Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id g94BFxX11039; Fri, 4 Oct 2002 07:15:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 07:15:59 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <002e01c26baf$d20e5a40$e0255544@ewndsr01.nj.comcast.net> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Ujwala Samant <usamant@comcast.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8099] Re: NIFL-ESL Help with materials X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 Status: O Content-Length: 1625 Lines: 30 >>When I read about the EFF stuff, I linked it with this line of argument about literacy: have you not had it explained to you in the US yet that there is no such thing as literacy only literacies, such arguments being linked with anthropology and ethology and Lave and Wenger? This, as I see it, links only too clearly with Skinner's view of human behaviour as 'controlled' by the environment and generally with 'behaviourist' dislike of 'mentalist' explanations. << If you're from the UK then you might know Brian Street's work on the existence of multiple literacies. I don't quite see that as behaviourist though. However, to my surprise, literacy for a number of people in academe here still means reading and writing. I tend to use other understandings of literacy as survival, techniracy, all the skills needed to negotiate the world and community learners live in. This includes "transferable skills", although their definition is often loose and linked to whatever is deemed necessary at the moment. This also has more practical applications than traditional literacy which is so strongly linked to what Cook-Gumperz refers to as schooled literacy. I've had women learning to become literate point out to me that "education" was what their children were getting in school. They were becoming "literate" and that there was a difference. Their definition of literacy was a combination of school skills as well as survival skills. Schooled skills were (according to them) only useful if taught within the context of their lives and were useful across the multiple realities of their lives. regards Ujwala Samant
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