Great Leap Theory of Literacy/Great Divide Theory of Literacy
The development of literacy changes cognition
Walter Ong
- The technology of literacy changes how we think
- Pits literacy against orality
- Literacy leads to a cognitive change
- Provides time and distance for thought
- Remember things longer (Plato in Phaedrus)
- Categorize ideas
- Superior attitude in his argument; Catholic
- Try finding a non-literate society
- Guns, Germs, Steel—literacy leads to technology and weaponry
- We don’t know—we can’t study oral cultures
- Oral culture based on mnemonic memory devices; storytelling; narrative is natural memory device
David Olsen
- Looks at ancient sumarian texts; earliest forms of writing
- Attempt to prove Ong’s ideas are correct
- Early writing is lists of goods; how many sheep; how many bales of hay etc. inventory; capitalism/consumerism
- Shift from a list of livestock to a list of animals; categories
- Change in how we think; abstract thinking
Jean Piaget
- Studies this development of abstract thinking in children
- Leading educational theorists
- Developmental learning; basic writing vs. composition 1 vs. advanced composition
Social Uses of Literacy
How society defines literacy is what makes you literate; literacy is a social act
Scribner and Cole
- Take issue with the great leap theory
- Say it is not so simple
- More socially based
- Study a culture called the Vai in which 3 forms of literacy exist
- Personal communication
- Governmental
- Religious
- Oral only
- Based on your literacy needs
Gee
- primary and secondary discourses (academic discourse)
- levels/kinds of literacy
- James Gee “Literacy is control of secondary uses of language (i.e. uses of language in secondary discourses).” (p. 8)
- Discourse for Gee is a kind of identity kit, membership in a group and control of the group’s language.
Shirley Brice Heath’s Ways with Words (ethnographer)
Street
- ethnographer who looks at how literacy gets used in particular communities
- world view of English
- the New London Group
- define literacy as multiple types of literacy
- strong connection to technological literacy (Selfe)
- move to make literacy a broad concept that encompasses more than reading and writing
Freire and Macedo—critical literacy (defining literacy is about controlling literacy and the circulation of power)—begin with oral and work toward literate (Ohmann—economics)
Smith—throws in that learning literacy is personal/emotional/sensory experience
Literacy for Whom?
Who benefits from these literacy categories or the literacy theory we’ve applied?
David Bartholomae—teaching academic discourse “Inventing the University”
Deborah Brandt
- Literacy has real impacts on people’s lives across genearations
- Literacy as Involvement
Kathy Sohn
- Whistlin Women, Crowin Hens
- Won CCCC best dissertation awards
- Looks at nontraditional women who return to college and then what they use literacy for later in life
How Do We Define Literacy?
- What is literacy?
- What is illiteracy?
- What is pre-literacy?
- Where do speaking and listening fit in?
- Where does critical thinking fit in?