Thursday, March 25, 2010

V's Pick #7: Literacy in Theory and Practice by Brian Street





Hello skimming...this book was a snore. I took a 16 week class on literacy. I've been teaching an ENC 1102 course where we've talked about various aspects of literacy for going on 12 weeks. I receive two literacy-related email newsletters. I've been certified with the Literacy Alliance of Brevard thanks to a day two summers ago where the A/C went out and our dedicated group of volunteers sat in a sweltering conference room for eight hours. Literacy and me? We're more than friends. 

I was hoping Brian Street, whose name is mentioned often by other scholars, would have something amazing and new to teach me. Maybe I'm reading myself retarded or maybe I know more about literacy than I once thought, but after reading the introduction (wherein he methodically lays out in a truly dull voice what he will do in every single chapter) I couldn't bring myself to move forward in full. I finished the intro, took good notes and skimmed the rest. 

Here are some highlights: 

Ideologies about literacy and what it can do are all contextual to the culture wherein they take place - this the basis of the ideological model. (I agree)

"Faith in the power and qualities of literacy is itself socially learnt and is not an adequate tool which to embark on a description of its practice" (1). 

The widely-accepted autonomous model of literacy is aimed to distinguish literacy from schooling. 

Central question: "Are there, for instance, any significant general or universal patterns in the practices associated with literacy in different cultures?" (3) Sounds incredibly interesting but in my opinion, gets muddled down with ethnographic reporting written in pedantic prose that drains the life out of all the cultures mentioned...

Street uses linguistics to back up everything he does or believes. 

He urges us to take up the ideological model of literacy to inform our teaching and research. 

Cool new word alert: "maktabs" (religious schools)

Commercial literacy is literacy that results from economic expansion of a culture (12). 

Freire believes literacy means a raised consciousness which allows people to distinguish information from propaganda (known as the Unseco  view of literacy) (14). 

Main point: we need to teach and believe in the ideological model. 


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