Midterm Reflection

       Out of all the readings we have done, the one that has resonated with me most was Dennis Baron’s From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies. I definitely agree with his claim that literacy technology is always evolving and it is such an interesting concept that what seems ancient to us now (e.g. a pencil) was once a new piece of technology that was met with skepticism. With each new invention, people fear that we as a society will depend too much on it and therefore it will weaken our minds. Baron writes, “Plato was one leading thinker who spoke out strongly against writing, fearing that it would weaken our memories.” Plato feared that since we could now write things down, we wouldn’t rely on our minds anymore and so we wouldn’t be able to remember anything anymore. Clearly, we can still remember things and we’ve been writing things down for hundreds of years. In addition, Baron points out that when computers were invented, professors didn’t allow their students to use spell-check because they feared they would forget how to spell. Years and years of spelling words won’t just evaporate into thin air the minute someone invents spell-check. I think Baron sums it up very well when he writes, "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 has been around for so long, we forget it is a form of technology.

            The reading that challenged my beliefs about literacy was Aria by Richard Rodriguez. Though I am not bilingual and don’t have any of the experiences he’s had, I disagree with his claim that children shouldn’t be taught their native language in school because a person’s native language is something that is private to them. However, I believe that if children were taught their native language in school, their transition would be much easier. It wouldn’t be such an abrupt change from speaking all one language to speaking all another language. Rodriguez was forced to only speak English and it negatively affected his Spanish and maybe if he were encouraged in school to speak some Spanish, that wouldn't have happened.

            One term that is a bit challenging for me to understand is “social-epistemic rhetoric.” Here’s what I do know about it: this rhetoric states that we write to discover language and to critique economic, social, and political situations. This rhetoric also states that in order to write, we must constantly revise our work. Another concept I have trouble grasping is “writing on the bias.” I’m not exactly sure what that means or how to do it. Is she talking about a bias as in the sewing definition? Here’s what I think I know about it: if we look at “writing on the bias” in sewing terms, it says that fabric cut on the bias has more give/stretch to it. So maybe Brodkey’s writing has a lot of room for interpretation (a lot of give). I also don’t understand Bazerman’s four points (four cognitive hypotheses). I don’t really think I can explain what I know about them. Another concept that was hard at first was “cognitive apprenticeship.” However, with some in class explanations, I now know that a cognitive apprenticeship is basically a novice learning something from an expert. Vygotsky’s theory was confusing at first, but I understand it now to be that novices need scaffolding (specific steps) to reach the expert level of something. For example, when a child is learning to count, they need specific steps like pointing to the object to achieve their goal.

            One question about writing theory that I hope to get answered by the end of this semester is how do people from different socio-economic backgrounds learn and interpret writing? Another question is how does political and cultural contexts alter the education system? Lastly, how does cognitive apprenticeship affect people of different socio-economic backgrounds differently? For example, are the masters of skills in a poor area worse than the masters in a richer area?