Literacy in a Digital World

Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information

Kathleen Tyner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135690847
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Medienwissenschaften

In this book, Kathleen Tyner examines the tenets of literacy through a historical lens to demonstrate how new communication technologies are resisted and accepted over time. New uses of information for teaching and learning create a "disconnect" in the complex relationship between literacy and schooling, and raise questions about the purposes of literacy in a global, networked, educational environment. The way that new communication technologies change the nature of literacy in contemporary society is discussed as a rationale for corresponding changes in schooling. Digital technologies push beyond alphabetic literacy to explore the way that sound, image, and text can be incorporated into education. Attempts to redefine literacy terms--computer, information, technology, visual, and media literacies--proliferate and reflect the need to rethink entrenched assumptions about literacy. These multiple literacies are advanced to help users make sense of the information glut by fostering the ability to access, analyze, and produce communication in a variety of forms. Tyner explores the juncture between two broad movements that hope to improve education: educational technology and media education. A comparative analysis of these two movements develops a vision of teaching and learning that is critical, hands on, inquiry-based, and suitable for life in a mobile, global, participatory democracy.

CHAPTER ONE

Pause on Literacy Fast Forward

The dedication of a new public library in San Francisco provided a unique occasion to witness the historical forces of literacy in action. The image of public libraries’ place in the civic affairs of San Francisco is in keeping with the spirit of the city—energetic, forward-looking, and diverse, but tethered by a faint air of provincialism. The original library of the city was destroyed in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and replaced by a magnificent Beaux Arts structure. This graceful edifice was the pride of the city until it was damaged by yet another earthquake in 1989. Each successive library building erected in San Francisco’s civic center serves as a powerful symbol of cultural tenacity in the face of disaster. The latest library occupies its customary place in contemporary public affairs. It is the site where the culture of books collides with the emerging digital culture of the late 20th century.

In 1996, San Francisco dedicated a New Main Library to replace the old Beaux Arts structure. When funds were raised for the $140 million “New Main,” its promoters promised to usher in library services that were unimaginable in the beginning of the century. One of the central goals for the 1996 San Francisco library was to align the library with the literacy needs for the Age of Information—to become a model “library of the 21st century.”

On this count, the New Main delivers. The floor decks are wired for multimedia. Using microwave and satellite technologies, the New Main provides state-of-the-art videoconferencing. A large auditorium permits screening of prerecorded media. Six hundred computer terminals provide users with access to the library’s holdings, including art, graphics, and special collections. An Internet connection allows users to access collections of other networked libraries around the world—even from their home computers. Microcomputers are available for projects and reference librarians access CDs to research answers to obscure questions posed to them by phone-in callers. Networked library patrons can access the Children’s Electronic Discovery Center, a multimedia playground for children, through their computers.

But according to critics of the New Main, library technology came at the expense of the library books. Shelf space in the New Main does not match that in the old library and books that were readily available to the public at the old library are now shelved in closed stacks, or stored in an underground warehouse. Furthermore, in preparation for the move to the New Main, wholesale culling of the collection assigned tens of thousands of books to the city dump. The new state-of-the-art, mechanized sorting device mangled several thousand more (Baker, 1996, pp. 50–62).

The old card catalog contained 3 million index cards in 2,520 wooden drawers, replete with exquisite carvings of Greek figures, flora and fauna, and other 19th-century symbols of high art and culture. Too beautiful to discard, the old card catalogs were warehoused as antiques (Wiley, 1996, p. 224). Replacement of the old cabinets by a computerized referencing system had already begun in the 1980s, to some initial grumbling by the public. But the New Main of 1996 went one step further. It completely eliminated the card catalogs, calling them “predigital records,” in favor of a state-of-the-art indexing system located completely on computers (Delgado, 1996, p. A-12). In the process of inputting the index cards to a computerized database, the handwritten notes from librarians who interpreted the works and cross-referenced them to other contexts over the years were lost. Even worse, clerical workers, who were in the position to choose and discard, sometimes missed a card altogether—relegating books to the limbo of non-indexed materials.

