Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought

Walter J. Ong's main claim is that writing is most definitely a technology even though most people don't think of it that way. People assume writing is natural, but as Ong points out, oral expression is what is natural to humans; writing is just as unnatural as people perceive computers to be. Ong goes on to explain the many differences between writing and speaking. He also alludes to the idea of "haves" and "have-nots" because it seems as though people who are able to write effectively are seen as "literate" and "haves" and those who use oral communication and do not write things down are seen as "illiterate" and "have-nots."

Five sentences:

1. "Functionally, literate persons, those who regularly assimilate discourse such as this, are not simply thinking and speaking human beings but chirographically thinking and speaking human beings (latterly conditioned also by print and by electronics)." --literate people are seen as literate because they are well versed in electronics and and various forms of print media. 

2. "Although we take writing so much for granted as to forget that it is technology, writing is in a way the most drastic of the three technologies of the word. It initiated what printing and electronics only continued, the physical reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone real, spoken words exist." --if writing was never invented, we wouldn't have the technologies we have today. Writing is an invention that changed how we as a society operate.

3. "Whereas in oral communication the source (speaker) and the recipient (hearer) are necessarily present to one another, writing distances the source of the communication (the writer) from the recipient (the reader)." --this is one of the differences between writing and oral communication. When someone reads something, the writer can be in the same room or thousands of miles away and unaware that someone is reading their work. But in oral communication, there is a very high likelihood that the people are in the same room together (unless it is skype or a phone call, which are new technologies that oral communicators back in the day could have never anticipated).

4. "They separate the knower from the known more spectacularly than writing does. Between the knower and the known, print interposes elaborate mechanical contrivances and operations of a different order of complexity than writing." --electronics separate the "haves" and the "have-nots."

5. "Writing separates the known from the knower more definitely than the original orally grounded maneuver of naming does, but it also unites the knower and the known more consciously and more articulately." --since writing is a form of technology, and technology separates society, writing does the same, unlike oral communication which is the original way of communicating. However, oral communication is not always accurate, but writing is because you have a record of what someone said rather than just relying on memory. 

Something I want more info on:

On page 26 when Ong writes that administration is unknown in oral cultures, I wonder how the student/teacher binary got to be the way it is now. When teachers and students interact orally in a classroom, there is a clear hierarchy; the teacher is in charge of the students. So this is kind of the opposite of what is being said about oral communication. 

Cynthia Selfe

Selfe's central claim is that composition teachers have to pay attention to technology. Literacy and technology are linked, so if teachers don't pay attention, they are responsible for illiteracy among students. However, Selfe claims that there is a cultural and economic divide and that even though a national program for technological literacy could provide people with equal access to better education (and therefore upward mobility and economic prosperity), computers still tend to get distributed unevenly among people of ethnic minorities and a lower socio-economic standing and people of ethnic majorities and a higher socio-economic standing.

Sentences that support:
1. It is a fact, for instance, that schools primarily serving students of color
and poor students continue to have less access to computers, and access to
less sophisticated computer equipment than do schools primarily serving
more affluent and white students.

2. I believe composition studies faculty have a much larger and more
complicated obligation to fulfill-that of trying to understand and make
sense of, to pay attention to, how technology is now inextricably linked to
literacy and literacy education in this country.

3. In other words, the poorer you are and the less educated you are in this
country-both of which conditions are correlated with race-the less
likely you are to have access to computers and to high-paying, high-tech jobs
in the American workplace.

4. Computer-using teachers instruct students in how to use technology-but, all too often, they neglect to teach students how to pay critical attention to the issues generated by technology use.

5. Composition teachers, language arts teachers, and other literacy specialists need to recognize that the relevance of technology in the English studies disciplines is not simply a matter of helping students work effectively with communication software and hardware, but, rather, also a
matter of helping them to understand and to be able to assess-to pay attention to-the social, economic, and pedagogical implications of new communication technologies and technological initiatives that affect their lives.

The above sentences show some examples of what can happen when computers aren't equally distributed among schools. Also in the above sentences, it is a teacher's responsibility to not only teach children how to use computers, but to make sure they understand the effects of this technology. If children are technologically illiterate, they may not be able to get jobs.

