What Does Literacy Mean?

            Throughout the course we have been exploring literacy through numerous lenses and I have come to the conclusion that literacy can be defined in so many different ways. This becomes obvious when you take into account the vastly different ways that all the authors we have interacted with have described literacy. There is no concrete, universal concept of what literacy means. In her article, Literacy in Three Metaphors, Sylvia Scribner explains that scholars and researchers have set out on a “quest for definition and measurement of the concept” but have come up short. There are so many limitations to constructing a universal definition for literacy. The limitations arise when we take a moment to understand the different requirements for literacy in different communities and countries. An urban New Yorker may consider the require literacy level to be much higher than a person living in a small African. Both individuals require completely different levels of literacy to be a functional member of their community. But both literacy standards are completely valid and appropriate in their respective societies. Therein lies the difficulty of defining a standard level of literacy. In this way, Scribner challenges the black and white split that Hedges creates between the literate and the illiterate, as if a person can only fall under one of these two categories. Because as Scribner reveals to us, those who would be considered ‘illiterate’ in American society are seen as literate in their communities if they can memorize a sacred text or write down a simple family history. Scribner really forces us to rethink what our definition of literacy is. 

            Andrea Lunsford paints a drastically different picture of literacy in the technology age in her article, Our Semi-­‐Literate Youth? Not So Fast, than Carr and Hedges describe in their articles. Carr and Hedges take a rather pessimistic standpoint and view the Internet and Technology as deteriorating our skills of literacy but Lunsford possess a very positive viewpoint of the effects of the media on our writing. In direct contrast to Carr and Hedges, Lunsford argues that the media is actually improving writing unlike “those who think Google is making us stupid and Facebook is frying our brains.” Lunsford would disagree with the fact that “Google is making us stupid” or that “the internet is making us illiterate.” Instead she argues that social networking is contributing to collaborative literacy and students are writing just as much outside of class as they are inside of class. Lunsford argues that, “rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these activities seemed to help them develop a range or repertoire of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities.” Students gain the ability to easily transition from formal to informal writing styles given the nature of in class and outside class transitions. On the opposite spectrum of Hedges and Carr, Lunsford would claim that, “the participatory nature of digital media allows for more—not less—development of literacies.” Lunsford asks us to shed our preconception that people of my generation our rotting our brains with mindless texting and useless website browsing, look beyond the view “ that paints them as either brain-­‐damaged by technology or as cogs in the latest race to the top,” and instead consider another alternative. The alternative is that “the changes brought about by the digital revolution are just that: changes.” The impact that technology has on literacy and writing is neither good nor bad it is simply a change and we do not know yet what this change will bring.

             Through reading the articles of Carr, Hedges, Scribner, and Lunsford I have learned that literacy is a relative concept and it is constantly changing. Literacy has a different meaning in every community and with every passing year and its meaning will continue to evolve. A quote from Lunsford’s article very accurately captures the transitory nature of literacy. She says, “These changes alter the very grounds of literacy as the definition, nature, and scope of writing are all shifting away from the consumption of discourse to its production across a wide range of genre and media, away from individual “authors” to participatory and collaborative partners-­‐in-­‐ production; away from a single static standard of correctness to a situated understanding of audience and context and purpose for writing.” Our most pressing concerns then are to avoid the temptation to constrict the definition of literacy. Instead we should allow it to change, grow, and expand, and the result might be pleasantly surprising.