ValerieM Blog #2

ValerieM

If I were to ask a person what is literacy, I believe they would say its reading and writing. I use to think of literacy was reading and writing also, because that’s how it was viewed. I believe literacy to go beyond the reading and writing. I would define literacy as a lifelong learning process of being able to comprehend in order to achieve our goals in life.

Literacy and Education has definitely changed since the writings of Gere and Rodriguez. I think Gere’s article saw literacy and educations as professionalism. Throughout her article she mentions workshops and speaking in communities centers, churches, shelters for homeless, around kitchen tables and rented rooms because  she believe that writing development occurs outside formal education. Rodriguez on the other hand believed that literacy and education was through the classroom. Since technology have arrived and many classrooms have computers, overheads and other visual aids to assist with preparing students to advance in education and to become literate  I think has also become problematic, because many students won’t pick up the book to read like Rodriguez, instead they’re goggling everything. This should be a concern to not just the parents but also to the teachers. It’s just like a person who knows the beat of a drum but can’t read music. Just knowing the beat will not get a person very far because sooner or later that beat will have to be put into action and that is reading the music sheet.

Rodriguez believes that the classroom is where his education and literacy come from, but he had no outside experience, instead of teaching his family what he learned he distanced himself from them. I believe when one mix education with experience the results is achieving goals. Even though Rodriguez achieved his goals I believe he hid behind the books because he wanted to have the appearance of being educated.  I guess I can understand why Gere stated, “ Reaching out into the community with prose performances develops in participants the perception that writing can effect changes in their lives” (p.77).

Julia Mishlove - Literacy and Education, Blog Post #2

The articles that we have read by Gere and Rodriguez have really caused me to think about the educational system in colleges and primary schools in a different way. Before, I would have thought that the shortcomings in education were mostly due to Eurocentric curriculum, incompetent instruction, overcrowding, underfunding, etc… In other words, the usual suspects that we hear about as problems in the educational system. These articles have made me think that there may also be fundamental problems in simply providing an educational experience that is meaningful and relevant.

Both Gere and Rodriguez have criticisms of schooling along these lines. In my interpretation, Gere felt that the field of composition in universities was more interested in promoting the professionalism of the field than providing a well-rounded curriculum to students. Extracurricular writers/ writing groups are purposefully left out. Rodriguez describes how in all of his years of primary school, college, and graduate school he lacked an educational experience that connected with his culture, or taught him to think for himself. From both of these authors, it would seem that the goals of the educational system are misguided.

If I were asked to define the word “literacy” I would say that literacy means the ability to read and speak, reading comprehension, level of vocabulary and word recognition. I would imagine when schools are evaluating the literacy of students these are the same things they are looking for. Rodriguez made me think that literacy also refers to intellectual sophistication to a certain degree. Rodriguez describes how although he was a bookworm, he never felt that a book caused him to reflect and come to his own opinions/ conclusions. Rather, he states that he read to be told what to think. I don’t know that I would consider this literacy, and it certainly should not be the goal of schools to develop this type of literacy in kids. It is not intellectually enriching.

Further, Rodriguez also describes how he would read just for the sake of feeling educated: “Most books, of course, I barely understood. When reading Plato’s Republic, for instance, I had to keep referring to the book jacket comments to remind myself what the book was about. Nevertheless, with the special patience and superstition of a scholarship boy, I looked at every word of the text. And by the time I reached the last word, relieved, I convinced myself that I had read The Republic. In a ceremony of great pride, I solemnly crossed Plato off my list.” (pg. 444) Obviously, this type of reading is not intellectually enriching either. So, I think we could stand to take a more sophisticated view of literacy and focus on more than just ability to read, speak with proper grammar, etc… Especially those of us going into the teaching profession. I found Rodriguez’s article to be more provoking to me personally, because I am and education major and his article addressed mostly his experience in primary schools. This article speaks directly to what my goals should be as an educator.

Gere’s article described the field of composition in universities as more self-serving and driven towards prestige than interested in teaching comprehensive background in composition. Gere speaks about many people in private/ extracurricular writing groups that function much differently than those offered in universities. Many of the people involved in these groups were rejected in the realm of academia. Gere’s article made me think that these academic institutions are trying to force people to fit a mold which may or may not utilize their unique talents. Gere feels that the world of academia should take a broader view of what they consider professional. She states: “Few of the participants in the Tenderloin Women's Writing Workshop or the Lansing, Iowa Writers' Workshop had much formal education, and many had negative experiences with schooling. They did not think of themselves as writers because teachers had taught them they could not write. Yet these individuals wrote effectively in workshops, published their writing, and gained personal and community recognition for their work.”

