Literacy Narrative - First Draft

Karen Mooney

Professor Barbara Gleason

English B8109

October 21, 2014

First Draft

Turn To the Visual

That day in May was one of the hottest I can remember. College graduation. One of those rituals that are so fraught with expectation and confusion because they mark a transition from one profound state to another. My heavy blue robe seemed unsuited to the weather, my arms hidden in its long, wide sleeves, the generous folds of its fabric reaching down past my calves. Under it I wore one of the shortest pink dresses I had ever bought yet for once, neither of my parents complained.

            They were there—mom, dad, two of my three brothers, and grandma, dad taking movies with an 8 millimeter camera, later finding out they were largely unwatchable. I think my folks were proud, but they seemed as disoriented as I was.

            Pride wasn’t exactly my strongest emotion that day either. Mostly I was confused, not sure what was next. I planned to go to graduate school to study English, the area I had settled on as an undergrad, but I was out of money and out of steam and thought I might drift a while.

            I have absolutely no memory of sitting with my classmates during the ceremony that day. Where did I sit? Where were my parents? Did I walk across a stage and pick up my diploma? Did I feel any different when it was over?

Yet one moment of that exercise changed my life. Margaret Mead gave the commencement address. The legendary anthropologist, herself a graduate of the college, was teaching there now, and was occasionally seen around campus in these last years of her life, wrapped in a cape and walking with the help of a tall walking stick. Few people were as expert as she was about the transitions an adolescent makes in becoming an adult. A fitting graduation speaker, one would think, though many of us 20-somethings must have been skeptical of the advice someone so old might give.

There is no record of Mead’s address. She must have spoken for some time, possibly giving lots of advice, since that’s what commencement speakers do. But I remember only one line, and it had nothing to do with following your heart, or giving it 110 percent, or being kind. “Don’t ignore television,” she said. “It will shape the lives of your children and grandchildren.”

I went home for a visit after that day and took her advice—I watched television, something I hadn’t done much of during college. Grandma was my viewing companion. She liked soaps, talked back at the characters about their dramatic choices. My dad liked news. My younger brothers watched cartoon and kid shows. After a week of this, I concluded “I can fix this.” Arrogant? Optimistic? Maybe I just fell for all those admonitions to change the world that college graduates get as they’re pushed out into the world.

Back in New York, I rolled up my sleeves. Fixing TV was going to be a lot of work. I had always identified as a writer, from the self-made books that I generated as a child to my bookish adolescence and my literary college years.  Books were the door to imagination and new worlds but I also just liked words. Recently, though, they seemed to be taking me away from the real world—what was out there? It seemed more wild and colorful than many of the books I could read. What about those colors? What about shapes and images? My world was so black and white in comparison. I was curious.

I eventually found my way to a media center in Soho where they were experimenting with new, small-format video equipment. It was easy to carry and the images were instantly available. I learned to shoot video, to frame sequences, and to communicate stories and information by connecting one shot to another. Eventually, I happened into a job at a television network, working with the first generation of electronic graphics machines. The processing was so slow back then (and the networks so rich) that we routinely worked 15-hour shifts creating and animating what looks now like very primitive images.

One day I was assigned to produce a sequence of falling leaves that would cascade over video of a sports show as it transitioned to the commercial, a bumper, as it’s called. I imported images of leaves of varying shapes, colored them from a palate of a handful of colors (a fraction of the choices today), and worked for hours making the movements look random. The day turned to night and almost to day again, and I was still there with the machines, in the tiny, dark cubicle, with that monitor glowing with multi-hued pictures. Color entered my life in a new way that long day, and so did a profound new recognition of image.

From there, I would take whatever opportunity came my way to do something I had never done before or something that offered a chance to learn something new. Eventually I found my way back to writing and have spent the past 10 or so years writing the words that go with TV pictures. This type of literacy is aural, meant to be understood by hearing it. But the communication works best when the words apply directly to the images; there’s a force multiplier effect. It’s very satisfying when it clicks. It appears to be seamless, the words don’t fight the picture. After so many years of communicating this way, using words alone rarely seems enough. 

            My journey is now coming full circle. From that day on the lawn when Margaret Mead sent me out into the world to watch television, I’m now back at school, studying language and literacy. So much has changed in the meantime. When I first started in television news, the words were clearly king, the pictures a primitive afterthought. Today, some television news producers even argue that their mission is to present the visual world, the world we can see today only because of the new technologies now at our fingertips. They are working hard to find new ways to tell stories in a visual way,  using that technology. I believe this reflects what British Professor of Semiotics and English Education Gunter Kress calls culture’s “turn to the visual” (67). He and the other scholars who contributed to the manifesto called The Pedagogy of Multiliteracies argue that literacy must now go beyond the mere reading and writing of words. For the first time in traditional scholarship, they suggest that tools other than language might be used to define a body of knowledge, to make arguments, and to interpret the world.

