The literacy of sharing a world

NICSUN already gave us "Literacy in Politics." That put a new twist to a thought I've had for some time: that many people from majority or socially/politically/economically dominant groups have never learned to look at things from any other point of view, and have been educated to regard their own dominance as the right and natural order of the world. Any tipping of the balance, any leveling of the field that reduces the automatic supremacy of the dominant group is unfair, artificial, and part of an evil conspiracy.

Recently, I see this most glaringly from defenders of the Arizona immigration law, and the Tea Partiers. In the first case, many white "Conservative" Americans simply cannot believe there's an objection. "It's only against illegals!", they assure me, and can't imagine why anyone would think this law might impact legal immigrants, or even American citizens, who speak the same language or have the same skin color as those "illegals." I think we can say, with confidence, that Arizona would never have passed a law requiring white people to carry around documentation (documentation most Americans don't even possess) to produce any time a police officer demanded proof of citizenship. First of all, the majority of Arizona's voters would never subject themselves to harassment and humiliation like that. Second, well everyone just knows that white people are citizens, right?; it's non-whites who have to be individually scanned for alien status. Supporters, willfully or otherwise, blind themselves to the racial dynamic and the past and present reality of law enforcement's interaction with minority communities and claim that latinos who are here legally have nothing to fear from the law.

My second example, the one tied to the image above (or any of thousands of egregious signs that proliferate at Tea Party rallies), is the astonishing conviction held by some members of traditionally privileged groups in this country that they are getting a bad deal, that they are victims, that minorities are getting special advantages and taking over the country. This is an old, old refrain in America, dating back at least to the Civil War and white fears of "Negro Rule," as if weakening the institution of slavery or any advances toward basic citizenship and equality for African Americans meant that they'd grind whites in the dust. You see this today, with white conservatives (and, in 2008, Gloria Steinem!) denouncing Affirmative Action and the election of Barack Obama as proof that black Americans have things too easy and white people just can't catch a break anymore. Realistically, whatever disadvantages whites might suffer from Affirmative Action don't begin to override the benefits whites have received (for most of us unwillingly, unwittingly, without intent or understanding of the structural forces pushing us towards the top and others down) from our nation's racial caste system. Certainly, the election of the first non-white president can hardly spell the end of white success in America, especially when Congress, the media, the electorate, the business community, and the president's staff (from Joe Biden on down) are overwhelmingly white. Similarly, every year like clockwork Fox News warns us about a War On Christmas because some retailers have seen fit to ask their employees (who are not all Christian) to wish their customers (who are not all Christian) Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. To those who are accustomed to ignoring the existence of other religions it seems like a huge affront to be asked to share the holiday shopping season in this tiny way. As my final example, the "Defense of Marriage" campaign, which peaked in 2004 with a series of amendments to state constitutions and an attempt to amend the United States Constitution to "defend marriage" from gay participation. How utterly baffling that so many Americans have taken "heterosexual" as a political and cultural identity, and think that marriage would be devalued and destroyed if a small excluded section of the population were allowed to join in. What on earth gays marrying is supposed to do to marriage as it exists between straight couples remains vague, but the very fact that same sex marriages were performed would utterly devalue the concept. It seems very clear to me that the point in retaining exclusive ownership of marriage is to have someone to look down at; whatever else is going wrong in my life, at least I'm better than them. In a world where diversity is increasing in all fields and classes, this isn't a viable attitude in the long term. We have to learn to share both economic resources and social capital.

Update: As if to prove my point the Tea Party's flagship candidate, GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul, puts the "government mandate" to share space in this country with non-whites in terms of the death of freedom.

Literacy in Medicine

Literacy, both in the traditional sense of being able to read and our expanded sense encompassing virtually all technical skills and knowledge, plays a vital role in receiving medical care. At the most basic level, knowing about anatomy and basic health maintenance is crucial. For most of us, getting our teeth cleaned periodically and making at least a gesture towards exercise and eating healthy are ingrained, but they are learned behaviors. Once one enters the clutches of the medical system, both literal and expanded literacy are essential because of the reams of highly technical, both medically and legally, paperwork one must handle to receive, authorize, understand and pay for care. If one lacks the medical literacy to understand one's body and conditions, the literal literacy to understand the forms and paperwork, and the computer and research literacy to investigate, one is at the mercy of what information one overworked doctor can convey in brief, expensive face-to-face meetings.

