Arta Popovic – Conversation 2

According to Szwed, the five elements of literacy are text, function, context, participants, and motivation. The one that I believe I would choose is motivation. The reason why I would choose motivation is because without motivation, I believe the interest within literacy would be null as you wouldn’t have the motivation to put in the effort. The method that Szwed recommends when studying literacy is ethnography which is exposing yourself to one’s culture. The reason why Szwed recommends this way is because he believes that “we must come to terms with the lives of people without patronizing them or falling into what can become a sociology of pathos.” What this means is we should be open-minded to the cultures around us and that we should be able to respect them without feeling the need to replace the structures that they have already set. If I were a literacy instructor at a high school in the Bronx, I would be culturally open-minded to the way my students were to perceive literature and learn off of their responses in which I would attempt to incorporate that into future assignments. I believe with that approach, it can not only be culturally in tune with them but also an ethnographic approach. The two models of literacy mentioned by Perry were ideological and autonomous. An ideological approach would be the critical thinking when regarding literature while the autonomous would be the technical views of reading and writing. I believe that an ideological approach would be better due to how it focuses on the bigger picture of “whose literacies are dominant and whose are marginalized” in which I believe that would grant you more knowledge on literacy as a whole. What I learned from researching orality versus literacy is orality focuses more on thought and verbal expression when literacy focuses more on written expression. In areas where you may consider the people illiterate, you can find that they’re more educated and informed through the orality approach. Our literacy practices are shaped by our communities in ways such as how certain schools will only accept certain grade average requirements which marginalizes a general group of students within these teaching grounds. Something like this example also shows how those schools would go about education such as literature knowing what grade average their students are. In situations like these you may perceive a child to be less intelligent if their literature standing isn’t as strong as their orality. What I like about what Perry says on the ideological model is how its “linked to cultural and power structures in society.” Literacy standards are created in the attempt to group the “intelligent” together and the “unintelligent” in another group. There is a power structure when it comes to literacy as the ones who are well versed in literature have a chance of better opportunities in their future as people prefer when one is “well educated.” Szwed mentions that literacy is simply a matter of skills of reading and writing so the idea of orality is usually undermined. Because of this people focus on their understanding and knowledge of literacy to help better their standing in the power structure.