How Literacy Has Affected me Over the Years

Literacy is defined as “the ability to read and write.” A literate person is someone who “possesses the ability to read and write fluently.” As for me, I would define literacy as an infinite series of word-doors leading outward to the world around you--and an infinite series of word-doors leading inward to yourself.

Literacy has always had a great effect on my life--it is my life. In fact, one could even say I was born to be literate. My brain was born to decode language. I was able to read when I was just 18 months old (or thereabouts), three or four years before most children begin to read. As a toddler in a stroller, I read the signs I passed on the street and shouted out their meanings. “Parking” and “Exit” were favorites.  I read newspaper headlines and memorized children’s poems without trying. These acts came naturally, like breathing.

As a person with Asperger’s, I believe this was a blessing. I have depended on written words to tell me how people think and function socially, because I can’t always make sense of this with my own eyes and ears. How do people know when and what to say to one another (unless they obviously need to speak up to accomplish something immediate)? Social communication, apparently so easy for others, is a mystery to me. Luckily, books and articles on social behavior have helped me learn some of the answers to these questions.

Also, the written and spoken word have communicated to me other rules for functioning that I can’t sense otherwise--wonderful rules about everything from the workings of the universe to how to organize time. This in turn has imposed a certain structure on a world that can seem chaotic at times, too rich in sensory input for me to organize, and this has given me peace of mind. Beyond that, though, literacy has given me ideas to guide my thinking and learning. Knowing how to read has helped me develop a political philosophy, a good sense of humor, and inspiration for my future. From sections of The Communist Manifesto to sections of The Art of the Deal, reading and grasping literary passages has influenced the creation of my own political philosophy, or political system, if you will, which I like to call State National Socialism. Through reading, primarily of documented traditionalist works discovered online, I have pieced together a philosophy that states that nature has a long-standing, ordained, and traditional order that must be preserved. Tradition, Biology, and Environmental health are crucial. My philosophy also states that capitalism is unhealthy because it causes people to turn from compassion for the environment and for one another to the false idol of profit at all costs.

Without the ability to read, not only would I not have crafted my philosophy, I would not have built my sense of humor, which is mostly based around pictorial memes now, but got its start in reading. This sense of humor, which deals with things from politics all the way to lewd humor nowadays, goes as far back as fourth or even third grade, when we had to write funny stories for class, and sometimes even draw pictures for them. I loved how laughter made me feel, and how a simple story with a silly and unexpected twist or ending could bring about a giddy feeling--and totally improve a so-so or even dismal day. This precious sense of humor found expression in memes as I got older, but is fundamentally based in words and is the joyful result of being able to read and write.

And speaking of writing, this aspect of literacy is equally crucial for exploring and defining yourself. You don’t know what you know until you try to write about it. Somebody once observed, “writing is thinking,” and this is true. Sit down to write anything, from an email to a research project, and when you try to explain what you know, you realize you actually have more questions than knowledge. I remember reading an article by the NY Times that said “Writers, especially younger writers, often hear the exhortation ‘write what you know’. This is understandable. Some of the best fiction ever written seems to have followed that advice.” The act of putting thoughts into the structure of words forces you to make sure you really, totally understand those thoughts. This reminds me of another quote I read in that same article. It says “You should write what you really know instead of a slick, bowdlerized version of what you know.” This is how you really take advantage of the situation, so you can really put that knowledge into writing. This is important because writing is a bootcamp for thoughts, forcing them to shape up, and forcing you to deepen and strengthen your grasp of a subject.

So, without literacy I would be a very different person. Certainly I would be very diminished without it. I would not have the knowledge that I possess now about the world around me and how things work, but much more importantly, I would not know what I believe, and love, and value. Ironically, it is literacy, with its window into the the thoughts and beliefs and ideas of others, that somehow opens a door to your own thoughts and beliefs. It shows you what you identify with, from politics, to religion, to personality, to whatever provides a good laugh. Without the written words of others to lend structure, your own personal beliefs would be an unarticulated mass within yourself, an unexplored and poorly defined forest of impulses and seemingly random thoughts. This is why I say literacy has a way of shaping one’s knowledge into a state where it is intellectually beneficiary. So, yes, words can be definite, bossy, and demanding, but ultimately literacy is a kind of magic that conjures up your path and your life.

