What interests you?

We live in a world where traveling faster than flight means reaching for a handheld device. Where information is packaged up and sent at two thirds the speed of light, and “making money” ranges from buying fake currency to working more than one job to get by. The importance of education and literacy is cementing itself more as a means of finding happiness and purpose than one of survival. And more importantly, the use of interest in educating is fast becoming an imperative to education’s survival. The idea of national literacy means that literacy is no longer a way to excel. Education has become a combination of standardized testing and a doomed attempt to standardized teaching.

The distancing of students from teachers has thrown our educational system into a harsh light. We’re fatigued. In some cases, we’re failing or supplementing our education with other sources. We learn or we don’t, and that success or failure is more based on personal environment or teacher quality. The differentiation of students from each other may be as important as the learning environment and educator, but it is the teacher’s responsibility to be responsible, to teach -through their own behavior- what it means to hold oneself accountable, especially in the education of K-12 students.

Goody/Watts encourage the idea that the cultures with writing systems were propelled into critical inquiry, of observing history with skepticism, and the developing of logical practices. With the advent of the internet and concept of technological literacy, the benefits (or dangers) of writing have been given weaponry. Given the barest introduction, and a community interested in interests, kids today can learn everything they want through such platforms as TedX, Kahn Academy, or Coursera. People can learn languages from native speakers, game-like applications, or forums. Standardized education isn’t possible in a world where bridges are so small that I can ask a professor working at the University of Tokyo their favorite book on introducing architecture and compare it with a The Ohio State University professor’s favorite in the same day.

Holding the interest of the student should be a teachers top priority in the classroom. Teaching through interest inspires passion for education, and teaching against interests kills the desire to grow. We live in a society where we literally don’t have to pay attention to get by, where we have access to substances, both legal and illegal, that will get us through the day. There’s an infinite universe out there and we’re still teaching like knowing precise information is necessary. Like critical thought is secondary. We’re still teaching kids straight out of a love of writing, of learning, and of growing. It’s a problem I ran into a long time ago, and one that took a long time to find a work around. It took looking at myself, and asking a simple and complex question.
What are my interests?

Judgements on Accents and Pronunciations–An Inexcusable Reality

No matter who you are and what you sound like, you have most likely run into the situation of meeting someone who sounds different from you. Whether it be the letter they enunciate most in a word or the way they pronounce a word altogether, it’s okay to notice these differences. What’s not okay is to judge individuals based on these differences.

Throughout the United States, people speak differently. I’m from the East coast. Coming to school in the Midwest for college was interesting for me in terms of dialect and pronunciation. People always tend to “make fun” of the way New Yorkers speak (as seen below).

One of my good friends at Ohio State is named Hannah. She’s from Chicago. Saying her name–a quite simple task–has become a big controversy. I pronounce it H-AH-NA, which is the way I have heard it pronounced in my area of New York throughout my entire life. That being said, she pronounces it H-ANNE-NA–a more commonly accepted pronunciation in the Midwest.

Getting back to my little anecdote, I always feel so bad because it’s her name and I should pronounce it the way she thinks it is properly pronounced. But changing the way you pronounce simple letter pairings and words is a lot more difficult than one would think.

All over the country, people speak differently. There are southern accents, New York accents, Bostonian accents, etc. And of course, there are accents that can be recognized as coming from other areas and even other countries around the world. With these pronunciations also come some new vocabulary. For example, some people may say “that isn’t the right answer,” but some may say “that ain’t the right answer.”

It’s okay for there to be numerous ways to relay the same sort of message. But people tend to cross into dangerous territory when they make poor judgements based on accents and word choice.

Again, take the word “ain’t.” It isn’t commonly taught in schools, and in many districts throughout the U.S., teachers would actually look down upon a student that were to use it in a formal essay or assignment. It is unfair to place such a pressure on students to speak or write in a way that’s different from what they were taught in the “real world.” “Ain’t” is actually recognized by some of the largest, well-known dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.

As explained in “The Right to be Literate: Literacy, Education, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” literacy should not be catered to certain groups with certain beliefs that live in certain areas. People speak differently and that should be accepted. The following quote from the article explains it perfectly:

“Literacy as a civil right really translates into “literacies” as a civil right, including children’s right to their own creative and cultural literate practice.”

