I've just been reading Howard's chapter on History of Writing in the Community and found it interestingly connected to my interest on identity. I'm trying to tie what I read back to theories of identities, especially those of Holland, Bahktin, and Gee. This chapter is a pretty easy connection on many levels. The beginning of the setion "The 20th Century: Change and Continuity" claims that not all writing communities viewed more compulsory education as a healthy addition and inclusion into their practices. A quote that really hit me was toward the end of the chapter. "Despite the availability of formal, postcompulsory education, many prefer independent, informal learning and literacy practices" (p. 251).
This entire chapter focuses on how communities used writing, in many ways to build, share, and perserve identity of individuals, organizations, families, etc.. Writing was often self-taught when this preservation or communication felt important and desirable. I think it's fascinating that the 'schooling', both compulsory and postcompulsory, was not necessarily always linked to writing in a favorable way. In face the quote tells me that many still prefer their independedent and informal literacy practices.
I especially love to study this topic with adolescents. We addressed this a little bit in class when we talked about texting. Adolescents today are reading and writing and constructing meaning and identity all the time, but schools ban many of these practices and force-feed the 5 paragraph essay. We teach the "Collins" writing program, whose structure introduces the ideas of multiple purposes for writing; however, we still won't allow anything other than full sentences written with pen and paper to constitute "school writing". (Sometimes, if the teacher is lucking enough to beat the race to the computer lab, students can actually use a computer for print too.)
I consistently struggle with how middle and high schools can let students use the form of literacies (writing here, specifically) that make sense to them to think and mean meaning in schools. It's a topic I wrestle with in my grad classes and in many conversations I have with my English teachers all over the district. This article, again, historically, points out the need for our perspectives to widen and pedagogy to become more flexible.
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I agree that middle school, high school, and even college students are still expected to turn in a finished writing product that exemplifies standard conventions practices. In my undergraduate course that I was teaching on Friday morning, we were discussing our next annotated bibliography assignment. One student asked if she could be "creative" with the assignment, indicating she would like to use various formats, fonts, colors, etc. in her finished product. Other students chimed in the conversation stating that many of my colleagues require the submission of all written responses and assignments in 12 point, Times New Roman, etc. Although, I can understand that various assignments warrant more traditional structures, there are many occasions when students can express themselves in alternate forms, while still completing the requirements. Therefore, I gave a resounding "yes" to my student's inquiry, and am looking forward to her submission.
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