as well. I just found this mesh of literacy and culture really interesting, partially because it seemed serendipitous and partially because it’s one of the first texts that deals with literacy in minorities that aren’t immigrants.

My question is, what are some non-obvious literate safe spaces that you know of? PW, Inc.’s goal has nothing to do with literacy, yet through their exploration of texts they not only become more literate, but they delve further into their culture. The safe spaces you know of don’t have to deal with certain minorities or cultures, I’m just interested in places that foster literacy without initially intending to.

I have often thought of religion as a thing that limits literacy, based on certain religions/sects not believing in the education of women, religious censorship (Delpit’s Amish article), privatized education plans (banned books), the use of the Latin bible as a tool of oppression by the Catholic Church (of the poor, in the past), etc. While I understand most of these things and generalization or no longer relevant, I still have some personal prejudices.

In Janet Duitsman Corneilus’ article “When I Can Read My Title Clear”, I was really struck by how liberating reading the Bible was for African Americans during slavery and immediately after, and yet it seemed to be a double-edged sword. Yes, literacy was able to exalt African Americans into positions of power and respect (seen in the first example of Thomas Johnson), but it also made them a target for racial violence, because educated Blacks were the most dangerous. Slaves who learned to read had a greater chance of escaping and helping others, yet they were most at risk for death, or being sent deeper south (there are many horrific examples of punishments of pages 65-66). While I think the article clearly has a strong and positive relationship between religion and literacy, I wonder if you would agree? I think that slavery is a specific and awful situation in which any source of comfort and literacy is a positive thing, but in general, do you think that religion (modern or past) encourages literacy or hinders it?

As I read this weeks articles, specifically Resnick & Resnick, I realized that through most of the articles we’ve read so far, the only type of literacy we’ve been addressing is that which serves an infomation-gathering purpose: people are taught to read so that they can retain information about a subject or task, to further their educations/careers/lives, etc. In fact, the only article that comes to mind that expressed a need for literacy, purely for the joys of reading, is Rose’s article. Resnick & Resnick really focused on the movement in schools to get children to read so that they retain more information in school, and later can gather information from newspapers, manuals, etc. But where is the importance of reading simply because you love it, or for knowledge expansion?

That being said, which literacy is more valuable, in society’s opinion and in yours? While clearly people need to be able to read things to gain information, I also think that there is a huge emphasis on the “connection”, if there is one, between reading for fun and higher intelligence. I think it is interesting that so far we have only discussed reading as a necessity, and not as a fun activity.

In both of this week’s articles, I noticed a common idea that children can “read the world” before they are truly literate, with Marti and the other students in Delpit’s article “reading” verbal and behavioral shifts in their teacher, and with Eli Jr. in Fishman’s article, with Eli “reading” with the rest of the family and becoming involved in all the literate activities they partake in. I can even remember instances of my own when I “read the world”, all of these memories from when I was much younger. For  example, my mother used to work as a fundraising and development director in the city’s museum of art. I would go to her work sometimes and tag along on the tours she would give to potential donors, and while I couldn’t read the signs telling me not to touch or how far away to stand, I picked up on these behaviors from watching her and the potential benefactors. Additionally, I knew that when she began speaking to people in a different way (with larger words and a slower cadence), that it would be expected that I would try and speak “politely”, when spoken to.

Still, these memories are only from when  I was younger. Do we lose the ability to read the world as we become “literate” in the literal reading and writing sense? Or do we stop noticing these moments of subtle literacy because we are more capable of understanding our surroundings now? When was the last time you “read the world”?

I don’t really remember much from learning how to read, but I do know that I’ve always enjoyed reading because it’s a very private experience. When you pick up a book, you are for all intents and purposes, the only person reading that specific copy at that specific time, and your interpretations of the text are private if you wish to keep them so. Unlike a movie, which you see in a theater with 50+ other people, a book is personal. While I always valued reading for that experience, I never saw the advantages of using reading, and literacy in general, as a way of connecting your ideas to a larger audience until I was in high school.

I took Speech class during the summer, because it was only 3 weeks instead of a whole semester. It was essentially your typical speech class expect for one project, which is to date the best assignment I’ve ever had to do. Students were told to bring in one of our favorite children’s books, and to read it to the class. While this seemed like the most basic assignment—to read a book we didn’t even write, full of simple sentences and pictures—but we were being graded on our ability to convey the love and excitement we felt about that book to an audience of people who were hearing the story for the first time. I chose Dinosaur Bob, easily one of my favorite books of all time, and if you haven’t read it you should, but that’s not the point. Watching my peers reading books that they loved, and seeing how much fun everyone was having made me realize how much of a gift literacy is. It isn’t just useful because we can read texts that transport us to different places or make us laugh, it’s useful because we can use this ability to read to share the stories we love with those who haven’t heard them yet, or who don’t have the ability to read themselves.