Although I wasn't thinking in terms of Literacy per se, I witnessed the importance of medical and standard literacy last year when I was teaching in Namibia. Namibia is a new and impoverished country, having only won independence from Apartheid South Africa 20 years ago. It is also ground zero, along with neighboring Botswana, of the AIDS Crisis. AIDS medications are finally becoming available in the developing world, but taking AIDS "cocktails" properly and effectively is a very complicated and time-sensitive business, with a myriad of pills required at very specific times of day. How does this work in a country virtually without clocks, where time is vague to the point of near meaninglessness, and where people aren't accustomed to working with precision measuring and details? Where most people can't read in any language, much less the English formal instructions are almost always printed in? In rural Namibia (everywhere but the capital Windhoek), pill dosage instructions aren't given by the numerical clock (take two pills at 6am, and another two at 6pm) but with pictures: Take two pills when the sun is low in the sky! For some medication this may work, but for complicated and highly precise regimens it poses a huge obstacle.

Knitting and Mathematics

Every knitting pattern gives a gauge, or number of stitches and rows per inch, appropriate for the type of yarn and needle size used in the original pattern. The gauge is extremely important for a pattern because it tells you how many stitches to cast on and how many rows to knit for your desired garment size. I rarely use the yarn that is listed in the pattern nor do I even use a yarn similar in size to the given yarn. Because of this tendency, I am required to change the pattern in order to ensure that I am making the correct size for the garment. Therefore, I need to read and write the words, letters, and symbols of the pattern, as well as write and interpret mathematics in figuring out how many stitches to cast on, how many rows to knit, how much yarn to use, etc.

Determining gauge is also essential when making up your own patterns. Writing your own pattern again requires the reading, writing, and interpreting of mathematics as well as writing skills to write out the final pattern. I am making a blanket for my dad with a pattern that I wrote myself. He is a big fan of the University of Miami Hurricanes so I took a photo of one of their logos and ran it through a pattern generator. While this program breaks down the picture into number of stitches, I still need to figure out how big the blanket will be based on the yarn I want to use as well as the suggested needle size for that yarn. This particular pattern taken as it was generated would have made a tiny lap blanket so I needed to add in rows and stitches to widen and lengthen it as well as to make a nice border so that it was a more appropriate size. You can see all of my notes with equations and written instructions for the pattern along the margins of the picture of the logo.

While a knitter obviously needs to know physically how to knit, it is also important for a knitter to be literate in the language of the craft in order to pick apart a pattern. And it is mighty helpful to understand ratios!

Literacy in Music

This is my little sister CJ playing piano. She is 9 years old. Literacy in this photo is evident in the fact that she is indeed reading music while playing. However, literacy is also evident in the fact that she is listening to herself. She told me she can remember that she forgot to put the pedal on in the last two measures and she is able to point out her hardest measure and tell me how she is going to practice it. Music, to me, is the ultimate multi-tasking activity. They need to read the conductor (if there is one), read music (in the staff and the details that are around the staff, for instance, CJ forgot to read below the staff that the pedal should be put on in the last two measures) and it also includes listening to what you have played or evening listening to something that is in your head before you play so that when you do play it it is exactly how you imagined it. Music requires students to be literate in a completely different language, and practicing, just like CJ, makes a more literate person.

Photovoice 1

I think part of literacy in world language is being aware of the language you're expected to function in.
This means being wary of false cognates, especially in French.
A cognate is a word that is similar to a word in English.  For example, in French "la tradition" is very similar looking and sounding to the word "tradition" in English.  And since it is a cognate, that is what it means.
A false cognate is a word that looks and sounds very similar to a word in English, but it does not share a similar meaning.  For example, "chair" in French is not something to sit on.  It is basically "flesh" in English.
So, it was very important to realize the false cognate "naturaliste" when I visited this small seaside town in the south of France.  This particular town is inhabited by "les naturalistes" during the warmer months (I visited in January).  Naturalist has a different meaning in English, while in French "naturaliste" means nudest.  This bit of new vocabulary was and will be extremely helpful in the future.

Cognates and false cognates are an important part of literacy in teaching and learning world languages.

Literacy in Art

I am working on a lesson where students will design and draw a community eco art-park, then they will create a 3-d version using mixed media. This is my 3-d version. In the process of drawing thier park they create a what will be like a map key. I have been thinking about how this relates to reading a text of an object. Images are a large part our our daily lives, and many times written language is involved in comprehension. It seems extreemly important to be able to read our surroundings in order to survive and thrive. Our students will flurious in any environment if they are able to read the small information and build from there.

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

Ok, I didn't take this photo, but the piece provides a lot of visual reading material as an artist. Picasso's Guernica depicts the bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian forces on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of civilians were killed. When viewing this painting, the horrors of the incidents are immediately apparent. Not only do we see it in the mangled, stricken faces of the subjects, but also in the awkward, strained shapes and spacing, the rigid use of line, the lack of color, and the dark and dismal shade, or value, of the painting.

These elements; line, shape, form, value, color, space, are the language of art. They are what a work of art are made up of, and it is through these elements that an artist can create not only the image that he or she wants to convey, but also the underlying message or the mood of the work.