This made me think about how the system of education does take a very selective view in many ways. How could schools reject people and tell them that they cannot write when these same people are then going on to have some success as writers, and more importantly, take great satisfaction from writing? I don’t think rejection and humiliation have any place in education unless you’re somewhere like Harvard’s business school. In a primary or undergraduate level the most important goal of the educational system should be to encourage each student to find their own talents and interests and develop them. For my own future profession as a teacher, I would like to seek out a broader view of what kinds of experiences and materials I find to be of educational relevance. Gere’s article indicates that the current narrow scope of the educational world leaves many people behind. While Gere is speaking specifically of the field of composition, I see how this can parallel any are of education.

My personal reflections on this are that the educational system does not focus enough on intellectual enrichment in a real sense. These articles indicate that the educational system is focused a narrow view of what’s considered educational, and is dismissive of what isn’t. Further, literacy development in schools seems to be too superficial to be intellectually enriching. I have thought more about these topics and seen these areas for criticism. I’d be interested now in reading some articles with some practice ideas on how to improve education and promote deeper literacy.

Google

Google

When I used to think about literacy I thought it was just a person who could read and write. Throughout my school years it became clear that literacy was much more than being able to read and write. Literacy also make me think about when even I have a conversation with a person that is not literate it really frustrates me because it is like talking to a baby that has not learned to speak yet. Being able to talk well consists of being able to read and have a large cognitive capacity. A person that can understand books, long or short articles, and also pieces as short as paragraphs. A person that is literate can write and it is not the way they would talk. Literacy can also be understanding things in different ways. Literacy does not only have to do with reading and writing, because it is used in everyday life. Literacy is being able to read and being able to understand what you have read well. A person can not read something without understanding what they have just read. An illiterate person can not read, write nor understand what they have read. When reading Anne Gere article my understanding about literacy changed a lot. Before reading this article I thought a person could only be taught literacy from school. After reading this this article I now know that it is taught in everyday life. The two groups teachers each other and they learned from one another. “The stated purpose of the Lansing, Iowa Writers Workshop is to build community in order to solve local problems” (75). Literacy is not just about learning in school, but also everyday life. While reading the Anne gere article education was very important. These people came from not knowing or knowing little about writing, to writing essays that were published. After reading Rodriguez article, my understanding about education and literacy changed. He was very determined to become a very educated man. He had a rough life because not only was English his second language, but he was torn between his family and school. “he goes home and sees in his parents a way of life not only different but stankly opposed to that of the classroom”(433). He teaches a lot about education because no matter where a person comes from with hard work and determination anyone can become successful. A person can not always depend on their family but that does not mean they will fail in life. He had other people that supported him in the way he needed while in school. Rodriguez makes me want to work harder in life because after reading the obstacles he had to over come nothing seems impossible for me. Education is very important and I do not believe a person can be successful with out one.

Blog Post for 10-02

After rereading Gere’s article, again, I came to the realization that education and literacy are constantly changing. She gives several histories about how education and literacy has changed over the last three hundred plus years and, although she does not come out and say it, the way reading and writing has changed from the 1700’s to now. Rodriguez’s article actually explains what he went through to get his education and explains how getting it made him nostalgic. Both articles made me rethink why students go to school. “Workshops outside classroom walls frequently succeed with those individuals deemed unsuccessful by their compositions instructors,” (Gere 77). My first thought when I read this this last time was ‘if this is so true then why do students go to school and spend a lot of money on getting an education if they’re just going to fail at writing to go to a workshop and succeed?‘ Students go to school to get an education in something that, sometimes, they love, such as becoming an author. Or other times students go to school to get a degree in anything they think will help them get a good job, such as business. Lets say a person wants to become an author, they take composition classes, to improve their writing. But then the teacher or professor tells the student that they can’t write. So to me, its almost like, then why bother taking a class if your just going to fail it? Then it hit me; students take reading and writing classes because if they don’t pay for it, it doesn’t count toward their degree at all therefore they can’t graduate. This bothered me. Knowing that so many students that take reading and/or writing composition classes fail (after paying for them!) just to retake it in a workshop. I think after reading it again, this is what bothered the most. In Rodriguez’s article, he mentions that his mother gained her high school diploma and “On her own, she determined to learn how to type. That skill get her jobs typing envelops in letter shops, and it encouraged in her an optimism about the possibility of advancement,” (437). So, determined as she was, she got a job working in a California state government civil service position. It was just a typing job, but she was proud to have it. “On the dictating tape, a voice referred to urban guerrillas. My mother typed (the wrong word , correctly): ‘gorillas”. The mistake horrified the anti-poverty bureaucrats who shortly arranged to have her return to her previous position. She would go no further,” (437/438). Although she knew how to spell very well, she made a mistake. This mistake ended up costing her which is her reasoning for pushing her children to get an education. This proved just because a person was literate and could read and write didn’t mean they could do whatever they wanted. Today, there are many spelling’s for one word, such as gorilla (guerrilla) and they all have different meanings. No wonder the hardest language to learn today in American English! Literacy has also changed in the last three hundred plus years because the American English language is changing, slowly, but its still changing. This is what literacy means to me; a person must not only be able to read and write, they have to know what the definition of what a word is.

