Brandt, Deborah. Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
CHAPTER 3:
“Accumulating Literacy: How Four Generations of One American Family Learned to Write” (73-104)
Summary:
In this chapter, Brandt seems to speak to those who assume that our greatest challenge today regarding literacy has to do with making literacy available to new masses and populations. Brandt attempts to complicate this perspective by illustrating the degrees in which literacy practices changed over four generations of one family, highlighting how each member coped with those historical and economical advancements. In other words, Brandt shows that there are far more contextual complexities, technological advancements, and economical influences to literacy practices to consider rather than assuming the only change is the rise of populations being literate. Instead, Brandt argues that today’s challenge is to keep up with the ever evolving practices of literacy, especially in regard to how economic demands and events have historically shaped literacy.
In the narratives given of the four family members, Brandt looks at literacy as each individual experienced it, depending on (a) how literacy was practiced at the time; (b) how family economics influenced these practices; and (c) how regional economics influenced these practices. An overview of her findings:
Geena (1898)
· Literacy Practices
o Learned to write with slate and chalk
o Had few books; some newspapers
o Wrote stories or wrote for bookkeeping
o Valued writing for labor: typing, shorthand, penmanship
o 1st generation HS student
o Learned writing as labor skills in college (to be a clerk)
· Family economical influences
o Protestant church
o Rural family: write for records
o Financial constraints mean less go to school
· Regional or Historical Economical influences
o Geographical constraints: Many locations didn’t have schools and folks couldn’t afford travel
o Laws say students go to school until 16
o Economic depression
Sam (1925)
· Literacy Practices
o Learned to write by emulation of proper grammar and speech
o Had more books
o Wrote for community: wrote notes to kids, collaborated on writing plays, taught others to write
o Valued handwriting, emulation, and writing for political/civic engagement
o Learned and conducted tech writing in military
o Attended (but didn’t graduate) college on GI bill.
· Family Economical Influences
o Language style is aligned with elitism and class
o Family beginning switch from rural to urban
· Regional or Historical Economical Influences
o Geographically moved around: some schools better than others
o Can later drive to school
o Literacy of rural gentility: focus on manners and decorum
o WWII and associated technology (radio) and education
Jack (1958)
· Literacy Practices
o Learned to write with guidebooks (like Dick and Jane). Mom reads every night.
o Had a small home library. Spread of children’s literature
o It is the norm to go to college for business or marketing
o More of a focus on writing, especially in college
o Literacy training on the job: computer; forms
o Writing is aligned with social prestige and class
· Family Economical Influences
o Family completes transition to urban: lives in middle-America suburb
o Past and present literacy practices conflict: focus on handwriting still; manners still important
· Regional or Historical Economical Influences
o Not much geographical restraints (many schools in walking distance); however, class is still an issue in regional ed.
o Technology of TV, radio
o Post-war rapid educational expansion
o College is business driven
Michael (1981)
· Literacy Practices
o Learned to write through various materials: chalk, magnetic letters, pens, pencils, typewriter, computer
o Writes in numerous genres: journals, stories, reports, essays, memos, research, letters
o Value on critical thinking and reflection
o First to have an identity as a writer
· Family Economical Influences
o Full urbanites
o Multiple technologies available to average family: computers, books, utensils, etc.
· Regional or Historical Economical Influences
o People adjust skills by location: technology advances quickly and folks adapt (migration of literacy from metropolitan areas to all cities)
Methods/Methodology:
- She constructs her evidence in five ways:
- She provides detailed narratives of each family member’s literacy practices, summarizing and quoting responses from interviews conducted in the early 1990s.
- She offers additional anecdotes that aligned with the May family (from other individuals she interviewed).
- She contextualizes the narratives using historical references relating to education, literacy, economics, and politics. Besides offering factual information about the time period, she also cites sources like: Soltlow and Stevens (1981); Beniger (1986); Goldberg (1951); Thompson (1965); Ginzberg and Bray (1953).