Sentence I want more info on:
But, all too often, they neglect to teach students how to pay critical attention to the issues generated by technology use. -- Why do some teachers neglect to teach students this?


Question for class:
If the government proposes a national program to make computers equally accessible in schools, why do you think they are only going to rich/white areas?

Literacy narrative final draft

Danielle Zickl

Composition Theory

Mary Lourdes Silva

9/23/14

Literacy Narrative

            A lot of kids don’t really like reading because they associate it with being forced to read books for school that they never would have chosen on their own, but I caught the reading bug in kindergarten—long before that was an issue.

            The New York Public Library was easily my favorite place as a child (other than ballet class). Here, I’d wander the children’s section for what seemed like hours, handing my mom or dad every book I picked out so I wouldn’t have to hold them all. At the tender age of six I got my first library card with a signature that was close to illegible (when I got older I just had to get a new one because I couldn’t stand how sloppily written my name was), but what mattered most was that it was my own; it was a portal to a different world. When I’d finish raiding the children’s section, we’d go to the adult section so my parents could browse around. I remember being in awe of how long these books were compared to my books and couldn’t wait until I could read them all. But the one thing I didn’t like about the adult section was how quiet it was. In the children’s section, there’d be parents reading to their kids on the various couches that were around, or kids just being loud and obnoxious because they’re little and that’s what they do. But none of that happened in the adult section. It was just grown-ups picking up a book, quickly scanning its contents, and either putting it back on the shelf or holding on to it while they repeated the cycle, and all of this was done for the most part silently.

            Spending time at the library with my parents gave me a chance to bond with them. Many parents could have easily left their child’s school in charge of their reading if they were too busy to do it themselves, but since I’m an only child, it was pretty easy for parents to make time for my literacy. My mom worked part time as a pre-school teacher and was always home when I was to take me to the library if I wanted to go, and even though my dad worked a full time job and wasn’t home as much as my mom was, he would never say no to a trip to the library. Though my dad never liked school and didn’t continue on to college, he’s an avid reader. He just enjoys reading for fun as opposed to being forced to read for educational purposes, and I think he wanted to impart that habit on me early — way before forced reading had a chance to ruin my love of it.

            I went to the same school from kindergarten to eighth grade. It was kind of a pilot school because it tested new types of learning methods out on its students. For example, we had mixed classes of first and second graders, and third and fourth graders. The idea was that the older kids could help the younger kids out. The school also provided us laptops from fifth through eighth grade to see how the use of technology could help us learn. No other schools on Staten Island were doing these types of things at the time, which is why it was exclusive; the school held a lottery to get in. In other words, most children go to schools they’re zoned for (which are presumably close to where they live), but the school I went to didn’t abide by zoning laws. Anyone whose parents entered them into the lottery and ended up getting in could go to this school, no matter where on Staten Island they lived. So every morning for eight years, my mom drove me a half hour there and every afternoon she drove me a half hour back home all in the name of a good education.

            My grandma got me my first journal when I was in third grade. I’m not really sure why she got it, but maybe because it was my favorite color she knew I’d like it. It was purple and sparkly and you could only open it with the key that it came with and I guarded that key with my life. I scribbled down my thoughts on my classmates, my friends, my family, my animals and anything else my little eight-year-old mind could think of until I ran out of pages. Though I’ve never been one to religiously keep a journal (I’ve had a few since third grade), this was my first brush with writing just for myself as opposed to writing for academic reasons, and I liked it.

            In fifth grade, it was evident that I was ahead of my peers in the reading department. All the books in Mrs. Held’s classroom had colored stickers on them and we could only read books of the color we were assigned based on our reading level. I remember being able to read books of a higher level than most of my class and I totally loved the fact that I was reading books that no one else was; it made me feel special. Two books I read then that stick out in my mind are The Giver by Lois Lowry and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

            A year later, in sixth grade, we had to write a book about ourselves. I remember including information about my dog, my hobbies (ballet and ice skating), and my friends. I found this assignment to be a lot of fun and even bound it together with ribbon instead of just stapling it. Ms. Roman thought I did a good job on it and showed the class my work (along with a few other students’ work). During this time, I was practically failing math and this book kind of let me know that I was good at something.