Literacy varies and we must accept that variation. It’s impossible not to recognize differences in language. But it is necessary to prevent judgements of differentiation.

Denial by Design

In December 1948, the United Nations drafted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to establish fundamental rights and freedoms all nations should protect for their citizens. The document lays the groundwork for human rights laws on the basis that all people are born free and equal in dignity.

Article 26 of the declaration outlays the right to education. To summarize, the right to education involves free and compulsory elementary education, equal access to higher education, and a parent’s right to choose the kind of education given to their children.

But this week’s reading from Winn and Behizadeh puts on a lens on how U.S. schooling systematically denies children, particularly children of color, their right to literacy and education.

Winn and Behizadeh point to evidence that Black students significantly trail behind white students in standardized testing, and predominately white schools can sometimes spend over twice as much per student than schools with larger populations of Black and Latinx students.

How did this happen?

Map of Columbus, Ohio from 1936. Neighborhoods are assigned levels of "mortgage security," and lines are drawn around different levels of security.

Map of Columbus, Ohio from 1936 via Mapping Inequality. Neighborhoods are assigned levels of “mortgage security.”

For one thing, racial inequities continue to be affected by the legacy of redlining.

We can look back historically and see that in the 1930s the federal government began segregating neighborhoods based on race, diverting money and resources away from minority communities.

Because we fund public schools through property taxes, neighborhoods with lower property values have lower-funded schools and lower graduation rates still to this day.

Redlining is technically illegal now, but the country is still affected by its original mapping system.

So, how can we fix it?

Much like the work of Winn and Behizadeh, we need to take a closer look at policies that limit access to education.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has since been replaced by Every Student Succeeds in 2015. Although Every Student Succeeds responds to many of the criticisms of NCLB, it’s still worth keeping a critical eye on standardized tests and proficiency targets.

I’m particularly drawn to S. Green’s assertion that “social justice is about understanding education and access to literacy as civil rights” (Winn and Behizadeh 147).

Tackling Education in the Age of Coronavirus

As we approach the one year anniversary of the Coronavirus upending American life, it’s a good time to reflect on its potential long term impacts on education. For many across the country, students continue to learn either entirely online or through a hybrid model, combining online schooling with some in-person instruction.

Child Learning at Computer

The burden on students, parents, and teachers to keep track of ever-changing schedules is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the multitude of disruptions wrought by the virus. While transmissions appear to be slowing in some parts of the country, some experts are expressing concern about the effects of a year in quarantine on students.

At the end of every school year, parents and teachers alike worry about students slipping in the summer months. This year, this fear is magnified by the fact that many students have struggled to keep up in an online learning environment. For students who were enrolled in tutoring for reading and writing, online learning has proved to be a poor substitute.

Typically, a student who is falling behind would have access to one-on-one instruction or small groups to help them improve their literacy skills. But for many school districts, this has been a difficult task to replicate virtually. Parents worry that the lack of resources through the school will mean their already struggling student might fall further behind.

Adding to this anxiety, parents feel pressure to teach their children themselves but may lack the time and resources to do so. Particularly for families with limited means or single parent households, the achievement gap can feel more like a canyon.

Inequalities in education have long been a source of anxiety in the United States. In their article, “The Right to Be Literate: Literacy, Education, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Winn, et. al. note that literacy has become “a new civil rights frontier.” In the time of Coronavirus, inequalities in education have widened.

Group of illustrated children reading books on a bench

So what do we do? Colorado school districts are recognizing the issues outlined above by beefing up their summer school programs. Students will be able to catch up via in-person instruction and the goal is to have smaller class sizes to address each child’s specific needs.

The resources needed to undo the chaos brought onto the education system by the Coronavirus will likely be massive. But experts believe that children, naturally resilient and curious, will fare just fine in the long run. In the meantime, patience is a friend to everyone.

Make it make sense: How AAVE is invalidated by the masses, yet used for capital gains.

English is one of the many languages that is not homogenous. It varies from culture, region, and ethnicity.

