For centuries, since the acts of reading and writing were
first formed, the way that people read and write has been changing
constantly. We are now entering an era
in which the way we read and write is being influenced by rapidly advancing new
technologies and the Internet. This
brings concern to many people as to whether or not the changes occurring in
this day and age are either beneficial or detrimental to the “problems” the
U.S. has regarding literacy. According
to the website Dictionary.com, which I was able to reach instantly thanks to
the marvel of the internet, to be literate is to be “1. able to read and write.
2. having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.; literary;
well-read.” One of the first aspects of reading and writing we covered in Unit
1 of this writing course was the phenomenon of the internet and how it has
changed the way writers are able to reach and share pieces that they write with
their audiences at an immense scale, while also providing instant access to the
reader’s interests. The second piece of
writing that we were provided with in this unit was the article Is Google Making Us Stupid, written by
Nicholas Carr, in which the writer mentions that he and other writers have
noticed a bit of a change in the way they read.
Next, we were exposed to the pessimistic article written by Chris
Hedges. He explains that America is
trapped in a dependency for image based information, and that the minority of
the people that live in the U.S. are actually living in the literate world. The last two pieces that we read for this
unit are completely based on the topic of literacy. One of the articles, written by Sylvia
Scribner, called Literacy in Three
Metaphors, gave us a neutral scientific analysis of literacy, while the
other, written by Andrea Lunsford, Our
Semi-illiterate Youth? Not So Fast, shows us the opinion of the writer
backed up by two social studies.
Sullivan shares his love for reading and
writing through his explanation of the phenomenon of blogging in his
opinion. To begin, the author mentions
the connection between blogs and the act of keeping logs in past times. They are different in a sense that through
blogs, the author can compose a small piece of writing and reach his audience
at the click of a button to just a few seconds, while logs were recorded for
long periods of time and were not available to other readers until the traveler
arrived at his destination. But on the
other they have the similar component of providing a sort of enlightenment or
entertainment through the act of writing and expressing opinions and
personalities. The writer was first
exposed to the world of blogging when he encountered the website, “blogger,”
which is coincidentally the same website we have been using to blog in this
course. He recognized that it was
necessary for him to have a presence in the new and rapidly expanding online
universe. In his article, Sullivan
indirectly sheds a bit of light on the fear of illiteracy by explaining that
blogs create an open table for writers to let go of their writing and become
exposed to others that will then provide feedback.
Nicholas
Carr recalls being able to “immerse himself in a book or a lengthy article”
(Carr). The author seems to share that
he is developing some sort of attention deficit disorder as he notices that he
tends to dose off after just several pages of a piece of writing. One part of Carr’s article that stood out to
me was the way that he states the fact that he is not the only one that is
noticing a change in the way people read today.
Other writers have also begun to observe that they read books very
little or close to none, which shows how the Internet has caused the ultimate
demise of information shared through writing in the form of books. This has created a new type of way to read,
which is known as power browsing.
To ridicule
the country from which you hail can most commonly be seen as a taboo in the
U.S. The way that Chris Hedges does this
is by explaining that the people in this country are becoming completely dependent
on image-based information, rather than information shared through books as it
was in the past. The writer dives into
the topic of presidential candidates and the fact that they are forced to lower
the speaking level of their speeches to one of a 6th grader, while
in the past, presidential candidates spoke with a speaking level of a 12th
grader or higher, which I find to be a little saddening coming from one of the
leading countries of the world. As I
stated in one of my blogs for this unit, “knowing that presidential candidates
are lowering their speaking levels to accommodate the majority of citizens, and
that entertainment providers are shifting their outputs to lower quality levels
due to the desired quality by the illiterate public is surprising…” (Hedges)
Sylvia
Scribner, an American psychologist and educational researcher that graduated
with a masters and a PhD from well known schools, sheds a bit of light on the
topic of literacy in her article Literacy
in Three Metaphors, considering her extreme focus on the subject. The way I comprehended her piece was that she
separates literacy into three different stages, which one must work for. The first is literacy as adaptation and it
refers to “commonsense” literacy skills that most humans begin to develop early
on in life. The author describes the
next stage, literacy as power, as a “relationship between literacy and group
community advancement,” (Scribner) which is socio-political side of the culture
of literacy. The last stage, literacy as
a state of grace, ties into religiously focused communities that have “the
tendency…to endow the literate person with special virtues,” (Scribner) simply
because they have the ability to read the texts.
Unlike many
of the other authors that we studied during this unit, Andrea Lunsford has an
optimistic point of view regarding the change in reading and writing that is
overcoming humans. In a study of writing
that Lunsford began about a decade ago, she had students not only write pieces
that were required for school, but also “life writing,” which was to be
concentrated on topics that the students were interested in. It turns out that those students became much
more enthusiastic and committed to the writing they did out of class. The author states that we are becoming
stronger in some fields of writing such as spelling, which has increased by
300% in the past 25 years thanks to a study she conducted. Lunsford explains that the new type of
writers just have different styles that they can incorporate for certain
situations; such as using lingo when texting a friend, and then being able to
switch from informal to completely formal for lets say a business report. In the studies that were done by Lunsford,
“these students did plenty of emailing, and texting; they were online a good
part of every day; they joined social networking sites enthusiastically. But rather than leading to a new illiteracy,
these activities seemed to help them develop a range of writing styles, tones,
and formats along with a range of abilities.” (Lunsford)
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The
Atlantic. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.
Hedges, Chris. "Chris Hedges: America the Illiterate - Chris
Hedges' Columns -Truthdig." Truthdig Main News. N.p., n.d.
Web. 28 Jan. 2013.
Lunsford, Andrea. "Our Semi-literate Youth?" Stanford.edu.
N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.
Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy in Three Metaphors." Harringtontech.
N.p., 3 Jan. 2007. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.
Sullivan. "Why I Blog." The Atlantic. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.
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