Literacy

Deborah Brandt, Literacy in American Lives

With such a fascinating topic, I was expecting something a little livelier. Once I made it through the introduction, though, I enjoyed the case studies and historical analysis of them. There seemed to be a theme of how people use literacy, not only for personal gain (employment), but also to champion causes (20) and to wage “document wars” (51). Literacy almost becomes a weapon, used to slander enemies and to prove points. On the one hand, affording literacy this powerful status means that we view it as vital and that more people end up learning to read and write, but it also takes on negative aspects and is used to maintain social and class boundaries. Literacy works to spread equality and to ensure that it’s never reached.

It’s interesting to me that Brandt chose to study writing instead of reading (or instead of both), and that she claims it’s one and the same, more or less. In another course I’m taking, we read an article about literacy in colonial America and how incredibly separate writing and reading are. We do consider them inseparable today, but there’s still a distinction to be made. Brandt points out the moment in history when radio- “learning to listen”- joins reading and writing in most people’s lives (84). The medium is also very important, isn’t it? It affects what we write and how we write.

The example of the shift in Dwayne Lowery’s union organizing duties (52-57) was very interesting. His position changed from one where verbal negotiation skills were key to one where they simply didn’t matter because everything was communicated through written documents. It strikes me as a case where the shift to increased written communication doesn’t make much sense—real discussion and compromise are best done in real-time. Over-use of documents contributes to the feelings of overwhelming bureaucracy that Levy points out in Scrolling Forward—maybe it’s time to figure out where we can cut back.

Brandt points out differences in the ways that literacy learning occurs in African American communities and suggests that schools, places of work, and other “sponsors” of literacy should adopt some of the same strategies. I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state, so I’d be hesitant to add the religious aspects that are so prevalent in some literacy learning, but I do think schools do a good job of teaching literacy in different ways—through reading, yes, but also through games, real-life applications, and television programs.

The chapter on reading and writing was by far the most interesting to me. It seems very true that families engage in communal reading but rarely in communal writing. I didn’t want to show my writing to my parents past a certain age (8 or so), and they didn’t ask to see it. Aside from cards to relatives, we didn’t write things with my parents, though my sister and I wrote joint stories sometimes. And yes, writing is a vent for emotions, and is sometimes done in secrecy, but sometimes reading is, too. I had reading nooks in the woods behind my house and in a park nearby. I’m not sure that the distinction is as sharp as she draws it, but it’s still fascinating.

Brandt says on page 162 that writing was described as an emotional release by white and black women but only by black men. From her small sample size, I don’t suppose we can draw any firm conclusions about whether it’s even a trend, but if so, why is it that white men don’t see writing in that way? Or is it just something they failed to mention in the interviews?

One last comment. Brandt speculates that parents’ jobs may be more important than their education level to a child’s literacy (184). The opposite is true in my case, as my mom worked as a retail clerk but reads avidly in her spare time and my dad works as a realtor but hasn’t read a book in years. I don’t remember work-related papers lying around, but my mom’s library books were always in a stack on the kitchen table. I see the relationship between parent’s job and child’s literacy, but not so much the lack of relationship between parent’s education and child’s literacy that her statement seems to imply.