Introduction:

Writing this essay really helped me explore what I went through in my years before high school and how I experienced literacy. It helped open my eyes to things I never actually thought about until now. How in schools they try to limit your reading and your literacy to one thing or one culture and same with home. People often look over it without actually realizing what they are doing. I am very proud of how I incorporated my scene of memory into my actual piece and larger idea. Something I can improve on as writer is trying to make connections within my writing and also my use of commas. Both my peers saw that there were times when there could’ve been more of a connection in my writing and where a comma or two could be added. In the future I want to improve on my use of commas and trying to make connection within my writing.

The smell of hot chocolate tiptoed it’s way up the steps and slowly into my room. It wrapped itself around my nose as it pulled me from my sleep. As I woke up all I could think about was that it was Christmas and that thought flooded my five-year-old mind. I jumped out of bed and raced down the steps as if someone was chasing me. The only thing that was chasing me was my excitement. Nothing made me happier than Christmas, the warm clothes, the sweet smell of hot chocolate, oh and of course the presents. How could I forget about the presents? That year the only thing I asked Santa for was a Barbie. Everyone in my school had a Barbie so I knew I just had to have one. When I finally got downstairs all I could see was the huge Christmas tree it was covered in the brightest lights you could ever imagine and the ornaments almost looked like they were made specifically for that tree. The one thing that topped it all off was the tree topper. I’ll never forget it, it was the most radiant star I had ever seen. My grandpa always told me that he pulled it straight from the night sky just for our tree and I believed every word he said.

As I stood there gazing at the beautiful tree my mom yelled at me and said

“Girl, if you don’t come here and open these presents before I have to open them for you.” So I rushed over there and she handed me a nice warm cup of hot chocolate and my first present to open. I don’t know what was more exciting ripping the wrapping paper off or trying to figure out what was inside. When I finally opened the gift I noticed that it was a white box and the only thing that comes in a white box is clothes. Oh, how I hated getting clothes as gifts, it was like eating spaghetti for breakfast, it just wasn’t right. I continued to unwrap my presents scavenging for the only thing I wanted, that Barbie. I finally got to my last present by then I was getting a little anxious. I was praying this last present was my Malibu Barbie I rushed to open it and when I saw that Barbie logo I couldn’t believe it. I took the entire wrapping paper off and when I finally saw her face, she was white. My five-year-old mind thought nothing of it but years and years of getting the same white barbie I started to question “Why don’t they look anything like me?”

   That same question stuck with me throughout my years of elementary school but my love of Barbies turned into my love of books. Same as Barbies, books gave me a separation from reality, they gave me a new world to look into rather than my own. My favorite genre was fiction it opened my eyes to all the different things people could do. I read about people flying in magic school buses, the adventures that the brother and sister went on in their tree house and one of my all time favorites the stories of Junie B. Jones. I couldn’t help but notice that all the books I read none of the characters were anything like me. Sure, it was fun to read about all these different adventures they went on but I didn’t really have a character I connected with. All the books I did read that had some form of a black person in it were limited to minor characters or books about the civil rights movement. In The Apartheid of Children’s Literature Christopher Meyers emphasizes how people of color are used in literature: “characters of color are limited to the townships of occasional historical books that concern themselves with the legacies of civil rights and slavery but are never given a pass card to traverse the lands of adventure, curiosity, imagination or personal growth” Within in all the fiction novels I read about people traveling through time and helping to save the princess there was never one black character or any person of color for that matter. This, of course, gave me a fixed mindset as a child. I knew there were certain things that children of color couldn’t do. Those things being traveling through time, in a magic school bus and going on adventures in treehouses with their siblings.

