Literacy

I was having trouble coming up with what I wanted to say about this week's book, Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brandt, so read a few of my fellow students' blog entries for this book. I agree with them on how difficult this book was to read, especially finding the argument, or even the point to many paragraphs. Brandt has lots of great anecdotal literacy histories, but she doesn't say anything definitive with her data. (maybe that's my science background speaking). I feel like many of the paragraphs in the conclusion were plug and chug along the lines of

"Of course [obvious and very general statement about literacy]. And while [extreme statement about the seedy and/or spurious economic motives for promoting literacy] is too extreme a thesis [idyllic naive happy fluffy bunnies universe of all good reading] is also false. Literacy Literacy literacy. we must keep in mind [urban/rural, rich/poor, racial, cultural, generational] factors when thinking about literacy, like in chapter[s 1-9].

Unlike others in this class, I did not see my family's literary history depicted in one or more of Brandt's subjects, in that my family's generational differences skewed her generational norms (my grandfather-my father's father- was a veteran of WWI, born in 1894), we didn't follow her rural to urban to suburban trend (all but one were urban and stayed so), nor did education level dramatically increase. My grandfather was a blue collar mechanic on train engines, but read his library out of books in the genres he preferred (westerns, mysteries, science fiction), and kept up correspondence with 10 siblings. My other grandfather was an optometrist, and very active in political causes, rating the op ed page in three different regional newspapers at least once a month.

I understand that this is not typical for this region, or from her examples in book.

I did like how broadly Brandt cast the net of literacy, and made the point that definitions of literacy have broadened and become more complicated from 'ability to sign one's name."