T(hinking)O(ut)L(oud): Literacy and Reading and Books

(TOL=Thinking Out Loud)

Yet again resurrecting the old blog… Not much time to write these days.

I am not a literacy theory student or a certified teacher. I’m a librarian — a systems librarian these days, to tell the truth. I manage a consortial ILS these days (Koha — hooray!), but questions like what Buffy Hamilton raised on Twitter tonight get me going and make me temporarily stop digging through mySQL databases or tickets or testing or email. Buffy’s sponsors of literacy posts at the DMLCentral blog have been very thought-provoking.

She posted this series of tweets:

I wonder if we inadvertently create unrealistic expectations when we promise kids an elusive love of reading IF they can find "right" books

— Buffy J. Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton) February 7, 2014

Is it another form/variation of Graff's "literacy myth"? Why do we expect every person will "fall in love" w/ reading?

— Buffy J. Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton) February 7, 2014

I will try and fully articulate these wonderings in a blog post soon—it's something I've been contemplating for a while.

— Buffy J. Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton) February 7, 2014

One other thought–interesting how books are the privileged medium of reading & other kinds of "texts" are not. Not new but still relevant.

— Buffy J. Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton) February 7, 2014

For the first time in a long time I was on Twitter while she was posted these thoughts, and I fired back:

@buffyjhamilton v interesting thought. I struggle w focus these days & find short bits of text grab me & make me think more than a book can

— Heather Braum (@hbraum) February 7, 2014

@buffyjhamilton it can be an article, or text snippet, or even your tweet. Hehe. Also didn't we used to be a fully oral not written culture?

— Heather Braum (@hbraum) February 7, 2014

@buffyjhamilton you've read and thought about this so much more but that thought abt oral tradition jumped into my head…

— Heather Braum (@hbraum) February 7, 2014

@buffyjhamilton which leads to a question. What is the end goal of reading, of literacy? Can it only be achieved through a traditional book?

— Heather Braum (@hbraum) February 7, 2014

—-

And that’s when I decided to write this post, the first in many, many months. Twitter’s character limits got in the way, and I have too many thoughts crashing into one another and they need to be shared. Bear with me just for a moment.

Again, I am not a literacy expert — the little I know solely comes from reading and listening to Buffy’s lines of thinking these days. I am not a certified teacher, either, so please don’t get all over me if I say something wrong or unkosher.

This conversation and numerous other mashed up discussions from the day (over stats, of all things!) has me questioning why people get so caught up in the container of what really matters — the STORY.

A newspaper has a multitude of stories.
A magazine.
A website is full of them.
Ads tell stories.
Movies — duh.
Graphic novels — ever read March??
Books — obviously (what about the different platforms of books?).
A sporting event.
A road sign.
And I’m getting side tracked.

I’ll returning to the last tweet I posted to Buffy:

@buffyjhamilton which leads to a question. What is the end goal of reading, of literacy? Can it only be achieved through a traditional book?

— Heather Braum (@hbraum) February 7, 2014

Is it
to be entertained?
to learn?
to grow?
to think?
to escape?
to be challenged?
to carry out a task?
to gain understanding?
to build knowledge?

I’d argue the end goal of literacy, of reading, is all of those and much more than I can think of right now.

And how can those actions —
the
entertaining,
learning,
growing,
thinking,
escaping,
challenging,
tasking,
understanding,
building —

be delivered?

Through written text, yes, but what about
simple conversations?
Writing?
Poetry?
Articles?
Movies?
A piece of music — sung or played?
A sport?
Observing someone?
And again, so much more.

All of these? They are telling stories.

So why, do we simply recommend books as the normal medium to help people discover the joy of reading? Instead, what if we started asking people what story they want to find or learn or seek out and provide the possible mediums to that story?

What if, by coming to where people are at — helping them find the stories they want to discover, they can be introduced to all types of literacies – and learn and grow — and not simply shut down, because “the right book” — the right container — couldn’t be found?

This post originally stopped here, but completely independent of this post, I stumbled across a commercial — for whiskey of all things — that told a beautiful story. And I want to close with it. Watch it and THEN finish the post 🙂

Do people still need to learn to read? Yes! The basics still need to be taught. You grow through reading different variations of literature, and gain understanding of the world. But there was a reason this commerical’s story happened. And it wasn’t to fall in love with reading… The main character had a story he wanted to read, and to get there took a lot of work and a lot of different containers to learn to read, before he came back to the first story (I’m being deliberately vague, in case you skipped the video).

I may unpack this further. Or it may stand alone, as a simple thinking out loud exercise. What do you think?