My development of personal literacy has been
a linear exploration of text which I liken to the climbing of a mountain.
Initially I am aided by tour guides, such as parents and teachers, who show me
the sights and help me move my way through the foreign terrain, until I am wise
enough to continue on my own. It is in this vein that I intend to accompany you
through my own literacy journey- from the bottom of the mountain to the peak,
to move from a traveler to a tour guide and perhaps revisit some sights I
missed on my first trip ascending the mountain (It should noted that through
this journey I am actively becoming a text participant through my utilisationof
this metaphor to illustrate my journey- a handy little observation I have made
as a result of appreciating my own personal literacy through the study of Luke
and Freebody’s ‘Four Resources Model (1990))
Literacy is defined as…I was
thinking of putting the definition of Anstey and Bull (2004) in this post but
it is so dense I am sure it would turn you off the rest of my blog so instead I
will relay it to you as best I can... Literacy, according to myself and based on
the work of Anstey and Bull (2004), refers to the way in which
we, as responders, read and construct meaning from language. This blog is
therefore an account of the development of my own literacy based on the before
mentioned ‘Four Resources Model’ (Luke and Freebody, 1990).
Since birth I have been immersed in
literacy, encouraged to read, write and to this day my favourite pastime is burying my head in a book (see side bar for some of my favourites). One of
my earliest memories is actually of my literacy being encouraged (surprisingly
this is actually sincere and I’m not just saying that for the purpose of this
assignment). I remember driving around town with my parents in the back seat of
the car reading out loud the signs we passed. Applying what I have researched in
EDUC3038 to this event in my life I can appreciate the encouragement of my
parents in aiding me to become a ‘code breaker’. I isolate this event in my life as the beginning of
my development of code breaker skills and an event which gives me the tools to embark upon my mountain journey. My development of this type of
literacy, though instigated at an early age by my parents, would continue
throughout primary school to varying levels of success, as demonstrated through my development of subject
specific vocabulary and use of comparisons- both characteristics of code
breaking behaviour(Santoro, 2004, p. 6).
My parents were always encouraging
me on this journey; they were patient and helpful on my road to becoming a
successful reader and as such acted as the initiators of my journey and for
this I am eternally thankful to mum and dad for opening up a world for me which
might have not been otherwise. To further illustrate this point I have included
an extract from my favourite
movie as a child, ‘The Swan Princess’.
Looking back on my understanding of the
film at the time I remember I liked the cartoons and story, from memory I also
quite like the sing-a-longs, but reflecting upon my literacy development from
then to now I can now appreciate the use of my parents always making me watch it with subtitles on to strengthen my
understanding of spoken sounds and written symbols- even though at the time I
was pretty sure they just couldn’t find the off button for them.
I believe that once these
foundations were laid they were built upon by teachers who aided me further up
the mountain and who eventually enabled me to continue by myself. The the majority of the time that is. I had a
disjointed primary school life and as such I missed many of the basics of
functional literacy such as grammar and punctuation, a fact that is evident in
my writing to this day, hard as I try to rectify it. I imagine in the context
of the Four Resources Model (Santoro) that throughout my life a brick wall of
literacy has been built where each layer of bricks and mortar represents the
acquisition of literacy. In my case though the foundations are unsteady- I am
missing bricks here and there which impact ultimately on the structure of the
whole wall. This instability will remain undetected however until I enter university
where it will become clear quite quickly that the concept of literacy had moved
beyond the ability to read and write (Cazden, et al, 1996).
My own literacy has always something I have taken for granted. I grew up in
a small middle class town, with middle class parents who instilled middle class
ideals in my brother and I from a young age. I believe that my emphasis on my
‘middle class’ upbringing is important in my analysis of my own literacy
development as it explains in some part my exposure to literacy from a young
age and my initial steps onto the mountain through becoming a text participant.