            I was in eighth grade when I finally got a television in my room. Until then, I had nothing to do in there but read and I think that was the point of me not being allowed to have a TV in there in the first place. They didn’t want to run the risk of me being holed up in my room 24/7 and never coming out. But I was allowed to watch TV in the living room whenever I wanted because it was a social thing. In order to watch TV I’d have to come downstairs to where my parents usually were. When I got the TV, I did read a little less at first because I was so thrilled to be able to watch TV anytime I wanted instead of having to wait for a time when my parents weren’t watching their shows, but after a while there were times where I simply didn’t feel like watching TV, so I’d go back to my books. I think this solidified the fact that books were an important part of my life and nothing was going to really change that, even though they were scared that a TV would.

            Ninth grade was the year that I discovered just how much I really liked to write. At the time, I was big into the show Gilmore Girls and one of the characters, Rory, wanted to be a journalist. When I found out that journalism was one of the electives my high school offered, I jumped at the opportunity to take it. I loved journalism because it gave me a sense that what I was writing really mattered (not to mention, I felt pretty official getting to interview people). This class had me constantly writing and I enjoyed every minute of it. Though I sometimes found it difficult to piece together a story, I welcomed the challenge (unlike the challenge of math, which was unbearable). The same year was also my mom’s first parent-teacher conference at the high school and that day, she asked me how to get to all of the classrooms. It was my first instinct to write a detailed list of steps that took up about three sheets of computer paper. For whatever reason my mom told my journalism teacher, Mrs. Baron, about what I had done and Mrs. Baron told her that she remembered doing the same kind of thing when she was younger. My mom took it as a sign that I was meant to write. I can see how many parents might take their child’s desire to be a writer and immediately worry that they won’t be able to find a job (or at least a high-paying one) and beg them to find something else. But if parents give their child the freedom to choose their own path, it makes for a much happier child. What’s worse than living an unhappy life and resenting your parents? Or vice versa, what’s worse than having your child resent you for the rest of their lives because you were too controlling back when they were younger? It’s just better to just support anything and everything your child wants to do, unless they want to become a serial killer or something, in which case I’d say get help immediately!

            It was a continuing trend all throughout middle school and high school that I was good at English and history, but not so great at science and embarrassingly terrible at math. It was only natural for me to want to pursue the things I was good at, so even though I think of my ninth grade journalism class as kind of a turning point for me, my academic record showed that I was bound for this path anyway.

            I never liked poetry until I really got into Stevie Nicks. I’d always enjoyed her music since I grew up listening to classic rock, but I really became obsessed with her during my freshman year of college. Until then, poetry had never done anything for me. Why was William Carlos Williams’ eight-line poem about a wheelbarrow so important? Why was I being forced to read poems from the 1800s that were so outdated and hard to understand? I hadn’t realized that songs were poems until I watched countless interviews where she talked about how all of her songs started out as written poems; she never added a melody until it was time for the band to record. Stevie’s words just hit me in a way that I had never experienced before; unlike “The Red Wheelbarrow,” or any other poems I read in high school, I could actually relate to what she was writing about (“never have I been a blue calm sea, I have always been a storm”).

            Looking back, my sponsors exhibit the type of life I had. I grew up in an upper-middle class household and had many opportunities that I now realize not everyone had. The kids I went to school with were very similar to me for the most part, so it never occurred to me that my socio-economic status played a large role in my literacy. The fact that I’m even writing this narrative as a student of Ithaca College is a reflection this; not everyone is able to go to college to pursue what they are interested in. Reading and writing have always been a big part of my life and I now realize that I’m not the only one responsible for that. 

Baron's "From Pencils To Pixels"

I agree with Baron's claim that literacy technology is always evolving and that what seems really old to us now was once new and was also viewed with skepticism like it is today. The computer, he says, is just the newest invention in a long line of inventions that have helped us write.

