Thoughts on "The Sleeper Curve"

I read this commentary with great interest, because I remember making a similar argument in one of my classes last semester. It has to do with defining literacy; this is the address for this blog and it's something I'm very interested in. I think literacy is a way of thinking; as Johnson puts it, "Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally assigned to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads." "Good" television shows demand viewers to possess these abilities, and watching good shows furthers them.

Last semester I argued that teachers and schools come at literacy from a culturally biased perspective--schools value books and writing and that's how literacy is defined in those institutions. But as I said about my favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, television can be just as much brain food as books. Buffy is layered, metaphoric, witty, and develops a new mythology. The motivation and ability to follow complex programs like Buffy is the same needed to read complex books.

Now, having said that, I'm not sure I would argue, as Johnson does, that good t.v. is making our culture smarter. The programs that he refers to are not ratings winners; they have a cult audience, but they are not in the top 10 or 20 shows per week. So, not everyone, or even most people, are watching them. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think everyone has to want to watch challenging shows--or read challenging books. And that's part of why I don't think our culture is being made smarter; it's still the same percentage or subset of people who are seeking these kinds of shows as who sought out "high" literature before. And that's not the majority. It's not that we're smarter; it's that the form, the medium, that the content is presented in, has changed. I take a bit if an issue with Johnson's assertion that audiences from 20 or 50 years ago couldn't have understood shows like The Sopranos. The medium of television had not developed enough to have shows written like that on it yet, but it's not like people then were morons. If for no one else, people that chose to read and enjoy complex texts could have followed right along--because, as Johnson himself says, it's the same cognitive abilities at work.

I'm not implying that our culture isn't smart. It is. But it's also dumb. It's always been that way and it always will. This is for two reasons: one, people are not all the same, with the same interests and motivations; and two, culture is not monolithic.

Thoughts on Shannon

I want to start this off by saying I'm no philosopher, so I need to qualify the following thoughts and remarks with that understanding.

As I read Shannon, I was struck by a disagreement with him--not in his underlying thesis about what's become of reading instruction and how it's been hijacked by businesses, transforming students into commodities and teachers into unskilled factory workers. What I dispute is his pinning that on capitalism. Okay, bear with me.

I appreciated that he increasing identified rationality as the issue (although in continued to tie this to capitalism). When we look at Western (and Eastern for that matter) countries, even those who have espoused Marxism value rationality, efficiency, above creativity and individuality. Neither system intends for people to lose their individuality, but whenever rationality is highly prized, this will happen to some extent because thoughts and behaviors that deviate from the rational are dichotomized as then irrational. There becomes no middle ground. Shannon writes, "The material fate of the masses becomes increasingly dependent upon the continuous and correct functioning of the increasingly bureaucratic order of private capitalistic organization." Well, this statement could just as easily apply the masses in the old Soviet Union, Cuba, or even modern Russia controlled by the mafia. You just replace "private capitalistic organization" with the name of whoever is in control.

However, I think the problem goes deeper than any economic or social philosophy. Capitalism is no more inherently dehumanizing than Marxism, yet in practice both of them can suck. Marxism in practice has certainly not embraced the individual or free thinking. The deeper issue is the nature of man. I don't think that all people are doomed to selfishness in a Hobbesian/Lockean, but I do believe that men are corrupted by power--in whatever framework they get that power (government, business, etc.). Reading Shannon's arguments, I couldn't help but wonder (I feel like Carrie Bradshaw typing that phrase) how a capitalist reading of education in China or Cuba would look. It would probably talk about how capitalism relies on individuality and original ideas as the foundation for business and economy. Man is corrupt and those in power will always try to control those who aren't in power; the social or economic system in place has little to do with it.

All that said, I do agree with Shannon's thoughts. I hate what has become/is becoming of teaching and learning in this country--but really, it's happening everywhere. The world is small and only a few people own it.