- She frames her analysis by focusing on how economical changes in the country affect literacy practices and sponsorship.
- She compares the family members’ individual experiences to highlight how some literacy practices are “legacies” while others are transformed.
Questions:
Brandt provides a really interesting account of how literacy has transformed in the last century. Still, I have two questions based on what I perceive as relative info not provided by Brandt in this chapter.
- First, I was disappointed that more attention was not placed to Michael’s experience. It is understandable since her interviews were in the early 90s, but I couldn’t help but feel as though my generation’s literacy profile was incomplete, especially considering how literacy has changed dramatically since the advent of the internet and especially considering that the book was published in 2001. How do researchers negotiate the temporal relevancy of their research when technology seems to advance faster than we’re able to conduct research and get this info published?
- Brandt does an impressive job at acknowledging how literacy is situated within local, historical, economical, and individual contexts. In addition to these contexts, I also wondered about how the history of composition in the university might play into the varying literacy practices of her participants. From a methodological point of view, I’m curious about where we should draw the line in our accounts of context. As researchers in comp/rhet, we’re all aware of how much literacy and learning are situated and social experiences. When contextualizing the experiences of our participants in a given study, then, how far should we go in illustrating relevant and influential contexts?
Thanks for laying out such good notes, Missy. I really found the four person intergenerational survey you provide to be useful. I, too, thought Michael got short-shrift. He's the literacy caboose, and yet we don't really get to see where he goes with his computer literacy I also wonder if this might be the nature of how Michael interviewed and how rich the interview transcript might have been. I really get the sense that some subjects were very rich subjects who said very interesting and poignant things and were good at reflecting and others had to be stretched somewhat (a chronic issue in interviewing). In answer to your last question or taking it a slightly different direction (it's a fruitful question), I was struck by the way that reading and writing instruction was addressed across the educational spectrum. Brandt seemed less interested in looking at the college classroom and our discipline and more at the lifelong practice of literacy and literacy development/sponsorship. I think your question can be thought of in terms of literacy sponsorship. How does our field truly sponsor literacy or even suppress it?
ReplyDeleteIn response to your last question Eileen, this came up in a class not too long ago. I think Rachael mentioned how - if we use the Flower model - we can let students "borrow" some of our power, but we often miss the opportunity to truly EMPOWER them. Instead of sponsoring literacy, we often just rent it out (or at least the power associated with sponsoring) so that students have the ability to trade in currencies of consequence in our classes, but when the semester is over, no mas. If this is the case, I'm woefully sad. . . :-(
ReplyDeleteI think this concept of literacy sponsorship is key to our understanding of literacy as comp/rhet professionals. I recognize that Brandt intentionally downplayed the role of formal literacy "training" and instead focused on the outside influences. What this did for me was twofold. First it helped relieve a lot of the pressure of desired outcomes in FYW (after all the student's outside influences seem to play a much larger role in his/her continued growth than mine will). Second it made me consider as Brandt suggests in chapter 1 how to incorporate the concept of literacy sponsorship in the formal setting of the classroom. In other words, if as Missy suggests as comp/rhet professionals we should have a say in or understanding of literacy practices at large...then we must be responsible for continually looking outside our discipline to better understand the very thing we teach.
ReplyDeleteMissy, like you and Eileen, I wanted to know much more about Michael's computer literacy. It seems to me that many of those in the computer age have a functional literacy of technology but not a critical literacy of technology. That is, they can send an email, or write a blog, or make a facebook page but they seem to be unaware of the effects of how they utilize these technologies. I'm thinking here of individuals who post pictures of themselves in compromised positions or write disparaging things about others in a public venue. I'd be interested to see how Michael learned not just the skill of using these technologies but also the consequences. What does it mean to possess a critical literacy of technology and how does that help or hinder one's social position?
ReplyDeleteGood questions--I hope we can take them up as we move into reading network theory and the work on digital research and ethics.
ReplyDelete