solrac09
Short Essay#1
9/29/09 Literacy mean the ability to comprehend what you are reading and to be able to write something and be confident that you make sense. One must keep in mind that there are many kinds of literacy and its almost impossible to be a complete literate. For example, a “hardcore” Star Wars fan can read any Star Wars book and completely understand what he is reading while someone else with complete different interests has no idea what a wookie is. This fan of Star Wars can go ahead and call that other person an illiterate in the field of Star Wars books. This is one of many examples that can be used to describe just how many forms of literacy there really is.
If you can comprehend what you are reading this means that you fall into the category of the literate people. If you can read perfectly but understand nothing of what you are reading, then you are an illiterate and need to practice your reading skills a bit more. This is the general idea of what literacy means and what I revolve around to comprehend a bit more on what literacy really means. If you can write something and achieve the task of letting the reader know what you are trying to say then you are also literate. This is part two of the general idea on what it means to be literate. Literacy however cannot be defined in just two parts, it can be expanded into an infinite number of forms of literacy.
High school is something I just came out of and what can be said is that public schools are having a hard time distributing knowledge to so many students at once. For example, an English class has 25 to 35 students and the teacher is handed the difficult task in teaching teens the ways of the language arts. This is going everywhere where there are big populations and is resulting in bad reading and writing habits. If this keeps up, there will be high school seniors with the reading level of a 6th grader. In my experience, I have friends at my part-time job that have a hard time reading and writing. Its rather sad but there has been instances where there appears to be more and more high school drop outs everyday, and all of theme resort to having full time jobs where fatigue is inevitable.
These are the consequences of being illiterate . So it can be said that literacy is also the ability to defend yourself from a life time of endless labor that will result in you regretting the mistakes that one did in the past, which is impossible to re-due.
Finally literacy has a load of ways it can be defined. It can be obtained easily and is something the majority of Americans enjoy. But there seems to be a declining number of high school drop outs and in modern thinking, a high school drop out is the same thing as being an illiterate. Too bad that these dropout are increasing by the years. Soon literacy will be a hard thing to obtain due to the poor handling of public schooling.
No More Passive Consuming!!
16 years ago
hmmm?
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I never really thought of myself as being illiterate until you gave your Star Wars example. I am definitely illiterate in that department :)
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your statement that, "Literacy is the ability to defend yourself from a life time of endless labor." Lankshear's book also identifies with this statement. He says that, "Proper literacy enhances people's control over their lives and their capacity for dealing with decisions that help change social practices." Both statements are key factors in the structure of American society. It is a hard truth that literacy creates a hierachy of social status, and whether or not a person is on top depends on how literate a person is. The development, or lack therof, of educational institutions is only weakening the disadvantaged and strengthening the advantaged. Just like you said, high school students are deprived of a proper education and are exiting the secondary education system at an extreme disadvantage for success within the higher social community. Sadly, it all boils down to politics. The education system does not have a bright future, unless people from all sides are willing to make a huge change. One thing American culture is good at is change. So I guess we have to do our part and see what can be done.
Haha. The Star Wars example is great. It is sad that education is not "important" anymore. It's a depressing reality when you mentioned that your co-workers can only read at a 6th grade level. This allows very little options in their lives but hopefully things will change.
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