Living Literacy: Rethinking Development in Adulthood

This is easily the first essay I feel that I have learned valuable information and have been completely interested the whole time. I feel this is largely because in a week I begin my tutoring of illiterate adults. I have to say I am very scared, but after reading this essay I feel that I have a new wave of ideas on how to approach this upcoming tutoring.

The first thing I enjoyed about this essay was that it covered the stereotypes that go along with illiterate adults. "Fingeret concluded that "illiterate" adults do not necessarily fit the stereotypes of dependency, weakness, and failure affixed to them by mainstream culture" (Lytle 379). I think by her then going on to prove then that they can have positive qualities such as intelligence, it starts to open people's minds to move towards accepting illiterates as "normal."

I, then, agreed with her approach on how illiterate adults should be looked at and taught. The normal way available today in literacy centers includes limited, cognitive ways which leads to illiterates not being taught to their full potential. The author brings up the idea of participatory approach. "Participatory approaches not only involve learners in negotiation the curriculum, but also in program management and governance, thereby providing opportunities for developing literacy within the program as an organizational, not just an instructional setting" (Lytle 385) She discusses how people group all illiterate adults into on category but should be looked at as different because they each come from different backgrounds, have different ways of learning, and have different goals they want to achieve.

I also agreed with the idea that in order to become motivated enough to learn, the learner must have some control over what they are going to learn and the way they do it. It is important because they feel more personally connected and more a part of the process in their learning.

I thought this was a very informative and important approach to improve literacy development in adults and after reading this I feel even more motivated to make a difference and be an active member in stopping adult illiteracy.

Writing is a Technology

One general theme I got from this essay is that writing and technology are bad. I think this especially because Ong refers to writing as a technology and throughout the essay offered only negatives to writing. The part the stuck out to me the most was subsection 4 when he referred to words as dead. Ong does offer the fact that the readers then give the words life. "Yet there is a paradox in the fact that deadness of the written or printed text, its removal from the living human lifeworld, its rigid visual fixity, assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a limitless number of living readers" (22). I liked this part because it was one of the few positive sentences and was something i completely agreed with. The words are there for us to interperate them in any way we want.

I overall didn't like that the majority of the essay discusses negative effects of writing, like memory loss and separation. That this technology is hurting more than helping. I love writing and the way words are such a large part of my life. I think they are definately worth the memory loss.

Sponsors of Literacy

When I read the title of the piece titled "Sponsors of Literacy" I thought of AA sponsors. I don't know why, but that was the only kind of sponsor I could think of at that time. After reading the piece, I started to see that although my first connection was quite different than literacy, I saw one common similarity. I saw that both kinds of sponsors motivate.

I now see what kind of literacy sponsors I have in my life, people who have influenced and motivated my processes of literacy. The ones that I think of most, however, are my elementary school teachers. I think it takes a really passionate person to get a child to look at boring letters grouped together to make words and become motivated enough to learn about them. As a future teacher, my goal is to be the best literacy sponsor I can be, just like the elementary school teachers I once had.

The concept I found most interesting about this piece is the fact that the author says the sponsors only teach what they want the learner to know and usually benefit from it. I thought about this in relation to teachers and I started to think about the 4th grade tests. The teachers were all talking to us about our class having the top scores of the area and how important that was to uphold. For a month before the test, that was all my teacher focused on. We went through at least 10 practice tests to get us ready. I think about how we were only taught stuff for that test and the teacher was benefiting from it by getting high test scores. I now see more than ever how teachers fit the definition perfectly of literacy sponsors, the motivate and help us learn to read and write but also only teach us certain things and benefit from it at the same time.