   This thought transferred itself into my writing as well. As much I loved reading fiction I loved writing it too. Sometimes I found it difficult to try to incorporate myself within my writing. A lot of the things I wanted to talk about I had no idea to, well at least I thought I didn’t. In Write What You Know Heller illustrates how writers shelter themselves without even knowing “— unconsciously censored themselves and thrown out the wheat, mistaking it for nonliterary chaff. In this sense, the reminder to write what you know” Many of the things I tried to write about I believed I had no business writing because I didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t until high school I actually read books about black people. I finally learned that I don’t have to limit myself or color myself in between the lines. Just because I only read about white people traveling through time fighting dinosaurs doesn’t mean that people of color can’t do the same. Just because I only had white Barbie dolls doesn’t mean the black Barbie wasn’t any prettier. I learned that Literacy doesn’t mean writing about what you know and limiting yourself. It means both writing about what you know and what you don’t know. Extending your knowledge to all regions and opening your mind to the new things in the world.

I.

I was in the third grade, and Christmas was rapidly approaching. My class had gathered in the school library where a special treat was awaiting us. Clad in polo shirts and jumpers, we plopped down upon the old grey carpet and awaited our treat from our librarian.

The librarian wheeled in a metal cart of books. It was maybe three shelves high, and was absolutely jam-packed with a variety of books celebrating the Christmas season. Because this was a Catholic school, they could give us books which were explicitly Christmas-themed and not really allow other holidays in. There was great jubilation as a sea of small children rushed forward to nab books from the shelf.

I looked at the choices in front of me with some distaste. They were primarily oversized pictures books with maybe a few short children’s novels thrown in-all things that I felt I had mostly outgrown by that point. I had known for a long time that I was an advanced reader, and had even been in a gifted reading group at school in kindergarten. I was completely bored with the choices arrayed before me.

Scanning the shelves, my eyes finally alighted on a book on the bottom shelf, shoved unceremoniously among a group of cutesy stories about Santa and elves and the baby Jesus. It was A Christmas Carol, the evergreen classic by Charles Dickens. I was already familiar with the story, as many people are-the tale of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who force him to alter his cold-hearted ways-but I wanted to see the original book myself, to see how Dickens wove this story that nearly everyone seems to know.

I was only a few pages into the book before the librarian came over and snatched Dickens’s novel right out of my hands. “You’re too young to read that”, she intoned angrily, “Pick another book”. I was absolutely livid with anger. She was a bat-like retired nun, with a scrunchy, wrinkled face and a bad attitude, especially when it came to kids who seemed to be just a little bit too bright. Looking much like Scrooge himself, she glowered down at me over a pair of glasses. After this, I only remember crying and my parents being upset at the librarian’s behaviour.

II.

There is a tremendous hatred towards gifted and talented students in the United States school system. Compared to other nations, we tend to want to cut down the best and the brightest-something known as “Tall Poppy Syndrome”, which is also prevalent in other Anglophone nations like Australia and Canada, but might just reach its apogee in the USA.

We feel, being a nation founded on the ideals of equality, that those who are smarter or more talented or more inquisitive than us are simply “spoiled”, “privileged”, or “unfairly ahead”. After all, they didn’t “have to work” to be smart, they were just intelligent already, from the day they crawled out of the womb. Clearly, they have to be discouraged because their ideas are a threat not just to classroom stability, but to society at large! If one child knows more about a topic than the teacher does, then we are on the road to anarchy! Or, conversely, they are undermining our pre-determined script and cannot be allowed to have their ideas flourish! So goes the thinking of many an American.

This can be seen in my own career. In kindergarten, I was a part of a small group for “advanced readers” that read more challenging texts while the other students did their typical “ABCs”-level work. I do not recall much of it, but I do remember it being more rewarding and interesting than what I typically worked on. Then, suddenly, it was yanked away from me for no apparent reason, especially as we entered the lower grades. I would never have a real advanced/gifted programme after that for the rest of my schooling career, which frustrates me to no end. There were so many hours wasted in the classroom with kids who read aloud at a snail’s pace, or who stumbled over basic facts about geography, or who didn’t know who so-and-so was, or teachers who bungled simple things and hated to be corrected, that I felt like I was going insane. Sure, I could do the work. Sure, I suppose I liked it on some level. But year after year, I always had some teacher who despised me and didn’t appreciate or understand my intelligence or the intelligence of others, who instead taught towards the middle and ignored those who might have wanted to stride above and beyond the pablum vomited at us by the mandated curriculum.