Economists Levitt and Dubner, in one of my favourite books ‘Freakonomics’
(2005) analyse a U.S Department of Education study looking at the academic
progress of more than twenty thousand children from kindergarten to the fifth
grade. The actual results of this study are unimportant to my own literacy but
the analysis of the factors contributing to these result are vital. Levitt and
Dubner found that when looking at correlating factors leading to successful
test scores in the students tested were having parents with a high
socioeconomic status and, more interestingly, that the child has many books in
his/her home. What was concluded was that the mere presence of the books in
one’s home does not equal high literacy, more that the books themselves
represent the inclination of the parents to value education and literacy as
well as the socio-economic status of the parents. The point of this inclusion
in my blog is to demonstrate my own cultural literacy by applying this text to my
own life and therefore drawing meaning from it – in this way I hope I have
explained and demonstrated cultural literacy through text participation.
Year 12 English for me was the learning place of personal literacy. School was the setting for this literacy to be explicitly taught by teachers- who would figuratively drag me up the mountain kicking and screaming. Up until this point in my life I was accepting of texts as being truthful, benign pieces of information- to learn this was not the case was quite confronting and changed the ways I looked at many sources of information in my life. Was my mum only being nice to me in text messages so I would do the shopping for her? This is only one example of the ways in which I began to understand text around me.Throughout my senior schooling I became quite an accomplished user of text and excelled in comprehension- signs of my developing personal literacy skills.
However, while not intending to lessen the importance of participating in or using of text it has to be said my achievement of them was quiet boring. I was developing frostbite from the forced learning of texts and analysis of features required of me in the limited curriculum. My creativity was stifled and I began to lose interest in personal literacy-by this stage it had become quite boring. To me it was the beginning and end of the journey that was the most interesting (the functional and critical literacies- neither of which I could do very well but at least they interested me)- as I believed I could already successfully participate in and use text (obviously you would have picked up on this now thanks to my brilliant blog to rival all other blogs). Oh how wrong I was and I was soon to receive a rude wake up call- enter University...
Once I got to university I thought I was the s**t (pardon my asterisks). However, my confidence in my literacy soon deflated after a series of abysmal results which shattered my belief I knew everything there was to know about everything (a hard thing to do if you can believe it). The literacy required by university is vastly different to that required in High School. This is a sentiment mirrored by the work of Gee (cited in Anstey and Bull, 2004) in which it states 'not all students arrive at school (or university) with the same literacies and approaches to learning' (p.12). I can now see that my literacy skills stopped developing at a personal literacy level and I agree with the idea that my literacy did not match that required of university. However, my vigorous agreement did not increase my marks unfortunately. What I had to do was learn to critically analyse texts- I went from enjoying fairy tales to thinking of them as misogynistic oppressive tales of sexism- basically, I lost my innocence (okay I might be being melodramatic but you get my point). In my Modern History major I went from credits to distinctions as a result of my new found ability to analyse texts, an important skill in history- a skill afforded to me by university and my new found appreciation of the four resources model (Luke and Freebody, 1990).
A quick aside before I leave you for another week- I want to leave you with an advertisement I used to think was quiet cute- small boy covered in dirt to small boy nice and clean with the help of 'Pears' soap- however the new critical Jessica is appalled by the inherent racism and eugenic principles demonstrated in the advertisement- ta ta
Dear Mother,
I have reached the mountain top. The view from here is lovely. Thank you again for paying my way for the trip and being nice to me when I was crying saying that my feet hurt and I want to stop and have a rest...p.s. please come send a plane or helicopter to get me, I don't know how to get down again.
Oh wait I got distracted, what do you care if I can write a post card to my mother? Not much? Well you should! Let me ask you something - How did you make meaning from these silly little written symbols on your computer? I bet you even knew I was writing a letter based on how it was structured before you even read it and I bet now everything is coming together and you appreciate that the purpose of that little tangent was to entice you into becoming a text user and having you apply the knowledge I have imparted on you throughout this blog...if you didn't get that from what I did start from the beginning of the blog again....it'll come to you...eventually...I hope.
