I think I have taken reading and writing, literacy, for granted. I've never before in my life given so much thought to the acts of speaking, reading, and writing and how they have affected me and society in general. Olson certainly made some outrageous claims (to me at least) right off the bat in chapter 1 when he questions our enthusiasm for literacy in the first place. I guess it's just been ingrained in me through the years that reading and writing is of the utmost importance in order to succeed in life. Proficiency in speaking seems to be seen as secondary, although still important. I was shocked to read that this proliferation of literacy seems to be contributing to the economic gap in this country, and indeed throughout the world in history, and that some people even think that we shouldn't be pushing literacy as hard as we should and that literacy isn't for everyone. In fact, on page 11, Olson says, "Literacy is functional, indeed advantageous, in certain managerial, administrative and an increasing number of social roles. But the number of such positions which call for that level or kind of literacy in limited." Is he saying that we shouldn't strive to make sure all American citizens are literate? That somebody has to flip the burgers, as it were? Isn't that a little extreme? Do not all children deserve the chance to become literate? Do not all children deserve the best education possible? I really enjoyed chapter one, I think the best of all 5 chapters we read this week, simply because it made me think about literacy and orality in a ways I never had before.
Chapter 5 was my second favorite chapter out of these, however, I want to discuss something he brings up in chapter 4 before talking about chapter 5. On page 89, Olson asks, "Does 'read' mean to lexicalize or 'decode' a text or does 'read' mean to construct a meaning? Is it decoding or interpretation?" Having taught reading to third graders for several years, I would argue that reading is most certainly both of those things. Normally children begin learning to read by simply decoding: learning the sounds associated with letters and how to put those sounds together into words. When they are able to decode pretty much independently, then they begin to associate meaning with the words they read. I personally feel that decoding and interpreting should go hand in hand and both should be taught from the beginning through discussion about the text. For this reason, I feel that some of our basal readers for children are ineffective because of their simplicity of subject. What is there to talk about when all you're reading is "See Jane run"? I was surprised at his question about decoding and interpreting because I don't believe someone is reading unless they are doing both. You can't read if you can't decode, and even if you can decode, what good are the words you're reading if you can't give them any meaning? Granted, different people can interpret the same text in different ways according to prior experience, mood, personality, knowledge of the subject, and many other variables. Was anyone else surprised at this question?
Back to chapter 5. The biggest revelation for me in this chapter was the purpose of punctuation. I had only thought of punctuation as a way to end a sentence, really, a way to understand when the next set of thoughts begins. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true because I did teach my third graders how inflection changes when an exclamation point or a question mark is used. I had just never thought about it in this much of a grand scheme, as part of our attempts at capturing every aspect of speech. I wonder if we will ever come up with an alphabet or other system that will caputer every aspect of speech; all the body language, intonation, volume, pitch, etc that goes with speaking face to face. Perhaps in the future a much more sophistacted (and complicated) system for writing will be used with all sorts of symbols to capture those unspoken parts of language. Or has this already been started? When we read the article about the Thanksgiving dinner, she used a lot of symbols to indicate pauses and such. Perhaps someday those kinds of notations will be commonly used to aid the reader in interpreting the text.
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I don't think we need to come up with a new system to capture every aspect of speech. As I pointed out in my blog, I think part of the art in writing is allowing the reader to create his or her own meaning, and part of learning to be a good reader is being able to figure out what is being said and how it's being said. We already have clues for this in writing--bold, underlined, italicized, exclamation points, question marks, commas, capital letters, word choice, etc. I tend to think Olson is trying to fix something that isn't broken.
That's a good point, and honestly I don't know if I'd want a system that captures everything in writing either. A huge part of reading is hearing that voice in your head. What fun would reading be, especially of fiction, if that voice and the context were already spelled out?
I agree--that voice in your head, your imgination, your own context brought to a piece of writing is just as critical as the text and the text features and what makes reading a type of conversation, an art and a skill. To add to that...Think about the difference between a book and a movie based on a book. Even movies that follow closely to the language and intent of the book, never quite capture, what we as readers bring to the text.
Oh my gosh, I know. The movie is never as good, especially when it doesn't match up to what you envisioned in your head. A good example for me, at the moment, is the new "Bridge to Teribithia" movie. It seems to be all about the fantasy world, but the book didn't focus on that at all. It wasn't about the fantasy, it was about friendship and human connections and grief and growing up. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I'm not sure I want to because I'm afraid it will ruin the book for me. I like the representation of it that I have in my head.
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