For my first reading for this semester, I had to read the article Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context by David Barton and Mary Hamilton. The main argument they pose in their writing is that writing, surprisingly, is inherently social, and that there is a clear link between reading and writing and “the social structures in which they are embedded and which they help shape” and how literacy and its practices fit into people lives, not the other way around (7). They also distinguish between literacy practices and literacy events. Literacy practices are “the general cultural ways of utilizing written language” while literacy events are “activities where literacy has a role” (7-8). The key difference between the two is measurability. Literacy practices are difficult to measure, as they contain intangible aspects like ideas, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, etc. Literacy events, however, are directly observable. What I found to be the most important part of the article was the argument that “literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these are observable in events which are mediated by written texts” (9). Furthermore, there are different domains of literacy, such as literacy for school, work, etc. At first this article definitely did not look interesting, put after the first page, Barton and Hamilton were making some interesting points. The first point of how literacy is a social practice struck me as surprising, and then not surprising at all. We never think of reading and writing as such, since we often read books solely on our own and reading is a “solitary” activity. However, our earliest forms of literacy engagement are purely social; they cannot exist otherwise. A one-year-old cannot experience a picture book unless an adult reads it to them. A four-year-old cannot write their ABC’s unless an adult teaches them first. On another point, I was surprised that Barton and Hamilton didn’t mention that literacy can cross domains. For example, I have recently gotten into a series of books written by Temple Grandin and her mother, Eustacia Cutler. Grandin is a famous spokeswoman for those with autism, and after being diagnosed as brain damaged in the early 50’s, she has seen and experienced the long journey autism and its diagnosis has made. As a student pursuing special education, this sounds like something I would be reading for school. However, I stumbled upon these books for my own pure entertainment, but also to grow my own knowledge on the topic. In this instance, the domains of school and leisure intersected, as I’m sure it does in many other circumstances.
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AuthorAll blog posts are for class, but hopefully I can add a little bit of flair. Archives
May 2018
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