Literacy in a Changing Society

In class we discussed that ‘literacy’ can be defined as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as inquiry, language study, and meaning making, but my understanding of literacy has developed and become more in line with Harste (2003) in which he states “Literacy can be thought of as a particular set of social practices that a particular set of people value” and Friere, that literacy is reading the word, and reading the world. If you look at literacy in these terms, then it is impossible to describe or define literacy without including the notion that is changes, the definition of literacy in terms of our set of social practices would be much different then 30, 50, or 100 years ago. Throughout my lifespan for example, I was not introduced to computer technology until around the middle of elementary school, in which case we used large green screen computers in the lab to play educational games, for math and spelling, it was closer to middle school when we began using computers for word processing assignments and internet research. I was also in my early teens before having a home pc was prevalent in our society, and until my generation began using personal computers for other purposes such as social networking, etc. Thus, learning how to use a computer was something that was not a necessarily a literary requirement when I first began school, but by the end of my high school career it was, I had to spend a great deal of time learning the functions, the processes, such as web browsing, keyboarding etc at a much later age then children in today’s society. My daughter Emelia, is 2 years old. Her generation of children now have entirely different literary expectations, because the use of technology and computers has now become so prominent in everyday life tasks and activities, it is essential for humans to learn and understand, “to be able to read”, computers and the internet, therefore beginning to teach these concepts at a much younger age, then 12 or 13 like I was, is a new social practice that would alter our definition of literacy. This photograph is of my two year old daughter about to skype with her grandmother (at two, she knows how to turn on the computer, use the keypad to move the cursor, click on the Skype shortcut button and she even knows which names her Nana is, she can pick a name, and click ‘video call’).