Can you imagine a world with no history? Is it even possible?
I took this photo in Philadelphia a few years ago, but I thought it was appropriate to revisit it for this last post. When I first saw the sign I thought it was a joke, but then quickly realized it was in fact an actual city sign. Philadelphia is a city rich in history and I suppose city officials didn't want tourists thinking any history was on this street.
What strikes me about this sign is the irony. We know by now that literacy is all around us, but what if we couldn't process it? What if we didn't even have the freedom to use the literacy skills we had inherently developed? No history? I don't even know what that would be like? I don't even want to know really.
The famous quote that says history is bound to repeat itself may apply to life, but does it apply to literacy? What I mean by this is we all build off of what we learn at a young age. That's our history. Sure, family or country history is interesting and integral, but what intrigues me is personal histories and how that applies to personal literacy. As an art education major my own personal literacy involves a lot of visual elements. I can't imagine a world without literacy in it.
First of all, this photo is incredible. "No history here"? I love it! How funny and how smart you were to capture this ironic scene.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I like the link you draw between the idea that there is no history and our literate selves. We're all history in action, right? And our histories as literate beings begin at birth, when we first communicate hunger, discomfort, happiness.
I was thinking about a sign that might say, "No literacy here". What would that sign be marking? Now that we've studied the idea that we can read the word and read the world, is it possible for there to be a place where there is no literacy? I could use your photo to kick off a new semester of Content Area Literacy by having students substitute the word "literacy" for "history" and tell me where they think literacy doesn't exist. We could return to the same idea at the end of the semester to see if thinking had changed.