Literacy: Tools of the Trade

I really have not given much thought before to the materials of literacy (other than the printing press in general terms). Thus, I found this week's readings and discussion significant for allowing me to think about an aspect of literacy that I hadn't before.

Haas writes, "...materiality is the central fact of literacy because writing gains its power--as a cognitive process, as a cultural practice,and even as a metaphor--by linking these two powerful systems" (p. 3). After reading this and thinking about it, I felt foolish for not having thought before about the materials of literacy because the material IS literacy; it is thought written down. So without materials, obviously, there would be no literacy. Or would there? Haas seems to be using the terms literacy and writing interchangeably. I would argue that writing is one form of literacy, and it does indeed require materiality.

Marx and Engels: Who knew? I was surprised to read and begin thinking about the influence their writing had on Vygotsky, thus shaping much of our understandings on thought, language, and social contexts. I would like to learn more about how their writings influenced Vygotsky, etc.

I really liked Haas' second chapter because I felt it offered a reasonable balance in terms of the impact and role of technology. As with many discussions in this field, arguments and points of view always seem to be dichotomized; it must be one way or the other, all or nothing. Technology has no impact or it is totally revolutionary. Is it not fathomable that it will have an impact, but perhaps in ways that are relatively subtle? And always tied to other factors--social, cultural, historical, etc.? I appreciated Haas' stance on this.

The point I most appreciated from Eisenstein was the idea that while the printing press did give more people than ever access to texts, it also increased communication among those already in possession of scribes and books. In this way, the divide between the literate and the non-literate, I think, actually got bigger. Those with the power now had more; the gulf widened. The one percent at the top now had access to each others' ideas, along with visuals such as maps, and this allowed them to shape thought--a small group of people influencing thought for hundreds of years to come.

Thoughts on Olson Chs. 6-12

I am interested in how the "history" of literacy isn't really history and the implications of that for any sort of argument that literacy causes cognitive change. As Olson wrote and we touched on briefly in class tonight, there seems to be a line of theories for interpreting written texts, beginning with the text being a "boundless resource from which one could take an inexhaustible supply of meanings" to one in which "the meaning of a text is austerely anchored in the textual evidence" (p. 144). As religious texts were first written down, someone had to do the work of "fixing the text," and this occurred in the context of a oral culture in which meaning was derived from the words, but also from the illocutionary force provided by the speaker. Oral "texts" were layered with meaning, so how to convey that in written text?

I found it interesting as Olson traced these ideas of interpretation from the time of Charlemange when scholars would read texts as having much meaning beneath the words through to Luther's idea of text being an "autonomous representation of meaning" (p. 154) to the idea that readers must try to read texts thinking about how the original audience would have. My point is that these ways of interpreting don't seem to be a linear progression. Today, in 2007, we have people who read texts the way scholars in Charlemange's day did; we have those who read texts literally; and we have those who try to place texts within their historical and sociocultural context. We also have a million theories beside and within those. We still have our own ideas, whether cultural or individual, as to how texts should be received or interpreted.

Reflections on Olson (Ch. 1-5)

I found these chapters quite interesting, although some of it was over my head. Chapter 1 addressed six assumptions that I think many of us implicitly and perhaps unconsciously have about literacy. I wonder how much of these beliefs are culturally bound. For example, one of the ones Olson discussed is the belief that writing is superior to speech. Olson later says that speech is the primary tool of our mind, and writing is secondary. I think I get what he is saying, but I prefer to think of speech and writing as perhaps serving different purposes. Later Olson discusses how early civilizations used/viewed writing as a mnemonic device, and some of our writing does serve this purpose (such as notes for a speech or a to do list). But I think that other forms of writing, such as research papers and even this type of reflection, force a type of analysis that speech in and of itself does not. I am thinking more deeply and truly seeing what I understand from Olson as I write this. And the writing holds me more accountable than in a discussion where I could choose not to participate or hedge my comments. BUT, back to my comment about these beliefs being culturally bound--in our culture, academic writing is held up as a certain standard, so I think my thoughts about what writing enables me to do are tied up in the cultural value placed on it.


