Some Thoughts on Literacy

When I sat down to write about a memory from my literacy journey I had no idea what I could write about. According to my mother, I learnt to read at two and a half years of age having been taught how to by one of their hippy friends. Whilst this number couldn't possibly be right, I do know that reading is something that I've always been able to do and being able to escape into the world of books is something I've always loved to do. I did, however, know what being illiterate meant, or at least I thought I did. As a baby, my dad suffered a stroke and as such he has an intellectual disability. He could read and write with difficulty and a lot of effort when he was young, but after leaving school at the age of fourteen and years of not reading or writing anything at all, he lost that ability. Growing up, I've always been told that my father was illiterate because of the fact that he cannot read or write, compared to me who is considered literate because I can do these things. However, I now know that he isn't completely illiterate because reading and writing is just one form of literacy, although it is one that is more highly favoured by society (Cazden, Cope, Fairclough & Gee et al,1996).

The best example I can make of this is his ability to read maps and my complete lack of this ability. It's not just that my dad can read a map. When he sees this:

Image source.

he actually sees this:

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He is able to transform the various lines on the page and interpret the image into the solid, real world image. Whereas I look at the first image and all I see is:

Image source.

Maps make absolutely no sense to me, or at least, they make sense on the page, but then I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to translating this into reality. I look at maps and think I know how to get somewhere, but three hours later I will find myself in the middle of nowhere, unable to figure out where on the map I am. This is usually because I have gone so far in the opposite direction to where Im supposed to be that I am no longer on the map. I look at maps and think that Mr. Squiggle should be telling Blackboard that it's, "Upside down, upside down!"*

The thing is though, it wasn't until recently that I actually considered the fact that this "skill" that my dad has is actually a form of visual literacy, which has been defined as the ability to read and understand signs and is a form of critical literacy (Winch, Johnston, March, Ljungdahl & Holliday, 2004). He is able to look at the map and use the semiotic codes to construct meaning by translating the various lines and symbols that make up a map into landmarks and streets. This can be linked to the Four Resources Model of literacy.

The ability to understand what the various symbols on the page represent is part of being a code breaker (Santoro, 2004). For most people this would be quite a simple task as each map has a key or legend attached to it, showing that a red dot means a traffic light, an arrow on a street pointing a particular way indicating what direction the traffic must flow, or a black line with lots of little lines crossing it representing train tracks etc. For someone who can't read, like my dad, this makes learning the symbols quite difficult. Whether or not this knowledge was acquired or learned, he can now call upon this knowledge when necessary. It might seem that some of the symbols are obvious, like the train tracks or the house with the cross on top of it denoting a church, but it's really not that simple. In order for us to actually know what these mean we have to bring our cultural literacy into play and the knowledge that we bring with us in order to break the code of the symbols without being able to read the key (Hirsch, in Christie & Mission, 1998). For someone who has never seen a cross or any Christian iconography, that is simply a T on a house. Those train tracks could be anything. By bringing his cultural knowledge of the symbols to the map, dad is being a text participant and is a text user because he is able to break code and apply his knowledge in order to read the map and get to where he is going (Santoro, 2004). I am unsure about the last of the four resources model, that of text analyst. From my reading I understand that the text analyst is someone that understands that texts are not neutral and are able to gather this through crticial reading (Santoro, 2004). This may not be correct, but I think that being able to not only read a map and know how to get somewhere, but also how to find the shortest and cheapest way to get somewhere through the use of the map could be considered a form of text analyst. Yes, you are being a text user, but I think it goes further than just using the map but into actually interpreting it.

This is all well and good, discussing my dad's literacy and his map reading abilities, but what does it actually mean for me? In the last 20-something years, whilst I have broken the code and learnt what the symbols mean and how to read a map, and I participate by bringing the knowledge I have to the various symbols on the map, I'm still not very proficient in actually using the map, often heading the wrong way up the correct street, and needing to turn the map upside down so it's facing the way I am. Somehow I've never been able to make the connection between what is depicted on the page and what is actually in front of me. It's OK though, because I am also computer literate and able to access Google Maps. With their instructions, I don't need to be able to read a map, just street signs. (Although life would be much easier if I could properly work maps out - Google is often wrong.)

* You need a certain amount of cultural literacy in order to understand this reference. For those who don't get it, click here.

References

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., et al. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66, 60-92.

Christie, F., & Mission, R. (1998). Framing the issues in literacy education. In F. Christie & R. Mission (Eds.), Literacy and Schooling (pp. 1-17). London, UK: Routledge.

Santoro, N. (2004). Using the four resources model across the curriculum. In A. Healy & E. Honan (Eds.), Text next: New resources for literacy learning (pp. 51-67). Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association.

Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2004). Literacy, Reading, Writing and Children's Literature (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.