Unpackaging Literacy

• Is there a writing crisis? If there is, is it a matter of national concern? 
• Literacy has produced a great divide in human modes of thinking.
• The "writing process" is identified with the production of written discourse or text. 
• Transactional writing: writing in which it is taken for granted that the writer means what he says and can be challenged for its truthfulness and its logicality. 
• Most of our notions of what writing is about is tied up with school-based writing. 
• Most writing in secondary schools is transactional.T
• This approach binds the intellectual and social significance of writing too closely to the image of the professional and academic member of society. 
• Promotes the idea that writing outside of school has little importance. 
• Vai script isn't taught in schools – completion of lessons isn't the endpoint of learning, like seems to be in American schools.
• Unlike American society, writing in Vai serves a variety of social functions (like letter-writing and record keeping). 

This chapter leads me to believe that we must somehow change our school system so writing is looked at in not just an academic way. Maybe teachers could be less stringent about requirements for papers so that writing seems more fun to students. That way, they'd want to write outside of school as opposed to now where students are so sick of writing boring research papers that they've filled their personal writing quota.