Today, I can say with confidence, that I have not fixed television. But Margaret Mead’s command set me on a path that led away from traditional literacy and toward a more complicated way of reading and writing, a multi-faceted, multi-modal kind of literacy. That journey has mirrored the transformation that has gone on the world at large. And Mead was right—television and the visual drift has also shaped the life of my children…and doubtless one day, the lives of my grandchildren as well.

Reflections on "Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts," Chapter 2

How I wish I had had a first-year college course like the one outlined in Chapter 2 of Bartholomae and Petrosky’s Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts. The Basic Reading and Writing curriculum is outlines is organized around a theme that is relevant to its students, that methodically develops skills, and that links reading and writing throughout. From our discussion in class, I understand that some colleges offer mainstream first-year students courses like this today, but few offer them to basic writing students. While I understand that colleges are often sorely understaffed and classes very large, what a lost opportunity to invite students into higher-level work and give them the skills they need to succeed at it.

As they write in the course description, Bartholomae and Petrosky outline a curriculum that aims to help students develop a command of the “activities basic to undergraduate study: reading, writing, interpretation, report, discussion” (48). They say they have modeled their course on one a graduate student might take, expecting students to develop their own ideas and theories on a subject and to report what they’ve learned to others. Students are expected to become expert enough “to begin to understand and respect the work (not the genius or inspiration) of those the university does acknowledge as expert” (48). In general, then, the course is “a general introduction to the language and methods of the university” (48).

(The only similar list of basic intellectual skills that I’ve ever read came from Mike Rose in Lives on the Boundary. He focused his students’ writing on the four intellectual strategies upon which he believes all education and scholarship is built: summarizing, classifying, comparing, and analyzing.)

Students in the University of Pittsburgh’s Basic Reading and Writing seminar are required to do many kinds of writing. Frequent journal entries, which are not shared with classmates and which are not graded by teachers, help students get words on a page. This writing is coupled with a variety of more formal output, from personal narrative, to literary essays, to research papers.

What may set Bartholomae and Petrosky’s curriculum apart from courses geared toward more experienced, mainstream writers, is its parallel focus on study skills. Teachers in this program require students to read for long, uninterrupted periods, specifically suggesting at least one-hour at a time, and to keep a log of their reading time on 3x5 cards. They discuss how to read a text, how to make simple markings on the page to help recall important passages, how to take notes, and how to make lists of important points. Similarly, teachers require students to write for specific periods of time. In contrast, most college teachers leave time management up to their students.

I found reading this section of Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts to be very exciting. If I had had a course like this in college, I might not have hurtled anxiously from assignment to assignment, never quite sure of what I was doing. I am happy even after so many years to finally get a handle on the foundations of college writing. And I’m happy that I’m a little closer to answering the even broader question of what it means to do college level work.

Thoughts on "Community College Students Face a Very Long Road to Graduation", NY Times 10/3/14

On October 3, 2014, The New York Times published an article about community college students that reveals fresh aspects of the yawning gap between the wealthiest universities and the dramatically under-resourced community colleges. In “Community College Students Face a Very Long Road to Graduation,” Ginia Bellafante (Link) writes  “In recent years, mounting concerns about inequality have fixated on the need for greater economic diversity at elite colleges, but the interest has tended to obscure the fact that the vast majority of high school students — including the wealthiest — will never go to Stanford or the University of Chicago or Yale.”

Elite colleges and universities should continue to be pressured to open their doors to a more diverse population, but I believe they might also be pressured to partner with community colleges in professional and financial ways. This arrangement could take many forms, from outright financial contributions, to jobs for community college students, to counseling services, and more. Any university that has a school or program of education could be encouraged to devote more attention and research to studying innovations or funding strategies that might help this huge population of college strivers, 45% of total undergraduates in America (Link).

Private colleges and universities will find many reasons to resist. They would like to give more financial aid to their own students who bear a very heavy burden of tuition and fees. It may seem like a “tax” on their own wealth and endowments. How would the community college students get on with the host college’s own students, would the tensions undermine the intention?   

Bellafante also reports on the fundraising success of “Prep for Prep,” an organization that identifies disadvantaged New York City children and directs them toward private high schools and exclusive colleges. The group raised $3 million during one fundraising event on a single night last June. Clearly, the strategy of the group and its donors is to groom children with promise in the values and habits of the academically successful. Adult students may be seen as a much riskier investment toward outcomes consistent with those values. Yet I believe the largess also reflects a sincere interest in extending their advantages to groups outside their own (albeit with limits) and there may be more ways to tap this generosity for the benefit of community colleges.

In suggesting these ways to bridge the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest educational institutions, I realize I may be naïve and that talented people may already have tried these approaches. My experience in both public and private schools at every level leads me to conclude that each structure has strengths and weaknesses and each has a carefully guarded place and mission. I have to believe, though, that the enormous groundswell of students trying to better their lives through attendance at community colleges will eventually break through into the public spotlight.  In the meantime, I would like to learn more about what advocacy groups are doing to raise awareness of these students’ needs and those of the schools that serve them.