The Briggs-Chisnell Project

And so our discussion must thicken.

If we are teachers of composition, then this must be any meaningful assembly of symbols within a given literacy.  Teachers of musical composition instruct us in the arrangement of notes to form harmony and melody, for instance.  However, while composition and rhetoric have their own complications in definition, literacy is our opening topic, and trying to define literacy is problematic at best.  Nevertheless, I’ll begin with a brief outline of the problem and go from there.

When schools discuss literacy (just as when governments do as they measure literacy rates), they nearly always mean the ability to read/decode written words on a static page.  Enter the endless parade of grammar worksheets, weekly vocabulary quizzes, and ACT exams for college entry. 

Now we’ve always known that there are more literacies than this.  Just because a monk could read and write, this did not mean he understood the mathematics of the astronomer or the reading of the temper of iron that the blacksmith does.  Perhaps I go too far in defining literacy in reading metals; but perhaps not: if by reading we mean the interpretation of signs in the making of meaning, a meteorologist interprets as much as any monk.  But suppose we limit reading and literacy to the interpretation of man-made symbols.  This might limit the number of literacies, but it by no means reduces them to successfully reading Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

More, defining literacy is a political act, as well.  Definitions of the literate and illiterate determine social class, productivity opportunities of citizenship, and social prejudices.  The introduction of print media as a standard for literacy did not mean that prior to it there was none: oral literacy which dominated civilization for millennia was simply politically displaced.  Today oral literacy is largely mocked, though we ironically revere Homer.  We often call such societies “pre-literate;” which suggests that any society which eventually abandons the written word will be “post-literate.”

All this understood, defining types or categories of literacy is unavoidable, I think.  For our purposes, it will raise implications of pedagogy, what we choose to teach.  It will also redefine for us the notions of composition and rhetoric.  In so doing, we cannot avoid thinking of the teacher of composition as an agent of some political or social agenda. 

So what definitions do we consider?  Forgive my “list” approach, but this might be a fair start, adapted from Gardner and others:

I’ve reduced the list extensively and combined some definitions to which the authors of these literacies would undoubtedly object; I’ve also eliminated some.  But here, I think, is a fair sampling of what is out there.

The final term, authentic literacy, is most commonly called “critical literacy,” but I prefer the term authentic because it goes to the heart of what a classroom is about no matter what literacy it approaches.  All literacies depend upon active consciousness, what Freire would call “conscientization.”  Learners recognize both the personal and social aspects of the symbol systems.  No system exists outside its social context (or its omission from one); indeed by limiting our definitions to man-made symbols, this is self-evident.  Therefore, any discussion of literacy must include the broader implications of meaning and, because literacy is inherently political by nature, the meanings any literacy uncovers are, as well.

I am, of course, using the term “political” in a broad sense, that of any act with a motive for social change.  If symbols shape consciousness, the ability to rename and reshape symbols is critical or civic literacy.  As Kutz and Roskelly in An Unquiet Pedagogy write, the “role of the teacher is to make these strategies conscious and systematic” (113).  In other words, knowledge and learning are only authentic when they are connected to the student’s consciousness of how symbols enact social change. 

On such foundations are democracies built.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone of my fondness for an authentic civic literacy based upon dialogue.

When educators measure literacy as comprehension of printed matter (itself no small ambition), we limit our students’ critical and human potential. To reduce the social applications of numeracy to a few story problems is to misunderstand our roles. To ignore, subvert, or limit the discussion of technological literacy as it increasingly surpasses printed matter is at its kindest, negligence of our responsibility.