Five sentences that support this position:
1. "The pencil may seem a simple device in contrast to the computer, but although it has fewer parts, it too is an advanced technology." - We think that pencils are so old fashioned since now we have complicated electronic devices that can do virtually everything for us, but at the time they were created, pencils were viewed just like we view high tech computers nowadays.
2. "We cannot be exactly sure why writing was invented, but just as the gurus of today's technology are called computer geeks, it's possible that the first writers also seemed like a bunch of oddballs to the early Sumerians, who might have called them cuneiform geeks." - Since speaking was the primary way of getting ideas across originally, the people who invented writing might have been looked at in a way that denoted above average intelligence. I know I look at technology experts in today's world that way.
3. "Plato was one leading thinker who spoke out strongly against writing, fearing that it would weaken our memories."
4. "When we began to use computers in university writing classes, instructors didn't tell students about the spell-check programs on their word processors, fearing the students would forget how to spell." - This sentence and the previous sentence represent the fact that people today have the same fears that people in the past had. Even though it may seem ridiculous to us now that people feared the act of writing because writing has been around for ages, writing was new at one time and people generally fear new things.
5. "We have a way of getting so used to writing technologies that we come to think of them as natural rather than technological. We assume that pencils are a natural way to write because they are old — or at least because we have come to think of them as being old." - Since writing and pencils and whatnot have been around for so long, we forget they are forms of technology. We only see computers as technology because that's what is new today, but old things were once new.

One sentence that's ambiguous:
Under the section Humanists and Technology, I just don't understand why Henderson is so anti-computers when pencils were the computers of the 1800s. He bases his actions on the fact that Thoreau didn't like telegraphs, but Thoreau full-well knew that pencils were technology since he designed them for a living.

Questions for class discussion:
Do you think this article would make people who are "anti-technology" give technology a chance, seeing as the tools they use and see as old-fashioned were once new?

Autoethnography first draft

            As far back as I can remember I’ve always loved to read. My love of writing came a bit later, but reading was my first passion. A lot of kids don’t really like reading because they associate it with being forced to read books for school that they never would have chosen on their own, but I caught the reading bug in kindergarten—long before that was an issue.

            Some of my first literacy memories took place inside the New York Public Library. Here, I’d wander the children’s section for what seemed like hours, handing my mom or dad every book I picked out so I wouldn’t have to hold them all. At the tender age of six I got my first library card with a signature that was close to illegible (when I got older I just had to get a new one because I couldn’t stand how sloppily written my name was), but what mattered most was that it was my own; it was a portal to a different world. When I’d finish raiding the children’s section, we’d go to the adult section so my parents could browse around. I remember being in awe of how long these books were compared to my books and couldn’t wait until I could read them all. Spending time at the library with my parents gave me a chance to bond with them; the three of us had (and still have) different interests, but books are one thing we’ve always had in common. To this day if you walk into my house, you’re likely to find the three of us in various areas of the house with a book in our hands.

            My grandma got me my first journal when I was in third grade. It was purple (my favorite color then and now) and sparkly and you could only open it with the key that it came with and I guarded that key with my life. I scribbled down my thoughts on my classmates, my friends, my family, my animals and anything else my little eight-year-old mind could think of until I ran out of pages. Though I’ve never been one to religiously keep a journal (I’ve had a few since third grade), this was my first brush with writing just for myself as opposed to writing for academic reasons, and I liked it.

            In fifth grade, it was evident that I was ahead of my peers in the reading department. All the books in Mrs. Held’s classroom had colored stickers on them and we could only read books of the color we were assigned based on our reading level. I remember being able to read books of a higher level than most of my class and I totally loved the fact that I was reading books that no one else was; it made me feel special. Two books I read then that stick out in my mind are The Giver by Lois Lowry and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

            A year later, in sixth grade, we had to write a book about ourselves. I found this assignment to be a lot of fun and even bound it together with ribbon instead of just stapling it. Ms. Roman thought I did a good job on it and showed the class my work (along with a few other students’ work). During this time, I was practically failing math and this book kind of let me know that I was good at something.

            I was in eighth grade when I finally got a television in my room. Until then, I had nothing to do in there but read and I think that was the point of me not being allowed to have a TV in there in the first place. My parents placed a high value on literacy and didn’t really want me spending 24 hours a day in front of a TV. I did read a little less at first because I was so thrilled to be able to watch TV anytime I wanted instead of having to wait for a time when my parents weren’t watching their shows, but after a while there were times where I simply didn’t feel like watching TV, so I’d go back to my books. I think this solidified the fact that books were an important part of my life and nothing was going to really change that.