 

Cultural difference and influence are what makes humans unique and special. All stemming from different regions around the world, our style of clothing, the things we eat, and our language adapt to the elements around us.

With this in mind, there is a notion that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) somehow destroys the English language as far to say that it is inappropriate regardless of setting.

However, in a digital culture that’s consistently growing, AAVE is seen at the forefront of the way media agencies and companies communicate their advertising to their consumers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dokRhm3vcQ

 

This video demonstrates how quick companies are to capitalize on terms yet not acknowledge the creator by any regards. The mom states “on fleek” which was a term created and made popular by Black Viner Kayla Newman in 2014. As of today, Kayla has  yet to receive her coins.

The goal here isn’t necessarily to gate keep an entire multitude of lingo and terms made popular by black people, but to legitimize them as part of the way we talk while paying homage to its creators.

In Learning to Read by Civil Rights visionary and leader Malcolm X, he speaks on his frustration on not being able to convey his expression by literary means.

Image result for malcolm x illustration

“In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there – I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad”.

Mr.Malcolm has been regarded as one of the great leaders of his time by his methods, teachings and lifestyle, yet somehow he was still placed in a system where he believed the way he spoke was invalidated by the masses.

The masses in question however, were those who conformed to the Eurocentric way of life that seeks to discredit anything that wasn’t rooted in their culture. So, it isn’t necessarily that Mr. Malcolm felt like the way he spoke was wrong, it was the people that felt that way and specifically those of European descent.

The English language grows daily. New terms, phrases, and ideas are formed all the time. It is about time companies, media outlets and the sort show appreciation to the founders. By doing so, it creates a safe space for words to be used without seeming forced or used for alternative intents.

 

 

Clay envelopes, pigeons, and drones

Cybersecurity sounds like a definitively contemporary term, alluding both to new fears and to the new technologies we create to cope with them. At Ohio State, Dr. Dan Gauthier is on the forefront of cutting edge encryption technology, promising to keep information traveling by drone secure. But as new as it sounds, information security is an ancient practice, and as technical as it seems, its social, economic, and political dimensions affect society in increasingly pressing ways. Meme of Michael Scott from the television show The Office saying. White text on top and bottom says,

Dr. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, an archaeologist and scholar of the history of writing, spent her long career looking for clues as to how writing came to be. Her token theory of writing is widely accepted, but also hidden in this history is the foundation of information security. Tokens were used to represent objects, especially in trade. Before the advent of writing, these tokens were counted, then sealed inside clay envelopes and delivered with the goods as a receipt. Upon delivery, the receiver could then break the envelope to be sure that the order matched what was supposed to be sent. This protection of trade data is an early form of information security.

Long after writing was invented, and long before the invention of the Internet, this tradition of defense continued. The introduction to The History of Information Security describes a 17th century example of encryption by putting letters carried by couriers into written code. These coded letters had multiple lines of defense: the fitness and physical defense of the courier, the encryption of the letter contents, and even international diplomatic immunity all served as mechanisms of information security.

In more modern settings, carrier pigeons evolved into drones, hand-written encryption evolved into digital code sequences, and international protections evolved into massive organizational innovations like ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee, the European Network and Information Security Agency, and the creation of national Computer Emergency Response Teams. Beyond information security, privacy as a concept has evolved into a right secured by laws like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and the state of Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act.

As more individuals become hyper-connected, the importance of privacy and security takes on a new role. State secrets and mercantile arrangements aren’t all that needs protecting, though the potential for some information to cause political conflict and social instability is lost on no one. Now, the most sensitive details of our lives are now available for the hacking. While encryption and other information security measures may not themselves be forms of writing, their use to protect the knowledge we hold dear has made them an indispensable part of the information ecosystem, and an understanding of historical and contemporary information security is important for active and informed participation in the digital age.

The Importance of Prison Libraries

“The United States is not a country with a prison system, but a prison system with a country”

We as a nation currently live in the age of mass incarceration, our prisons overflow with prisoners and teens are funneled from schools into prisons (to such an extent that high school graduation rates are measurably affected). Said school-prison nexus is so prolific and problematic that it has been given a specific label — the “school-to-prison pipeline” — and been made the subject of numerous academic studies.