Julia Mishlove

I found this essay by Richard Rodriguez to be somewhat unsettling. In this essay Rodriguez relates how his academic education despite its many benefits, served to alienate him from his family and culture. Further Rodriguez describes his education to have been empty as far as substance. He felt that he did not develop his own opinions or ideas through school and readings, he just regurgitated up the information that he memorized. Overall, Rodriguez concludes that he didn’t really find his own voice until he ended his education.

Rodriguez continually refers to himself as a “scholarship boy” throughout the article, meaning a student from a poor and/or uneducated family who excels beyond what would be expected of him based on his demographic. He states, “I was a certain kind of scholarship boy. Always successful, I was always unconfident.” (pg. 431) Rodriguez tells us that his academic success was based more on extrinsic motivation, mainly the praise and approval of teachers, rather than a genuine love of learning. Further, Rodriguez explains that becoming a scholarship boy removed him more and more from his Mexican immigrant family. He quotes from Hoggart, “What he grasps very well is that the scholarship boy must move between environments, his home and his classroom, which are at cultural extremes, opposed.” (pg. 432) He felt embarrassed by his parent’s lack of education and English fluency which he came to see as a sign of one’s worth. His relationship with his parents also grew more distant as he became more and more driven by academia and “important books.”

It seems that Rodriguez found in retrospect that his academic education was detrimental to him in many ways. He describes always being nervous and seeking approval. As I mentioned above, he also claims to not have developed any critical thinking skills, ideas, or opinions or his own. He states, “I was not a good reader. Merely bookish, I lacked a point of view when I read. Rather, I read to acquire a point of view.” While he has clearly become successful because of his education, Rodriguez also stresses what he has lost in life by becoming the “scholarship boy.”

I believe Rodriguez is trying to convey that too much emphasis is placed on the value of a good education. Conversely, he is also saying that people are judged unfairly by lack of education. His parents, for example, had many skill sets, cultural knowledge, and other assets despite their limited English proficiency and lack of college education. Yet, Rodriguez felt embarrassed by them. He placed the idea of a scholarly educated man on a pedestal in his own mind, striving for that image rather than striving for real knowledge. I believe Rodriguez tells us these things about himself to demonstrate how prevalent these same perceptions are in our culture and educational system. More emphasis needs to be placed on intellectual development instead of becoming well read or scholarly.

Gere and Rodriguez made very similar points in their essays. Gere described the how the teaching of composition in schools and colleges neglected the points of view of those not considered “scholarly”. She stated she felt that the field of composition purposefully neglected extracurricular writers in order to gain credibility. Rodriguez describes himself in a similar way; he neglects his cultural background and own creativity in order to gain what he perceived as credibility. My interpretation of both authors is that they criticized this point of view and indicated that a broader, more inclusive perspective would be more positive for learners.

201OnlineUWMFall2011: ValerieM

201OnlineUWMFall2011: ValerieM: I believe Rodriguez’s purpose in sharing his educational experience with us serves as a warning. I think he wanted to warn us not to allow ...