            Ninth grade was the year that I discovered just how much I really liked to write. At the time, I was big into the show Gilmore Girls and one of the characters, Rory, wanted to be a journalist. When I found out that journalism was one of the electives my high school offered, I jumped at the opportunity to take it. I loved journalism because it gave me a sense that what I was writing really mattered (not to mention, I felt pretty official getting to interview people). This class had me constantly writing and I enjoyed every minute of it. Though I sometimes found it difficult to piece together a story, I welcomed the challenge (unlike the challenge of math, which was unbearable). The same year was also my mom’s first parent-teacher conference at the high school and that day, she asked me how to get to all of the classrooms. It was my first instinct to write a detailed list of steps that took up about three sheets of computer paper. For whatever reason my mom told my journalism teacher, Mrs. Baron, about what I had done and Mrs. Baron told her that she remembered doing the same kind of thing when she was younger. My mom took it as a sign that I was meant to write.

            It was a continuing trend all throughout middle school and high school that I was good at English and history, but not so great at science and embarrassingly terrible at math. It was only natural for me to want to pursue the things I was good at, so even though I think of my ninth grade journalism class as kind of a turning point for me, my academic record showed that I was bound for this path anyway.

            I never liked poetry until I really got into Stevie Nicks. I’d always enjoyed her music since I grew up listening to classic rock, but I really became obsessed freshman year of college. Until then, poetry had never done anything for me. Why was William Carlos Williams’ eight-line poem about a wheelbarrow so important? Why was I being forced to read poems from the 1800s that were so outdated and hard to understand? I hadn’t realized that songs were poems and Stevie’s just hit me in a way that I had never experienced before; unlike “The Red Wheelbarrow,” or any other poems I read in high school, I could actually relate to Stevie’s words.   

            In applying Deborah Brandt’s theory, my sponsors of literacy throughout my life have been my parents and the resources they’ve provided me throughout my life, my teachers, and Stevie Nicks. Brandt’s definition of sponsors includes the fact that they gain some advantage by their sponsorship and this is true of the sponsors I’ve mentioned. My parents gain the knowledge that I am a literate and educated person with a path that I am following. So far, they have been pretty successful in raising me and I think that’s definitely valuable to them. My teachers have not only gained a paycheck for their efforts, but the knowledge that they helped shape a student’s life in some way. Lastly, Stevie Nicks earns money from the songs and albums I’ve purchased and all the money she’s ever made shows her that she has a large fan base. This is good for her to know because if she didn’t have any fans, what’s the point of her doing what she does?

            Looking back, these sponsors exhibit the type of life I had. For example, many parents could have easily left their child’s school in charge of their reading if they were too busy to do it themselves, but my parents always made time because they felt that my literacy was very important. Although I didn’t mention it, being a student at Ithaca College is a reflection of my economic standing and class as well; not everyone is able to go to college to pursue what they are interested in.

            It’s very interesting to look back at how my literacy sponsors and socioeconomic background have shaped me. Reading and writing have always been a big part of my life and I now realize that I’m not the only one responsible for that. 

map of my own literacy

my own literacy moment

As a child, I always had an interest in books. My mom would always take me to the library whenever I wanted to go (which was a lot) and I'd check out tons of books of any kind. My mom never put a limit on what I could and couldn't read. Anything that piqued my interest was okay with her. Even as a small child, I had my own library card and I remember that when I got a little older, I desperately wanted a new one because my kindergarten signature was so sloppy. Since I would always get so many books from the library, I developed a habit of reading multiple books at one time. I still do that to this day and a lot of people don't understand how/why I do it, but it works for me. Since my childhood was so deeply rooted in actual books, it boggles my mind how people are able to read off of nooks and kindles. It just doesn't seem natural to me at all.

summary of a literacy sponsor

Brandt's idea of a literacy sponsor is anyone or anything that influences a person's literacy. It could be someone's teacher, parents, job, etc. Sponsors also have something to gain. For example, a teacher gains a paycheck, or a boss gains a competent worker. Literacy sponsors are dependent on who you are as a person (culture, class, gender, etc.). For example, if you are Chinese and live in a rural area of America, accessing a sponsor to fit your needs might be hard. If you are extremely poor, accessing a sponsor might be a little harder than if a rich person wanted to access a sponsor because you might not have the money to buy books or get a higher education, etc.