The computerized system became the main gatekeeper between reader and text, and patrons had no choice but to learn to navigate an unfamiliar, cumbersome, and complicated high-tech system. Although critics conceded that the computer-savvy librarians were supportive, they demanded the return of the card catalogs. With the computer interface as the primary reference tool, the experience of book selection had become less a matter of leisurely perusal and more of a direct, sterile transaction. No longer were library patrons able to browse the catalogs haphazardly, or to inspect the cards, or even to wander the stacks. To its detractors, the computerized indexing system was a relatively bland and frustrating experience, devoid of the joys of random intellectual discovery.

Instead, the old catalog cards were culled for an “art wall.” The installation, designed by artists Ann Hamilton and Ann Chamberlain, was intended to simulate the “accidental juxtapositions that users of the old system experienced while thumbing through the catalog.” Rendered dysfunctional, the cards were reduced to the quaint curiosities of an Industrial Age, when typewriters were manual and librarians still used mechanized date stamps and cursive handwriting. For a one-dollar donation, San Franciscans were invited to “embellish” the cards with their own naive artwork for the artists to embed in the art wall (Wiley, 1996, p. 216).

Needless to say, the technological changes designed so proudly in the New Main in San Francisco created tremendous uproar from those citizens who resented the intrusion of technology into their library experience. The card catalog became the rallying post for their collective ire. To the lovers of the card catalog, the demise of physical card catalogs was a loss of tremendous proportion that went far beyond mere inconvenience. Digital records represented an irretrievable loss of knowledge, an obliteration of the past. The catalog became the focal point for resentment and anxiety about the encroachment of technology in all walks of life. Charging that library administrators were more interested in creating a technological showplace than a place of learning, the card catalog argument became a digital vs. print confrontation (Adams, 1996).

The criticism took supporters of the high-tech library—many of them librarians—by surprise. They patiently pointed to the efficiency of the computerized library system, to its accuracy and convenience. Librarians noted that prior to the computerized system, the index cards were often lost or inaccurate. Librarians scoffed at the romantic notion that the cards contained historical annotations, reminding patrons that the originals had, in fact, burned in the fires of 1906. In anticipation of their storage, cards had not been updated since 1991, leading users to believe that books were available that had, in fact, disappeared. Approximately 1.5 million books obtained since 1991 were not even listed. Under the circumstances, many librarians found the continued storage of all those little squares of card stock to be pointless. They were aghast to think that anyone would want to go back to the old method of referencing the library holdings by index cards.

Nonetheless, local library commissioners, responding to the hue and cry of the public, agreed to develop plans to save the old card catalog. Preservation plans ranged from binding the cards into books as is done at the New York Public Library, to storing the card catalog in the basement of a remote annex for use by historians (Ginsburg, 1996; Minton, 1996). By early 1997, the New Main’s most vocal champion and chief designer, San Francisco’s Chief Librarian, Kenneth Dowlin, resigned under fire.

The card catalog was the metaphor, if not the sole reason, for Dowlin’s demise. Supporters of modernized library technology were shocked by the loss of Dowlin, a well-regarded librarian with a national profile, and exasperated by the arcane arguments put forth by those who wanted to return to the days of low-tech access. Again and again, they reminded detractors that the card catalog was no longer functional—to no avail. Again and again, supporters of the computerized library missed the point. They were under the mistaken impression that the card catalog argument was about the most efficient way to locate library materials.