ValerieM

I believe Rodriguez’s purpose in sharing his educational experience with us serves as a warning. I think he wanted to warn us not to allow education to culturally separate us from our families, and not allowing it to change us as a person or our culture, and our heritage, only allowing education to take preeminence in its proper place in our life.  Rodriguez was a child who spoke Spanish as the dominant language in his home while learning English outside the home. Before he learned to speak English he was afraid to participate in class, but when he learned English he was eager to learn and it caused him to become alienated from his family.  I believe this caused him to live in two separate worlds at the same time dealing with two separate classes of people. His mother would tell him not to write in the books because she would sell them when school was over verses the teacher telling you the same thing but the purpose was different and he valued what his teacher said verses his mother (p.440).

Here is what I think Rodriguez is telling us about education. “Education is a long, unglamorous, even demeaning process- a nurturing never natural to the person one was before one enters a classroom”. Education does change people, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the worse (p. 446). A person may lose everything to gain an education, Rodriguez educations did not come without a cost. It cost him his family, friends and heritage.  Rodriguez gained the literacy of becoming bilingual which is something he argues with because it reflects his own experience.

I have gain quite a bit from reading this article; it has taught me not to throw away my culture, family and heritage to get ahead in life. I think he entitled this essay, “The Achievement of Desire” because he finally got what he was striving to get, “an education” and he had a desire for his past, which is why I think the entitled this essay what it is.

I believe the connections between Gere and Rodriguez is that of getting as much learning possible. One can never learn too much, but I think its how one go about getting it is where the problem lies. Although Gere speaks on the extracurricular or the additional experience needed to be a successful writer whereas Rodriguez thinks that’s an individual doesn’t need to be bilingual to be successful.

Tiffany

-Tiffany Rutecki

I think the purpose of Rodrigues sharing his educational experiences was because even though English was not his first language, he still managed to be successful. “The boy who first entered a classroom barely able to speak English twenty years later concluded his studies in the stately quiet of the reading room in the British Museum… but that only make clear how far he has moved from his past. He used education to remake himself” (431). He has made so many achievements throughout his life. He came from being a little boy who did not know English very well to a man who was very successful. When he did not believe in himself his teachers believe in him. Although he did not really understand what most of the books he read, he did not let that stop him from reading more books. Later he realized that he had to choose between his family and education. He began to become embarrassed of his parents. “He goes home and sees in his parents a way of life not only different but stankly opposed to that of the classroom” (433). He loves his family but realize he has to change his life to become educated. He was faced with the fact that his parents did not I have the same level of education in English as he did. They could read and write in Spanish, but not so much in English. His parents wanted to make sure he got a good education and was very successful in life. “Tightening the irony into a knot was the knowledge that my parents were always behind me. They made success possible” (437). He wanted so badly for his teachers to like him that it made him wore en harder. Seems he went in this direction because he had nowhere else to go. His parents were examples of “little to no education” in English and the things he needed to learn to be successful he could not learn from his parents.

I think that Rodriguez is teaching a lot about education with this article. He teachers that I you really want to get an education then you can all it takes is hard work and dedication. No matter the obstacles life gives you there is always a way to overcome them. Although he didn’t really have help from his parents, he had their support and encouragement.

There are a lot of connections between Gere and Rodriguez’s articles. They both talk about how important education is. In Gere article the Women’s writing workshop talked about helping each other. “They offer one another encouragement as well as criticism and suggest revisions” (Gere, 76). The student in Rodriguez’s article got a lot of criticism from his teachers. They both talked about getting an education not only from teacher, but from everyday life. In Gene article there was two different groups who wrote and learned from each other and things they did on a day to day bases outside of a classroom.

201OnlineUWMFall2011: BLOG POSTS FOR SUNDAY 9/25

201OnlineUWMFall2011: BLOG POSTS FOR SUNDAY 9/25: Dear all, Welcome to our course blog! The prompt for this Sunday's Blog posts (due by midnight on Sun 9/25) is on the Announcements page on...

BLOG POSTS FOR SUNDAY 9/25

Dear all,
Welcome to our course blog! The prompt for this Sunday's Blog posts (due by midnight on Sun 9/25) is on the Announcements page on our D2L site. Please access it there and re-read the requirements for Blog posts in order to complete your Blog upload by Sunday evening. Also, IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS for Blog posts, so that we know who's who when posting:

Please begin each of your Blog posts with your FIRST NAME and LAST NAME INITIAL so that we know who you are!

As always, please feel free to email me with any questions.
Dr. O.