Literacy Myth and the History of Literacy

Chapter III.

Muzaffer Çetin

Sociolinguistics – Dr.Azamat Akbarov

What is expected from students in the classroom? What do you remember your own educational experience

whether in primary, secondary, or college classrooms? What does “education as the practice of freedom” mean

to you? Did education help you become more self-reliant and

assertive?

Literacy Myth

language makes us human and it distinguishes us from other creatures on earth. Literate people are more intelligent, more modern, more moral.

Countries with high literacy rates are better developed, more modern, better behaved. Literacy freed some of humanity from a “primitive” state.

language makes us human, literacy makes us “civilized.”

Literacy leads to

logical, analytical,

critical, and rational thinking,a recognition of the importance of time and

space,

complex and modern governments

(with separation of church and state),

political democracy and greater social equity,

a lower crime rate,

better citizens,

economic development,

wealth and productivity,

political stability, urbanization.

This is quite a list.On the other hand,

there are those who have objections to the myth of literacy. The role of literacy is always much more complex. This chapter questions about the literacy myth in terms of a just, equitable, and humane world.

Plato

300 years ago Greeks invented the basis of Western literacy, and Plato was one of the first great writers in Western culture. Plato thought writing led to the deterioration of human memory and a view of knowledge that was both facile and false. Given writing, knowledge no longer had to be internalized, made “part of oneself.”

Plato recommended play method at elementary level; student should learn by doing. And when he/she reaches the higher level of education, his reason would be trained in the processes of thinking and abstracting.

He was against the use of force in education.

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"Do not then train youths by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.

TEACHING METHODS

It is created by education. It can survive only on condition that all its citizens receive an education that enables them to make rational political decisions.

Education must be compulsory for all.

In a nutshell, Plato’s polis (state) is essentially an educational community.

Plato’s perfect state is authoritarian, hierarchical ( at the top philosopher king like him) Ruler knows how to rule the best regardless of the little people’s ideas who have no actual say in government. The philosopher-king knows their interest better than they do. ( S. Demirel governed Turkiye for years as elites’ puppet treating citizens as illiterate villagers)

Plato was the first to combat writing in writing

Plato argues that writing is detrimental to memory, supports a false kind of/concept of knowledge that is external to the self, and is mostly incapable of the dialogic method to which he is so committed for its pursuit of pure, beautiful knowledge

Writing was just a “reminder.” For Plato, one knew only what one could reflectively defend in face-to-face dialogue with someone else. The written text tempted one to take its words as authoritative and final, because of its illusory quality of seeming to be explicit, clear, complete, closed, and self-sufficient.

By its very nature writing can travel in time and space away from its “author” to be read by just anyone, interpreted however they will, regardless of the reader’s training, effort or ignorance (witness what happened to Nietzsche in the hands of the Nazis; to the Bible in the hands of those who have used it to justify wealth, racism, imperialism, war and exploitation, Quran in the hand of extremist killers who misuse). The voice behind the text cannot respond or defend itself.

In Plato we see two sides of literacy: literacy as liberator and literacy as weapon. Plato wants to ensure that there is always a voice behind the spoken or written text that can dialogically respond, but people are careless, ignorant, lazy, self-interested, they never appreciate the value.

He talks about Sweden as symbol which achieved near-universal literacy at the eighteenth century. It is underlined that women had equality with men in literacy, an equality that still does not exist in most of the world today. By the tenets of the literacy myth, Sweden should have been an international example of modernization, social equality, economic development, and cognitive growth. In fact it was no such thing.

Sweden&religion&literacy

Sweden’s remarkable achievement took place in a land of widespread poverty, for the most part without formal institutional schooling, and it neither followed from nor stimulated economic development. Sweden achieved its impressive level of reading diffusion without writing, which did not become a part of popular literacy until the mid-nineteenth century.

So how did Sweden manage the feat of universal literacy? The Swedish literacy campaign, one of the most successful in the Western world, was stimulated by the Reformation and Lutheran Protestantism. Teaching was done at home (hence the emphasis on the literacy of women. Religious, social, and political ideologies were transmitted to virtually everyone through literacy learning.

The history of literacy stressed behaviors and attitudes appropriate to good citizenship and moral behavior, largely as these are perceived by the elites of the society.

What good does (could?) literacy do?

docility, (ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense ‘apt or willing to

learn’): from Latin docilis, from docere ‘teach’.)

discipline,

time management,

honesty, and respect for the lower classes,

suiting them for industrial or service jobs;

verbal and analytical skills,

“critical thinking,” discursive thought and

writing for the higher classes,

suiting them for management jobs.

Literacy gives

Low-track English junior high says “ In this class, I have learned manners.”

Our new global capitalism may well change the sorts of skills and values the society wishes to distribute to “lower” and “higher” “kinds” of people. They will become more “moral” and “better citizens”

Up to this point, the chapter concentrated on the authoritarian side of Plato’s dilemma.

But there is another side, the liberating side of the dilemma, that is, the use of an emancipatory literacy for religious, political, and cultural resistance to domination. Like Plato, Freire believes that literacy empowers people only when it renders them active questioners of the social reality around them.

Freire (1921-1997) lived in Brazil and worked in adult literacy in rural areas. In 1946, he began working with a social service agency responsible for educational programs for rural poor and industrial workers. His personal story may give you a grounding for how he became very critical and radical about his thoughts.

“To study is not easy, because to study is to create and re-create and not to repeat what others say”

“When we learn to read and write, it is also important to learn to think correctly. To think correctly we should think about our practice in work. We should think about our daily lives.”

“Our principal objective in writing the texts of this Notebook is to challenge you, comrades, to think correctly”

Freire’s dissatisfaction with traditional pedagogy

1. “banking model” of learning does not “work.” Freire thinks that the predominant model of teaching should not be like the teacher is the “subject” and the students are the “listening objects.” The teacher, who use traditional pedagogy, just fill students with content, but content that is “detached from reality”. It is that filling image that leads Freire to refer to this kind of teaching as similar to banking transactions.

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing the deposits”

2. “Reading word is reading the world. This dynamic movement is at the core of Freire’s understanding of how literacy process should be.

3. Dialogue. Freire recognizes that such a change in teaching methods requires a radical redefinition of the relationship between the teacher and the student. According to traditional education, teacher “knows everything” and the students “know nothing,” Freireclaims this is “teacher-student contradiction”. Students and teachers are not partners but they have hierarchical relationships. Freire insists on a new kind of pedagogy —dialogical teaching — Teachers are revolutionary figures to lead students to transform the society against capitalistic oppression.

Freire says both students and teachers should be subjects who can communicate in dialogue and the dialogue should stimulate creativity and requires critical thinking.

The teaching method :

4. Politics. Plato, Sweden, Freire all have a perspective, and a strong one. They all highlight the fact that politics can be separated from literacy.

All in all we can say that literacy has direct relationship with religious ideas, institutions, decision-makers, attitudes, social values, norms, policy-makers. According to Freire, one should oppose colonial powers in order to keep their integrity and identity. Education is like a weapon. The one who has the bullets (decision-making, policy-making) can shape the consequences. Literacy education requires sensitivity.

The writer, in that chapter, points out that our cultural models determine what and how words will mean and in ways that are consequential for us and the others in the world.