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last.updated 1.30.13

Histories of Literacy Education

Purpose

As with any theoretical discussions, it helps to know where we have been to get a better understanding of where we are going–or where we may be able to go. Thus we will use this opportunity to both examine the rhetorical moves made in historical narratives and consider the implications of nineteenth-century literacy practices and literacy education for modern English Studies programs.

Activity I–Does It Correlate?

Much of Graff's research on nineteenth-century Western literacy describes the various factors that do and do not correlate with the literacy rates in a given time and place. From these correlations and non-correlations, Graff draws a picture of social themes related to the population's literacy. In the following groups work together to tease out the themes in Graff's history of nineteenth-century literacy.

In course Google Doc that corresponds with your group number, address the following three questions:

• Why is it important for Harold Graff to get so granular with his research? In other words, he provides a lot of detail about the times and places he studies, what can his audience learn from his approach?
• What are the social themes that Graff identifies? Start by looking at the factors that he says do and do not correlate with literacy rates. Then look at his analysis of what the non/correlations says about that society. What themes emerge from these discussions?
• How are these themes also relevant to the work that we do in English Studies? First address the question: What does it mean to be literate in English Studies? (What literacies should students who earn a BA in English Studies have learned by the time they graduate? How does this differ from what it means to be literate after earning one's undergraduate degree?) Then answer: What do instructors in English Studies do to support or push against these themes?

Discussion I–Literacy Histories as Narratives

Historians tell stories about our past. And each of these narratives, based on what the historians choose to emphasize or de-emphasize, has actors responding in particular ways to specific situations and exigencies. By examining the construction of these narratives, we learn just as much about the historical event as we do about the historians agenda or argument. As a result we will ask the following questions of Graff's, Brereton's, and Fox's histories...

• What questions do you have about these texts?
• What are the narratives each author uses? What themes get addressed in these texts? What do we learn about these themes?
• What are their respective arguments? Are any of these arguments pushing against previous arguments?