Those who are Self-Taught

Having background knowledge in the Spanish Language, I picked as a first choice En Los Dos Idiomas: Literacy Practices Among Chicago Mexicanos, an article by Marcia Farr. I thought this article would be interesting because I thought it would talk about the discourse of spanish speakers in Chicago. The article talks about much more than that. It describes more deeply how many Mexicans travel back and forth to earn money and make a living. And with that being said, it talks about how their literacy is poorly affected as a result. These specific Mexicans (as case studies were conducted) only went to school for a few months learning acquiring very few literacy skills. However, these very determined Mexicans find ways to teach themselves, a point that I find very inspiring. This finding also expells myths of previous authors studied, such as Kozol, which generally would find that illiterates can't teach themselves/learn, let alone funtion.

Dwindling Memories

Wow! I am actually posting a blog for my first reading of Walter J. Ong's article Writing is Atechnology that Restructures Thought (not having realized what the date was and that I was still one behind for the blogging assignment but having had the in class discussion prior to reading really made me aware of what I was reading for; thus, making the article more insightful. The knowledge I gained from the class discussion allowed me to make better sense of the first section than I would have alone. Ong uses words and phrases such as "imperious [and] tend[ing] to arrogate to itself supreme power by taking itself as normative for human expression and thought" to describe literacy (Ong, 19). His use of these words is to say that overall literacy is powerful and should be viewed as more than a "mechanical skill" but the context of writing should be understood.

Furthermore I took great interest in the article when he spoke of Plato's theories of why writing is "an intrusion" (Ong 21). I actually agreed with Plato in his idea that "writing destroys memory"(Ong 21). I can directly relate to this when it comes to my skills in math. Throughout elementary and middle school I was on the advanced track in mathematics and we were never allowed to use calculators; thus, I was very sharp with my mental math (addition, subtraction etc). But slowly as I progressed through school, although I remained in upper level math classes, the usage of calculators was much more heavily implemented. I then began utilizing my mental math much less than before which made me become rusty on even the simplest equations (even now need a calculator to multiply by 11 and 12 which I never needed).