Street and Olson

This week’s reading included excerpts from various scholars on the literacy debate. I was particularly interested in the excerpts from Brian V. Street and David Olson and I wanted to post some of the highlights from each of the excerpts.

Brain V. Street “Literacy in Theory and Practice”

Street differentiates between what he terms the Autonomous and Ideological models of Literacy. Defined as follows:

Autonomous: Texts embody ‘autonomous’ meaning which does not change over time and space.

Ideological: The meaning of literacy depends upon the social institutions in which it is embedded.

I tend to side with Street and see literacy as a very social beast. Since I side with Street I am going to list the tenets of his Ideological model with some commentary:

1. It assumes that the meaning of literacy depends upon the social institutions in which it is embedded.

2. Literacy can only be to us in forma which already have political and ideological significance and it cannot, therefore, be helpfully separated from that significance and treated as though it were an ‘autonomous’ thing.

3. The particular practices of reading and writing that are taught in any context depend upon such aspects of social structure as stratification, and the role of educational institutions.

4. The processes whereby reading and writing are learnt are what construct the meaning of it for particular practitioners.

5. We would probably more appropriately refer to ‘literacies’ than to any single ‘literacy.’

6. Writers who tend towards this model and away from the ‘autonomous’ model recognize as problematic the relationship between the analysis of any ‘autonomous’, isolable qualities of literacy and the analysis of the ideological and political nature of literacy practice.

In a nutshell, Literacy as a whole is a social event, but because of the social nature, literacy or more specifically the analysis of literacy, is problematic because of the multiple influences. Influences like ideology or cultures that are difficult to pin down. I really liked Street’s examination of Literacy and will probably use his theory in my own research.

David Olson “The World on Paper: the Conceptual and Cognitive Implication of Writing and Reading”

I was interested in Olson’s examination of the beliefs and doubts about Literacy. In a very truncated form, I want to list some of the beliefs and Olson’s arguments against these beliefs.
Beliefs:

1. Writing is the transcription of speech.
2. The superiority of writing to speech.
3. The technological superiority of the alphabetic writing system.
4. Literacy as the organ of social progress.
5. Literacy as an instrument of cultural and scientific development.

Doubts:

1. Writing systems capture only certain properties of what was said, namely, verbal form – phonemes, lexemes, and syntax – leaving how it was said or with what intention radically represented.

2. Saussure “The linguistic object is not defined by the combination of the written word and the spoken word: the spoken form alone constitutes the object.”

3. Similar to the debate between writing and speech.

4. On the flip side of social progress is the way that literacy can be used as a means of social control.

5. Establishing a link between cultural development and literacy is a slippery slope.

I don’t know that my quick reader’s digest version encapsulates the entire argument, but I like the list approach which does give a quick overview of the debate. I think what I gained from both of these articles is affirmation of my position in regards to Literacy. I do see Literacy as a social practice and the debates over Literacy are contests spaces with many differing opinions.