What can I do to show you that I am literate? First, I would have to be human. Check. Secondly, I would have to be able to communicate in some fashion. Check.

That is as far as I get every time I dive into the debate of literacy. These are the only two boundaries that I have to contain the vastness of literacy. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even know the term “literate” for awhile after I heard of the term “illiterate”. We’ve talk a lot about this during class. This use of the negative side of literacy is much more prominent than the positive side. I have spent so much more time classifying myself and others as not-illiterate, than trying to figure out what it means to actually be literate. Maybe it was my teachers telling me what literate was, maybe it was the literacy technologies around me that taught me what not-illiterate was. Whatever the circumstance that caused me to identify as literate doesn’t matter in the scope of things though.

What matters is the boundaries we set. I got through my years of elementary school, learned how to read and write and thus considered myself literate. Done deal. Instead of attempting to contain the ocean of literacy, why don’t we simply mold our own version of literacy: one where being able to comprehend reading and form written thoughts is literate. For the other senses of “literacy”, like being able to write computer programs or dancing we could simply address them as something other than being “literate.” Maybe an unpopular opinion, but what do you guys think? Can’t it just be this simple?

After reading the assignments this week, and after weeks of articles that seemed to heavily suggest the “kids these days” sort of attitude, I couldn’t help but notice a difference in attitude. While Is Google Making us Stupid? certainly came to the conclusion of literacy technologies hindering our former ways of thinking, I actually had to agree initially with the point it was making. It could have been the non-accusatory type of writing, or the fact that it brought in direct sources from scientists about the function of neurological pathways and language development (I’m a sucker for a scientific source). Whatever the reason was, I believed it. It is extremely tough for me to sit down and read a lengthy paper on something that mildly interests me. Even this article was hard to read with all of the adds around it. From as far as I can remember, I cannot think of a time that I was able just sit down and read information flat out.

But then I started to remember what I had available to me as a child. Since I live in a extremely rural town (I’m talking less than 600 people rural), it was pretty tough to get cable or even satellite television, so I didn’t see many shows until I was 17. I ended up watching the news with the rest of my family until I got bored, which was pretty quick. Additionally, our internet was so slow that is was basically useless.

None of the technologies that could have influenced my literacy development, according to Carr, were available to me. I was just simply a hyper-attentive kid that was conditioned by the outdoors instead of new technological advancements. So where do I fit in to his conclusion? Google didn’t really have the opportunity to rewire me until I reached middle school, at which point, I was already unable to focus for long. Is it actually technology, or other factors that influenced my thinking patterns?

During this weeks learning, I was actually quite surprised to see a piece of work that did not directly attack technology in learning or use the phrase, “kids these days” in their arguments.  It was pretty refreshing to finally see a article that looks at the way millennials use and learn about technology. Most importantly, I enjoyed how it suggested that with the development of technology, there are more resources available to individuals. With the easiness and sheer availability of all these resources, the individual can play an active role in their education.

I think what bothers older generations the most is the quickness of independence that technology can provide. There is no longer an authoritative figure that stands in front of the school room, telling the children everything about everything.  Those generations had to rely on the technology available to them at the time, books, to pursue their own interests. Now we can google a topic and know the basic concepts of a topic in less than a minute. To me, that speed of knowledge would be off-putting if I had to spend the day going to the library, using the Dewey Decimal system to find the correct book, then reading until you found the topic you actually wanted to learn about. The speed of learning is important to us, but also the availability of these resources. Even at an early age we are surrounded with technology. Starting out so young learning about the world at our own pleasure and speed will obviously make us feel more independent. Knowing how to count and recite the alphabet before we even start kindergarten is going to make us harder to teach and socialize with. It is not that technology necessarily only downplayed social skills, but it increased our self-reliance. We have become the hardest generation to market to because we want to feel that we found out about a product by ourselves, not from someone telling us.

Has technology actually affected our social skills? Or do we know about these skills and just choose to become more independent?

Slavery was an interesting period in American history. Yes, the fact that one race dominated over the other is a fascinating topic, but the rules created and regulated by whites for the African-Americans are equally as fascinating. Not only was the idea of literacy pushed out of the minds of African Americans, but in some states they where physically punished.

However, something that kept popping up in the Cornelius piece was the fact that African-Americans were more heavily prosecuted if they were found to be learning how to write rather than read. In this system, writing caused more problems because slaves could use writing to obtain more freedoms, like writing to other slaves, writing permission slips, or even forging their masters signatures on checks. Back then, one had to learn how to read before they could write, so the overall process of literacy was slowed down. However, now a days, we are taught how to read while learning how to read simultaneously.