Newspaper comic which features a child being put into the prison system over low-level offenders.

School-to-prison Pipeline Comic

Thankfully within these overpopulated prison systems exists a trojan horse of sorts which helps victims of this pipeline escape from its long-term effects — the prison library.

Malcom X in his paper Learning to Read discusses how a major component in his transformation from a poorly educated street hustler to articulate leader for Black America was his access to his prison’s library during a seven year long prison sentence. In order to initially improve his reading and writing literacies, he took the route of learning the fundamentals through reading and copying a dictionary (sourced from his prison’s library) from front to back. He states that after teaching himself said fundamentals that for the rest of prison sentence that “in every free moment [he] had, if [he] was not reading in the library, [he] was reading on [his] bunk.”

The results of this self-education process speaks for itself through the renown he still holds for how he progressed the Civil Rights Movement through his effective speeches and intelligent writings.

Image of Malcom X (Civil Rights leader)

Malcom X

Merging Malcom X’s experience with Maisha T. Winn and Nadia Behizadeh’s paper The Right to Be Literate: Literacy, Education, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline reveals the importance of prison libraries in the reduction of the school-to-prison pipeline’s negative long-term effects. In that, Winn and Behizadeh’s work concludes that the development of critical literacy in youths is of major importance in helping them escape from being sucked up by the pipeline. Thus, drawing from both Winn and Malcom X, it seems intuitive to equally declare that the development of critical literacy after one was unable to break free of the school-prison nexus earlier in life still affords the ability for one to prevent themselves from getting stuck in cycle of reincarceration for the rest of their life.

A sad fact worth noting is that the prison-industrial complex has seemed to caught onto this trojan horse within their system and have taken steps to restrict prisoner access to the valuable tools stored by prison libraries.

Three Ben & Jerry's tubs of ice-cream advertising a campaign for justice system reform

Ben & Jerry’s Justice Remix’d Campaign

If even Ben & Jerry’s is attempting to combat the pipeline issue, then so too should you through speaking out and making book donations to the prison nearest to you. Your donations could directly help someone gain the critical literacies necessary for them to escape the system which has possibly entrapped them since they were a teenager.

Riding the Fast Track to Incarceration

The past year has been wrought with challenges for the entire world with the global Covid-19 pandemic, but also brought forward Black Lives Matter, the largest social justice movement since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AUGUST 24: Protesters with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement march through Manhattan following the shooting of a Black man by a White police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin over the weekend, on August 24, 2020 in New York City.

Millions of people of all ages, genders, races, backgrounds, and beliefs took to the streets to battle the overwhelming inequalities that minorities still face well into the 21st century.  Increased police presences and heightened security measures don’t give comfort to many, particularly in areas that are primarily populated by persons of color. An article from July 2020 in The Washington Post Do #BlackLivesMatter in schools? Why the answer is no addresses that the state of education is no different than that on the streets.  Schools are no longer just the means to prison but have become prisons themselves; policies and procedures target and persecute students of color and in supporting “zero tolerance” policies, students are fast tracked toward a life within the criminal justice system. The ACLU has complied statistics reflecting the disparages between discipline of black and white students and the numbers speak for themselves.

The blatant systemic racism engulfs the youth that are so desperate to break the cycle of school-prison pipeline; the deck is simply stacked against them. Policy change must occur, community involvement must occur- without input from those directly affected, how can any true progress forward be made? Educators and teachers must be given more tools for supporting their students aside from shoving them out the door for punishments that only further underscore the issue. A study conducted in Texas by the Department of Education showed students that were suspended were more likely to be held back a grade or drop out. This coupled with the blatant systemic racism and “broken windows” theory (cracking down on small infractions to discourage larger incidents and promote a sense of security and order within a community) leaves students of color at a massive disadvantage in the education system. Students are being given a glimpse first hand of prison life before ever even considering a crime and it has truly tainted the youth of America.

Writing as a System for Memory

Over two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato warned against the dangers of writing. While many around him saw the system as an exciting method of spreading art and knowledge, Plato viewed things differently. His critique was that reading and writing will lead to less education in society, not more. This is due to the convenience writing creates, whereby you don’t have to memorize information. Instead you can keep it written down somewhere, outside your mind. Writing is a system “not for memory, but for reminder,” he said, offering only the semblance of wisdom.

