Olson 6-12

Once again, after reading these chapters I feel that I have been taking literacy for granted. I had no idea that reading and writing has had such an enormous effect on human history. It has literally shaped the way we think about things. A common theme that I found running throughout the book was metacognition, the act of thinking about thinking, or reflecting. It was a major shift in human consciousness when we began to think about what was actually going on in our heads, instead of attributing everything to an outside force. This concept of essentially blaming everything on gods or forces of nature or something is hard for me to grasp. I just can't imagine believing that the decisions I make in everyday life don't come from my own brain or will, but from "voices" or gods. How could one not know that they were thinking?

I found the history covered in the book to be fascinating, but I'm still not quite convinced that literacy, reading, or writing singularly caused all of those major shifts in thinking. Maybe that's not what he is implying, but I got the impression sometimes that he was saying that developments in literacy were the cause for great shifts in thinking, such as the Reformation. Surely there were other factors involved. Any thoughts on this?

I liked chapter 12 best out of all of the chapters this week because he finally provided a nice concise summary of all that he had been discussing in the previous 11 chapters. As far as all this relates to literacy education, Olson didn't come right out and say, but I think he was trying to say that children should be thinking about the text and its intentions from an earlier age. He said several times that only late in school do students seem to grasp some intentions of text. Perhaps this is becuase we don't pay enough attention to that aspect of literacy at an earlier age. Perhaps when students begin reading we should be guiding them to think about what the text is saying rather than just how to read the words. Personally, I believe phonetic instruction and comprehension should be taught together. In fact, discussion of texts should really begin before a child enters school with parents and bedtime stories. I'm not saying that early childhood teachers never discuss texts with their students, I just don't think it is done enough. I don't think enough attention is being paid to teaching students to think. Of course, this should be done on a developmentally appropriate level as well. We certainly can't expect all first graders to understand irony. But, I think that an overemphasis on the act of reading the words, rather than thinking about what a text is saying is hindering our students.