And, controversially, this has not improved now that I have arrived at SLA. I still feel like teachers are teaching towards the middle, that students make stupid mistakes, or that they feed us stupid stuff (like Terence from Housman’s famous poem). We are trapped in limiting streams that force us to work with people who may or may not care about the fate of our projects. Our assignments, projects, and benchmarks themselves seem to have descended into frustrating busy-work that only serve to bore and anger the inquisitive.

III.

One of the great quests of Civilization is to preserve what has come before it. The great corpus of works that has defined the history of literature stands as a testament to humanity’s collective glory and wisdom. Without its light to shepherd us along the path of life, we would be lost, adrift without any signals as to how the human person works, lives, loves, and suffers.

We cannot allow it to be subsumed by the foolishness and myopia of a series of present-day bureaucrats. We cannot allow the Beacon of Civilization to be snuffed out, and for the heritage of the world to be destroyed.

But presently, it is under grave attack. It is being subsumed by a series of cheap, small-minded quasi-reptiles who cannot see the necessity of our traditions and our lifeblood.

That is why our gifted and talented children are central to the preservation of our heritage. They can understand our fallen nature as imperfect beings and how that even includes our highest authority figures-even our teachers. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel, much like the monks scratching away in the monasteries and chapels of Ionia over a thousand years ago. They can see that, though there is much darkness, there is also greatness and light. They shall persevere. They shall preserve.

Introduction- When writing this essay, I gained even more knowledge about exactly what literacy is, and how it can effect how you portray anything from an environment to people, and also how it important when building relationships with others and getting to know them. My goal for this essay was to show, how literacy impacted my action and my identity in temporary short time period when on a college campus. I am proud of my scene of memory in this piece, I did a good job using descriptive wording and think I portrayed and structured my essay in a great way. Hope you enjoy!!

Literacy is the knowledge obtained by the observance of someone or something either physically, socially or emotionally. By observing, something or someone in these ways, we are then able to obtain cultural and educational literacy. We use literacy is the main component of most of our everyday lives. Whether we are the ones providing or taking it in. Literacy is often seen and thought of, to  simply  knowledge gained by reading a book or some other form of literature. However, real literacy can come  from analyzing a person or place as well. It is allows for you to determine what kind of person someone may be, the state of emotion they are feeling at the time, or even the content of a new book you picked up.  With all the information we may take in about the things and those around usIt is important that we do not let the literacy in which we take in, affect us negatively,  and shape our identities and how we view both ourselves and them.  This may cause for stereotypes and even tension, depending on the situation around us.

I know this from experience, because this is what I had done. It was during the week of my sister’s welcome week onto Drexel University. All families had been told to meet, in one of the campus’s halls. As I stepped into the crowded hall, close to my mom’s heels,  I looked around and a sea of white faces greeted me. We had arrived. We were at Drexel University. As I scanned the room I saw my sister and my dad, who were already there. I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted her cocoa brown hair sticking out from the mass of blondes and brunettes. As I realized that there were few African- Americans families I immediately switched my speech unconsciously. I talked more proper and spoke even more politely than usual. I maintained a calmer demeanor. This was not me, my usual bubbly loud voice, and energetic demeanor had somehow vanished, thanks to the new environment and the people that surrounded me. As the day drew on, and we met other families, majority white with a sprinkle of African-American  my entire posture had changed. I sat up straighter, trying to blend in as much as possible. I could tell most of these white families had come from money, it showed in everything from their speech and the expectant proud look in their eyes as they acknowledged that they would be able to pay off their child’s tuition with or without help. I began to assume that they came from neighbors, commonly known for their large houses and educated schools. Suburbans, houses that one can only dream of living in. Upon acquiring this, I became a bit uncomfortable, because although my family is not poor, I knew we did not even come close to some of the standards by which they lived by. This being the reason why I tried to blend in, change my speech, and have some effect on the type of literacy they would get as they observed me, just as I was them.