Literacy Map of Dora Lopez on Coggle

Reading response to "Sponsors of Literacy"

"Sponsors of Literacy" demonstrated that sponsors play a very influential role in the literacy of individuals.  Brandt defines a sponsor as anything that "enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way." There were stories about a few different people, all of whose cultures, classes, opportunities, and jobs played an important part in their literacy. One man, Raymond Branch, grew up in California playing with computers both at his school and at his father's science lab in the mid 1970s. In the late 1970s, he and his family moved to the Midwest, where he received his own computer for Christmas. This computer gave him access to all types of literature that interested him. Conversely, Dora Lopez, who was born the same year as Raymond Branch and lived in the same area of the Midwest as he did, didn't have the same sponsors of literacy as he did. She and her family had to travel almost 70 miles for Spanish newspapers and magazines and couldn't usually get any Spanish radio stations. She was also exposed to computers at a later age than Raymond Branch. It's interesting that two people of the same age who live in the same town have such different sponsors of literacy based on their class, culture, and gender. 

Dwayne Lowery's sponsors of literacy were newspapers and the union he was in. Due to these two sponsors, Lowery's reading and writing habits drastically changed. He was someone who never really liked school and didn't do much reading and writing. When he got a job in the union, he began to inform himself more by reading newspapers, and he had to read and write legal briefs. By simply getting a job, Lowery gained sponsors of literacy and they became very important to his life.

In the cases of Sarah Steele and Carole White, people they worked with were their sponsors of literacy. Carole White's sponsor was the vice-president of the firm where she was a secretary. She observed him writing anecdotes and that helped her when she started going door-to-door as a Jehovah's Witness. Sarah Steele picked up tips on how to budget her household from an attorney where she worked. 

Having sponsors of literacy of any form is extremely important because they help you in many areas of life. I thought it was very interesting that a study was done on this subject and I'm actually very curious about what types of sponsors people I know have. 

"Aria" by Richard Rodriguez

        "Aria" by Richard Rodriguez is about his childhood as someone who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, but was then forced to learn English for school when he and his family moved to California from Mexico. Throughout the piece he talks about trying to reconcile the two languages, but finds much difficulty in doing so. At first it is hard for him to transition to speaking English. He finds the pronunciations and sounds of the language to be awkward and rarely speaks to anyone outside his home. Finally, his teachers impress the importance of speaking English upon his parents and he is now being encouraged to speak in English when he is at home, instead of Spanish. When Rodriguez is finally comfortable speaking in English, he then has to deal with extended family members looking down on him for not speaking Spanish. Eventually, he begins to feel guilty speaking Spanish anywhere and so he doesn't use it, or rather he feels he can't use it.
        Rodriguez claims that children shouldn't be taught in their native language at school because if they are taught in their native language, they are being taught something that should be private to them in a public space; children shouldn't be using something so familial in the classroom because it doesn't belong there. Granted, I grew up speaking nothing but English, so there's no way for me to really understand how bilingual children feel about speaking one language out in public and another language in the home, but I disagree with Rodriguez's stance. I believe that if children are taught at least partly in their native language at school, it would make their transition easier. Rodriguez was forced to only speak English and it negatively effected his Spanish and maybe if he were encouraged in school to speak some Spanish, that wouldn't have happened.

"Writing on the Bias" by Linda Brodkey

     "Writing on the Bias" is Linda Brodkey's narrative about recalling her childhood and adolescent memories literacy. Throughout this narrative, Brodkey talks about her love of reading from a very young age; after she read every book in the children's library, she moved on to the adult library. In school, she'd read so far ahead that her teachers would actually tape the pages so she couldn't. She also goes on to compare her perfectionism in writing to her perfectionism in dance. She mentions that she would force herself to read books that she didn't even really like just because they were classics, and this ties into her theme of class, which I will be elaborating on. 
      Brodkey felt that since she was of the working-class, she had to read classic literature to make her feel smarter and more middle-class. I think this is a valid concern for someone who had very high ambitions for herself. To get into a university like she wanted to, it is necessary to be well-read, no matter which class you are from. The whole reason Brodkey got into art is because it "transcends class"; she didn't want to be associated with her own class and thought that art would aid in that mobility. However, her desire to transcend classes became an issue at home when she felt she could no longer could relate to certain family members.