Instead, opposing arguments about the card catalog at the New Main in San Francisco are illustrative of a unique window in history when the influence of technology in all aspects of public and private life raises questions about the rapidly changing uses of literacy and its tools. Literacy has been called a “technology of the intellect” (Goody, 1973). For centuries, these tools have been the purview of the printed word:

Literacy is . . . above all, a technology or set of techniques for communications and for decoding and reproducing written or printed materials. (Graff, 1995, p. 10)

Just as oral traditions were both changed and incorporated by the printed word, electronic communication technologies seem to give with one hand and take with the other. Contrary to the concern that print culture will be eroded and obliterated by electronic forms, history demonstrates that literacy technologies ebb and flow, depending on the circumstances. They overlap, coexist, and change in symbiotic ways. Print culture did not eliminate oral traditions. Radio, television, and computers incorporate both print and oral conventions, but have yet to wipe out the book. In fact, book sales are at an all-time historical high. Instead, historical shifts in the tools of literacy change conceptions about what it means to be literate—a much more vexing and complicated question.

Digital communication forms are unique because they have the potential to collapse oral, written, print, and electronic codes and conventions into malleable nuggets of data, enabling diverse media to converge gracefully into a unified audiovisual schema. But if the transition from one form to another in times past is any indication, the mixing of media is bound to trigger unanticipated social tension. The introduction of new literacy tools raises intriguing questions about the way people pick and choose from the elements of a text—form, content, and context—to navigate and make sense of an increasingly mediated world. An historical long view of literacy helps to inform these questions and to put contemporary anxiety and hyperbole about new communication tools into perspective.

REWIND TO REFERENCING PAST

The San Francisco card catalog’s demise is only one example in a long line of pitched battles over literacy. It contains echoes of a similar turning point in literacy history—the obliteration of a reference tool called tally sticks, or tallies. Tallies were a literacy technology that grew out of the shift from oral to written culture in England during the Middle Ages. Just as modern-day computer users do not yet trust financial transactions over the Internet, medieval citizens did not trust the veracity of the printed word. Medieval deeds, charters, receipts, and other accounts were written on parchment and the potential for the fraudulent use of seals and wax, or ink on parchment was great.

Tally sticks were simple wooden rods, but they became the answer to trust and security issues around the printed word—the carbon paper of their time. The names of the interested parties were coded onto the tally stick in ink and the wood was notched with a knife at differing widths, depths, and intervals to represent the amount, times, and length of transactions. After the transaction was recorded with the knife, the tally stick was then carefully split down the middle and each party got to keep one half of the stick. If a dispute arose, the interlocking halves were proof of authenticity and the method was widely trusted as a safeguard against forgery. Tally sticks became a clever and efficient way to ensure secure records of contracts and financial transactions, such as bills of sale, monies owed, and payments made.

Literacy historian M. T. Clanchy, in From Memory to Written Record, studies the shift from oral to print culture in England, from the time of the Norman Conquest to the death of Edward I, or roughly between the years 1066 and 1307. Clanchy argues that the tally sticks provided the accounting technology necessary to launch the financial system in England during the 12th century. They were adopted by private accountants during the 13th century as reading and writing became more widely used by an increasingly print literate populace (Clanchy, 1993). The technology of the tallies symbolized the shift from the culture of the spoken word, to that of reading and writing.

Tallies were easier to store and preserve than the bulkier, fragile parchment that was also used to record transactions. In the case of the tallies of the royal Exchequer, these relics of medieval transactions were stored in London at Westminster, as documents of public record. As the Industrial Age took root in the public imagination, “things medieval” had become not only anachronistic, but pejorative. Caught up in the spirit of reform that held the Middle Ages in contempt and promised more enlightened times, a statute was passed abolishing these receipts of the Exchequer, in 1834. The tally sticks stored at Westminster were piled into bonfires and burned. According to Clanchy, the documents made of parchment were carefully preserved, but tally sticks “were deliberately destroyed because they were in a medium, wood, which was too uncouth for scholars to appreciate. . . . People at the time believed them to be medieval because doing accounting with sticks looked so primitive, and even shameful, to nineteenth century reformers” (p. 124). Ironically, the bonfire of tallies spread to the House of Parliament, providing a sardonic footnote for contemporary literacy researchers.