How I view the system back then is that reading is the past, and writing is the future. If the slaves knew how to read, they could comprehend what had already happened, but they could not do anything about it without writing. Writing opened up more doors than reading did; it was the ability to create their own thoughts–something that frightened the slave owners who wished to control them.

My question arises from the old system. What is more powerful/valuable in our current system of literacy teaching? Does writing still hold more power or does reading? Or is it possible that that system all together not exist anymore, that both equally matter in the sense of power?

From the readings this week,  it is very fascinating to see the cycles of literacy throughout history. In The Rise of Mass Literacy it was said that the installation of a universal postal service really pushed the literacy of the world. That being said, a few years later the telegraph took over as the main form of communication, then the telephone and finally texting came about. Some may argue that this discourages literacy, taking away from formal reading and writing and becoming more elementary. Resnick and Resnick commented about literacy evolved throughout history for the elite to use is to formulate critical reasoning skills; however, is that necessary in today’s society. Of course, problem solving is a valuable skill, but isn’t it more useful to speak to the public? Why a separation between the population when literacy can be maintained at a “standard” level so that information can be digested easier?

That being said, what designates elite sponsorship from the non-elite? I attended  a private, Catholic school that was designed to have extreme standards of excellence. We were exempt from taking New York State standardized tests because we proved ourselves as “elite”. For how much we excelled in some areas, we failed in many others. Our literacy sponsorship was based on theory and not a lot on application. We were very structured, and most of our creativity was pushed in other directions rather than in our English classes. Our problem solving strength was weak, unless the directions were clear. How do you hold a standard of elite-ness in literacy, or is it even possible? Should we focus on individual literacy abilities in their own context instead of creating a standard for everyone to follow?

While reading the article on the views of Amish literacy, I felt a little taken aback by the fact that they are very limited in their sponsorship of literacy. Being from a extremely rural town, my family has very good relations with the Amish. We often buy and sell materials from them, help build their parts of their houses, or even share coffee with them (pretty bitter, by the way). As much as I have been around the Amish, I do not see them as inferior or at a lower literacy level than me.

One memory is very clear to me, when I first remember meeting one of the boys from the family my father was buying a table from. He ran up to me and said, “Wie bist du heit”, to which I had no response too. At the time, I had no idea the Amish spoke another language, and I was shocked at the fact my father knew how to converse with them. However, after seeing the quizzical look on my face, the boy then said he did not know I couldn’t speak their tongue and plainly stated, “How are you?”. What I did not realize is that the Amish are not only expected to know mediocre English, but a form of German as well, called Pennsylvanian Dutch. At that time, I was still young and struggling with reading in English, while he could read, write, and speak in two.

While I understand that the Amish typically only go to school through eighth grade, I am not sure that it really takes an significant portion out of their literacy ability. Am I able to read, write, and speak in a more coherent and professional way? Of course. However, they have an entire set of sponsorship in literacy that we will never get to experience. Through their religion, work, and everyday lives, they are more proficient in many areas that the non-Amish are not. It all goes back if literacy is black-and-white or more of a gray area? If one excels in one area of literacy does that put them ahead of others, or is it one variable that we should take into account?

To me, literacy always felt like a race during my childhood. At my elementary school, we had these long bookshelves with different colored plastic bins containing an assortment of books. Based on our current reading level at the time, we were allowed to read books from a certain color bin. Unfortunately, my time in the normal writing and reading class ended very abruptly a few weeks into my second grade year. My teacher pulled me aside a couple weeks into the year and told me I would be going to another classroom during our reading time. The problem was not my reading level or my writing skills; the problem was I could not pronounce certain words. They told me I had a slight speech impediment, and I would be going through therapy to fix it. My problem with literacy is not comprehension, but a clear and coherent way to explain my understanding.  The action of comprehension is fluid, but my reaction was slowed. It resonates with me today, even though the problem was fixed, how to show that I comprehend something completely even though my verbal response might be sloppy. Literacy has always included that “reaction” for me, and it is an important factor in what I consider to be literate. Over the years I improved my speech, even today I am able to speak in a coherent fashion as a tour guide for the university; however, it is not something that comes innate to me. For every action comes the reaction, and using speech as a form of literacy has always been an important part of the reaction. I do not necessarily have to win the “race” of being literate, I just have to keep up.