In John Santiago Baca’s A Place To Stand, he too made similar cultural literacies as I had done about the people surrounding him. After being placed in one of the most dangerous prisons in the state, he had to make literacies of his own, literacies that would not only teach him about the people around him, but would save his life. Because of being in jail, he has plenty of time to make observations about the other men around him, which in turn allowed him to know the difference between danger and safety, life and death. He quotes about two  of his jail cell members by whom he felt uncomfortable and tense by , “JJ was short and Snake was long and tall, both had pale skin, from being in the dungeon too long. Their eyes gleamed furtively, and were lined with deception, Their blade like stares, and gaunt faces made them a lethal threat to anyone who looked at them.” (181). To be lethal means “sufficient to cause death.” This meant that Baca was aware and cautious of JJ and Snake, because he knew, that even just a look from them or at them could cause for him to be killed. He was able to determine such strongly a conclusion about them because of their appearance, and the way they came off to him and the other jail cell members. The way they looked and stared, shown that they were capable of murder and were dangerous. Therefore this causing, him to single them out as a threat and to be wary of his approach during later times. This literacy, and because of his observance allowed for him to know to stay away from them and avoid their stares at all cost. The more time he spends in jail, the more literacy he takes in and the more opinions he draws about the people around him. This allowed for him to know the difference between his friends and enemies.

I too, was continued to draw conclusions about people, and made some determining differences about the people around me as well. However, instead of friends and enemies,  I was drawing conclusions about the different educational backgrounds that many of the incoming students had. As the day went on, we came into contact with many of the families to get to know them better and to “break the ice”. This involved conversation and introductions. After what felt like hundreds, as the event continued I was able to see the difference between who had come from a great educational background and those who had not come from so great and educational background. I did this through the observance of language, and through listening to how people introduced themselves, and their demeanors and even the use of “ebonics”, which in other terms mean slang. I was able to tell about a good majority of the college kids. Whether they stuck out their hands, and politely introduced themselves, such as “my name is..” or if they jumped right to the point , without formality, with “My name..” This happened a few times, and I began to develop opinions about some of the students. The majority of them African-American. As much as I didn’t like to see it , it was unfortunately true. Many of them used slang and gave informal introductions, while the white students went out of their way to be formal and curt. It was because of this, that I was able to see the difference in educational background and systems, and the way in which it affected each racial group.

In  Mike Rose’s I just Want To Be Average, he too allowed for negative literacies about the people around him to affect not only his actions but even his identity. Upon accidentally being placed in a “slower vocational” class he writes about his observance about the people around him and how he was able to tell what kind of people they were, by not only their actions but appearance. “ Mercy relied on a series of test, mostly the Stanford Bennett mostly the stanford Binet for placement and somehow the results got switched and confused with those of another student named Rose. The other Rose apparently didn’t do very well, for I was placed in the vocational track a euphemism below level.” (17). Because of the results and outcomes of his class switch up, Mike was already able to determine that not only was Rose “slower” but that the test was not for her. He was using educational literacy, which allowed for him to analyze the level by which Rose was on and determine her status as a learner. Mike  used educational literacy to come to one conclusion, and to gain a certain type of knowledge. The author automatically was able to tell that Rose was not well prepared and was not very smart because of her test scores and the class he was placed in after the switch up. He was already able to conclude that she was “slow” and that she did not do well on standard tests because of this.

Just as Mike Rose and John Baca were able to use different literacies to determine things about the people and places around them, I too had did the same. John Baca’s literacies kept him alive in the dark confined prison by which he was placed and helped keep him afloat and connected to the real world, while Mike Rose’s literacies allowed for him to keep sane and constantly draw the line between him and his fellow vocational classmates. It reminded him that although placed in the slow class did not mean you were slow. Thus showing, that literacy and the gaining of it is not only important for how you view others and the environment around us, but even how it is a vital and ever-growing part of our identity and who we are as a person.