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?
It can be that simple for school policies or government requirements, where a singular, bounded definition facilitates categorization, but for individuals, I think it’s ok to be more encompassing and complex.
To me, self-defined literacy allows people to develop their skills to the levels that suit them. I consider myself literate in the traditional sense of being able to read and write, but also music literate, in that I can read musical notation and play an instrument. In order to call myself literate in music, I need to have competence in both skills–reading notes and using that reading to make particular sounds with an instrument.
Placing measurements on my ability level motivates me to engage with a subject more. I don’t want to be musically illiterate, to me, that term and concept has a negative connotation–I like to be good at the things I enjoy.
At the moment, I am taking improv classes, and I am comically illiterate. I can react well to the material generated by others, but I’m not good at initiating scenes myself. It’s similar to reading without being able to write. I think the terms of literacy apply well to this situation–I can “read” a scene or a line and respond to it, much in the same way of reading a line of text, but I can’t compose my own scenes and lines at this point, much like some children are able to read text, but lack the capability to write sentences.
I really like the idea of boundaries we set. But I kinda think that just simplifying literacy that much does a disservice to what we’ve done in this class. I feel like, since we have spent so much time coming up with a definition of literacy and talking about different aspects of being literate, it seems like a cop out to just say that literacy is that simple. I have enjoyed the amount of time we have spent doing this, and I don’t really know if I want to go back to the simple definition of literacy anymore.