Picture of Plato

Many rightfully dismiss Plato’s doomsday predictions. Contrary to what he expected, education has increased over time, and literacy has only ever helped, not hindered, that development. That’s not to say reading and writing are necessary for proper education, as Goody and Watt demonstrated by showing that oral cultures were just as intelligent as literate ones. Still, I don’t think anyone would say reading and writing have been categorically harmful. Many people’s education has benefited from books and other written methods of communication.

All that said, I think Plato’s main argument against writing—that it disincentivizes people to truly know and remember information—is an interesting one. It’s an empirical question, and looking at the data to see how well people in highly literature societies commit the things they read to memory should shed light on Plato’s claims. And it seems there is something to what he said. People don’t often remember very detailed information from what they read. Now in the Internet age, people rely even more on external methods to store information.

Puzzle in the shape of a brain

But this does not justify Plato’s ultimate dismissal of writing. Like all human actions, writing comes with tradeoffs. When you choose to do one thing, that necessarily means you willingly give up the time you could have spent on something else. This applies to writing, just on a much larger scale. When a society chooses to use writing as its primary method of education, it chooses to embrace both the positives and negatives associated with literacy, and forego the positives and negatives associated with oral societies. The problem Plato laid out then is much more complex than he seems to realize.

Picture of a brain with a USB cord extending from it

There are methods readers can use to better remember the material they read, such as writing down notes (which helps you remember the information in the process) and reflecting deeply on the material after reading. There’s also a possible rebuttal to Plato’s idea of the mind and what counts as knowledge from modern philosophy. The Extended Mind Thesis (EMT), famously argued by analytic philosopher David Chalmers, states that the human mind is not limited to the brain, but is also part of things external from a person, like a notebook or a computer. Thus, writing might have widened the human mind rather than diminished it. EMT is a highly debated concept, but is none-the-less a potentially interesting counter-point to Plato.

Implications of Writing

 

It hardly needs prefaced the impact of literacy in our culture; the relevance of written communication in most (if not all) functions of society.

Does progressively easier access of information and continually more effective communication only serve us for the better? Are there any adverse effects?

In considering people groups that function without literacy, present or historically, it may not be as much a question of better or worse as it is an apples-to-oranges kind of comparison. It is easy for us to see the indispensable perks of life as we know it – many thanks to writing and reading. Void of these methods, however, while life would be altogether different, we may be ignorant to assume that it would be worse.

Words have power, and large-scale communication can result in catastrophe. With the more intimate social structure that springs from depending on in-person dialogue, the tragedies could, arguably, be more finite or contained. Problems, still, perhaps – just different ones (again, apples to oranges).

Some may say that our access to the writings of people from many different backgrounds would give us more perspective. However, while this could contribute to a kind of “global perspective” or unified worldview, it also comes with wide variations from person to person since we all take in different information (books, websites, etc.), contrasting experiences and influences. Conversely, in an inter-reliant people group would be more likely to have a shared perspective, rooted in reality as it applies to them.

For a people group such as that, there would be an insignificant risk of information overload. Distinctions of people’s roles in society would be more clear. In one sense, that could be viewed as restrictive; however, in societies like ours, many people struggle to find their niche with such an expanse of possibilities. The open potential and constant stream of (usually) inapplicable information could be hindering in its own way.

For many of us, the importance of reading is instilled to us throughout childhood, whether through school, our parents, or even from community incentives such as the libraries’ summer reading programs. Reading is a cornerstone to learning, fundamental to acquiring knowledge. While this may be true, it is not to say that reading itself actually makes us more intelligent. In fact, Plato once said this: “they will cease to exercise memory because they will rely on that which is written…And it is no true wisdom…but only its semblance.”  (Ironically, that quote has been preserved through writing.) It is interesting to consider the ways that our mental acuteness may be affected through societal advancements; progress that simultaneously shows the capacity of and lifts burdens from our minds.

For more insight about literate and nonliterate cultures, refer to The Consequences of Literacy by J. Goody.