A Case Study... Digging Deeper

Digging deeper and making connections is that place where learners transform their understanding of what they are interacting with to analyzing and synthesizing it into their lives. That is to say... the transformation from  what it is now, to how I can or cannot use it, which follows closely the narrative I have been espousing for some time... form learning how to learn to learning how to think... It seems this circles back to me on a constant and ongoing basis because it very closely mirrors how I approach teaching and what Lankshear refers to in Chapter Three... from Wayne O'Neil's, "Improper Literacy vs. Proper Literacy." Which then leads to sociologist, C. Wright Mills' concept of "sociological imagination" a way of thinking and using information or... the way I understand information as learning how to think. Reading the words and understanding their meaning (improper literacy) provides the reader with enough information to answer questions on levels, one and two of the Bloom's scale, but to answer and use that understanding at higher levels of Bloom's requires Proper Literacy. This leads me down several different roads of understanding as it relates to me as well as other learners and specifically my case study student. Lankshear jumps right into the Stamp Acts and their impact on society both then and now... yes then and now... because many of the things I deal with in the classroom have a generational component, whether is be poverty, cultural values, mores, or folkways. The impact can be mild or severe depending on how far back the generational line it goes... it is sometimes very fair to say that apples fall directly under the tree. My quote is actually two that I join for the purpose of building the connection... part one, page 40, "The working class made itself as much as it was made" (Thompson, 1963:213) and part two, page 44, "What do working people receive in return for producing wealth and ensuring security?"  I make the connection to the text and my case study this way... In both quotes, the role of literacy has a lasting impact on the learner... in the case of my case study learner he has Not yet understood the value of "proper literacy" because it has had no value or impact in his brief life. It's likely that he will enter the working class and continue producing wealth and ensuring security for the controlling class because his "improper literacy" affords him only access to the working world, but Not the "proper literacy" for a deeper understanding of the "status quo" and therefore no knowledge or inclination to challenge or change his "class" standing. This will lead to yet another generation following in the same path... as he is a product of that path as well. I don't make these remarks from a judgmental view in that I think there is something wrong with the working class... quite the opposite... I grew up in a very middle working class...pay check to pay check... family, yet settling for the ideology that, "things are the way they because that's the way it is" was never part of my formal or informal education...sayings like, "average may be an outcome, but never a goal!!!" were constantly echoed.  The history of Chapter Three points to the controlling class promoting a certain level of literacy that helps to make the worker better at doing their job... ie... more productive... but not enough literacy to change their station and while the majority of the chapter covered England I easily can see the same issues in the US Colonies of the same period and even else where in the world today.

The quote for Chapter Four:... "In the beginning was the text; to the New Critics is was wholly within the text that the meaning was located, and the teacher was the privileged holder of this meaning (Thomason, 1984;Probst, 1986)" (Knobel, Chapter 4, page 63). This ideology coupled with everything that has been said in Chapters 1-3 along with all the other experiences I have with other readings seems to support the idea of the controlling class producing "keepers of the knowledge" to pass along only what they want the learner to know... ie... more support for improper literacy vs proper literacy or functional literacy vs authentic literacy. I think this point can even be further supported when looking at state standardized tests, in that states wanted control over their testing programs rather than a national standardize test that set the criteria for what every student should know at grade level. This notion presents even more issues, which seemingly further divides educators into groups or factions, like the for and against high stakes testing or for or against Common Core Standards vs NXT Gen CSOs. All of this commotion takes focus away from what should be happening in the modern classroom. The complexity of the world and the way in which we interact with that world and its information has made a huge shift and yet the educational system remains largely unchanged. Students need the rote fundamental skills on that I fully agree (as the way I process sound educational theory from the likes of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erickson, Gardner, Montessori, and others), but when students are able to start processing information in a deeper and more meaningful way then a static text approach is No longer sufficient, a multi-modal approach must be implemented. This relates to my case study student in the away I was delivering the math (the only way I really knew how) was Not sufficient, so he improvised by adding visual distraction. Note: this distraction, while seemingly complex to me, it was to him very simple and thus Not the cognitive distraction I would have judged it to be. Many times we make judgments as it relates to our understanding and experiences and if it is something we are very familiar with like our favorite subject then we often wonder and criticize why others are having a hard time with the subject or vice a versa. Neil Postman points this out in his book "Teaching as a Subversive Act," in this way... an English teacher that loves literature and reading, but hates math should be made to teach math for a year as a way to experience and understand what students in the English class may be dealing with because the student may be a poor reader or just not interested in static text. Its likely too, the the English teacher sees himself / herself as the "Keeper of the Knowledge" or the "Privileged Holder of Meaning" by guiding students into a singular view or understanding of the literature. Case in point... it's well known that the C. S. Lewis series "The Chronicles of Narnia" are said to be an analogy of the Christian faith, and that maybe true, but is that the only interpretation? and who gets to decide if it is? I agree that getting rid of the "Simon Says" and embracing the authentic response is Not easy... so I remind myself and my students of this recurring thought... Different is Not... good or bad, it's not right or wrong, it is just Different... try understanding before judgment or condemnation!

Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.