The second chapter addressed the possible relationship between literacy and cognition. I think this is another assumption we make because we are a "literate" society (literate as we define it) and look at all we've come up with. Again, this comes back to a culturally defined concept of literacy and what kinds of thinking are valued. Cultures that are primarily oral are still rational and logical and develop their own formal discourse (such as the maktab literacy Street studied--certain ways of setting up arguments).

I had a harder time with the thoughts on the parallel timing of literacy and classical Greek and Renaissance European revolutions. I do think that rising literacy changed or influenced thought. I believe that what we read does influence our thinking, even today. Some people are even more susceptible to this and believe anything and everything they read. Why would that not have been true hundreds of years ago? I don't think those writing/printing texts necessarily meant for that to happen, although some may have. Also, only a person with some form of power could get text written/printed, thus beginning the transmission of the culture's elite as "the" culture. What do you think?

Storytelling Assignment

I recorded a story told by my boyfriend about an old friend of his that he's trying to find. Dr. Bomer mentioned that storytelling is different from conversations, almost more of a monologue, so I was looking for a cue that would signal the story as being set apart from the conversation we were having. Much like "hook" to grap a reader's attention at the beginning of a piece of writing, Ruben set apart his story with a question. "So, do you remember me talking about my friend Wayne?" I answered that I did, but that was the end of my oral participation until the end of the story. I also noticed that this particular question served to activate my prior knowledge about Wayne--that he used to work with Ruben (at a place Ruben no longer works) but he was no longer there and no one seemed to know what had happened to him. This was troubling to Ruben because Wayne had been going through several personal hardships around the time he was let go. My knowledge of these things would be important to the subsequent storytelling, and Ruben's question allowed him to gauge what he needed to repeat.

Ruben's story consisted of him relaying to me that another former coworker had called him back with a few more details about how/why Wayne lost his job. Ruben continued to hold the floor with pauses, some unintentional as he searched for seemingly important details (such as specific dates) which often he would decide weren't important enough to keep the listener waiting and would just continue with the story. The story ended with a conclusion-type statement of, "I'm sorry that story was kind of a downer." Ruben "held the floor" for a solid 10 minutes. During that time, I participated by nodding, but I did not speak, even to ask a question or give a cursory affirmative response.

Besides the way he told the story, I thought it was significant that he chose to tell me this story at all, and the setting in which he did. The story, although about Wayne, inherently relates to some very serious and personal parts of Ruben's past. I felt that he shared this with me was a way of furthering a developing bond. Although we had just eaten dinner in an intimate restaurant, he waited to share the story until we were alone in the car on the way home. Again, I felt this suggested that to Ruben, this story was both serious and personal.

Have you been to Seoul?

Not South Korea, but rather a sushi place on South Congress. That was the setting of the conversation I transcribed for this assignment.

It was bit ridiculous to record and attempt my first transcription a dinner party with 8 people at the table. Deborah Tannen I am not. It would have actually been okay, but some people just were not heard on the recording, so there are some missing comments and questions (not many, though).

The most frustrating thing for me was not being able to transcribe the expression with which people said things. Surprise, sarcasm, honest questioning, boredom--these things are heard, but difficult to put into the transcription. Or at least, for me at this point, they are. I also was frustrated that I could not record (or at times even recall) the nonverbal parts of the conversation. However, without a video, I don't know how much anyone could accurately recall these things.

One interesting thing I found was that, even after listening to the same part several times, I would type what I thought the person said (kind of like predicting the next word in reading), but when I would listen again, while I had recorded the gist of what they said, I had not recorded their actual words. After doing that a couple of times, I quit trying to type all but two or three seconds before stopping the tape, typing, and then continuing. I think this is interesting as far as its implications for how we remember conversations. We probably do usually remember the gist, but if we get the wording wrong, then at times we must remember not what the person even meant.