“Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention.” CCC 50.3 (1999): 411-436.
This article is one I’m re-reading and I move into it pretty comfortably–I’ve read it before, I heard her give the original address, and I’ve read several of her books and other articles that follow from this one. I re-read it in its original journal format, and now I’m making notes after the paper reading (with Barney in the background, with a sick child home with me today). So it’s an, um, multimedia experience around here this morning.
Selfe starts positioning her field–computers and composition–in the larger field of comp studies, arguing that English people just don’t like to pay attention to computers. Evidence: lack of attention at our conferences, body language when she talks about her work; fact that tech issues are frequently the province of a single faculty member or staff member. “As a result, computers are rapidly becoming invisible, which is how we like our technology to be” (413).
The problem: not paying attention sustains the ideology of print, which “support[s] a pattern of continuing illiteracy in this country” (413). (I bet students will take issue with this claim).
I love the subheads in this article: so very clear and useful. Action-oriented. So why do we need to pay attention?
- lit and tech have been linked that promote social inequality
- in failing to attend to the seemingly-invisible technology, we ignore “serious social struggles” (415)
- literacy now increasingly linked to computer technology
- English teachers are not involved with technology
Selfe looks at the Clinton-Gore Getting America’s Children Ready for the 21st Century report. (No version of this document is easily available on the web in 2006). She highlights the costs of computer technology. Despite increasing spending, and the fact that professional documents now assume or assert the need for computers, our professional associations “do not provide adqquate guidance about how to get teachers and students thinking critically about such use” (419). She argues that “by payign critical attentio to lessons about technology, we can relearn important lessonsa bout literacy” (419).
Historical lessons from other large-scale literacy campaigns suggests that, as Brian Street says, “lack of literacy is more likely to be a symptom of poveryt and deprivation than a cause” (qtd 420). Lack of access to computers is more common in low-income schools and schools serving minority students. “profoundly disturbing” (420). Run-down of the digital divide on 421-22. “In sum, we have litle evidence that any large-scae project focusing on a narrowly defined set of officially sanctioned literacy skills will result in fundamental changes in the ratio of people labeled as literate or illiterate” (423).
Literacy education is political, not just educational. Starting on 424, Selfe outlines the political concerns–mostly economic–that drove the Clinton-Gore approach to putting computers in schools. Underlying attention to a global marketplace, need to boost high-tech industries.
“The people labeled as ‘illiterate’ in connection with technology–as expected–are those with the least power to effect a change in this system” (427). And what is the role of teachers? We are “the unwitting purveyors of technology and technological literacy–even as we try to avoid a technological focus by attending to more traditionally conceived topics within the humanities” (428). We are not “paying critical attention” (429).
So what should we do: she calls for situated knowledge
- in curriculum committees, standards documents, assessment programs
- professional orgs
- scholarship and research
- classrooms and courses
- computer facilities
- districts, states
- voting
- English Ed programs
- libraries, community centers
All are sites where we can ask about power, use, critical thinking. What would the landscape look like if we asked Selfe’s questions more often? “It is my hope that by paying some attention to technology, we may learn lessons about becoming better humanists, as well” (435).
Connections and Resources
- notes taken by a grad student prepping for exams.
- Internet access in US public schools 94-05
- (download report)