Millions of these literacy records, made during a time of great historical shifts in literacy, were lost. Only a few hundred tallies survive in the late 20th century and are the basis for a rich body of literacy scholarship (Clanchy, 1993, p. 124). Unlike their card catalog counterparts, no one has yet thought to embed the last of the tallies into a work of public art.

LITERACY THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

The attempt to comprehend literacy is probably an exercise in hubris—but it is one that continues to intrigue and lure scholars nonetheless. French literacy historian Henri-Jean Martin begins his book, The History and Power of Writing, by commenting on the vexing complexity of any study of literacy: “All history is first chronology. And anyone imprudent enough to risk studying the chronology of writing alternates ceaselessly between vertigo and myopia” (Martin, 1994, p. 1). Although comparisons are useful, literacy resists and refuses all attempts to pin it down into simple, definitive categories that transcend history. The form, content, and contexts of literacy records sprawl, overlap, and defy isolation.

The historical study of literacy was conducted in earnest in a time after World War II when the overall tone of both arts and humanities scholarship rejected the idea that one culture could truly and objectively understand another, due to the inability of researchers to completely transcend their own cultural and historical orientation. Contemporary literacy scholarship reflects the trend away from a psychoanalytical theory toward one that is more anthropological, or at least sociolinguistic, in nature. In the place of definitive conclusions about the nature of literacy and its effects on individuals and societies, are various readings of social texts and signs within specific contexts, from a variety of perspectives.

It is fair to say that there are vocal critics to the widespread assumption among literacy scholars that cross-cultural and cross-historical objectivity is ultimately illusive. Art historian E. H. Gombrich (I960, 1992), who conducted landmark studies of the psychology of pictorial representations, vehemently dismissed the idea that “one age or culture can never truly understand another, or is even obliged to try.” Gombrich attacked this perspective, calling it “cultural relativism,” for the same reasons its proponents embrace it: “because it denies the existence of any objective standards of truth” (Baker, 1992, p. 9).

In a review of Gombrich’s work, art critic Kenneth Baker suggests that:

Objectivity is denigrated in the humanities these days because it is seen as the tacit philosophical excuse for Western imperialism and the technological “conquest” of nature. Those who possess objective truth are implicitly entitled to impose it on those whose truth is shown to be merely poetic, mythic, or local. . . . The only proof against such arrogance, the “relativists” argue, is to break the spell of objectivity and its implicit pragmatic morality, and so lose our supercilious senses of intellectual access to other times and cultures. (Baker, 1992, p. 9)

It is against this backdrop of dominant “relativist” interpretation and rapid social and technological change that historical literacy scholarship came into its own. By recognizing that literacy cannot be viewed in isolation from other social factors, the discussion of the uses and purposes for literacy can provide deeper insight into its uses and purposes as a complex set of social practices. However, it is important to caution that an understanding of the history of literacy in this framework provides very little of practical use for those who want quick and easy mobilization of mass literacy campaigns. This kind of “one-size-fits-all” literacy goes decidedly against the tide of evidence that suggests an eclectic and idiosyncratic relationship between individuals, social groups, and literacy practices.

Literacy historians patiently collect evidence about how institutions such as churches, schools, states, social groups, workers, and families act on the practice of literacy over time—swinging the pendulum of history between control and freedom. Conversely, just as society shapes literacy practices, literacy historians also document evidence that new modes of literacy change social institutions.

Social expectations for new literacy forms give rise to the appropriate institutions to support the literacies du jour. Evidence abounds that the reorganization of institutions to accommodate new communication technologies, among them schooling, work, and recreation, is generally considered radical in its time. The adaptation of business practices to accommodate a proliferation of networked computers is a stunning case in point. But as literacy practices become established, what once seemed extreme becomes staid and routine, until the next wave of change transforms the radical into the status quo, threatening older forms and boxing them into a reactionary posi...