Looking too far into the literacies that surround us?

As I read one of our generative words/statements this week, my mind had a field day with one particular question: "The readings this week provide deeper theoretical ways to see the power of literacy; as Discourse, praxis, visual and performance art...But are we going too far?  Is literacy all things to all people?  What's the common thread to all of these ideas?"  So in hopes that this makes sense to others, I would like to make an attempt to put my thoughts to pen (or keyboard)……

I reflected first on a conversation that I had over the weekend with a friend, still enthralled so with the Iddings, McCafferty and da Silva article on Conscientizacao Through Graffiti Literacies in the Streets of a Sao Paulo Neighborhood: An Ecosocial Semiotic Perspective.  Thinking back to Susan’s quip regarding our enthusiasm and desire to discuss our readings with others; I too have become a load of fun at parties!  (Too funnyJ)  But even so, I couldn't resist bringing my thoughts up as I sat over a glass of wine with a friend that had majored in Art some years ago.  I thought, I suppose, about the theory that at times certain text does require a Discourse to truly understand its meaning.  So I was interested in what she knew about this particular form of literacy and the powerful meaning that it may mask from those unfamiliar.  She too was intrigued (FINALLY!!) about the meaning found in the art of Sao Paulo’s graffiti artists, for she knew of a “graffiti movement” and was aware that it can convey more than just a pretty picture.  Her artist’s lens had taught her to look for hidden meaning behind an image or picture, but she did not know the history of the area and so viewed it with her own experiences as she attempted to understand the artist’s intentions.  Her meanings were often different from those intended. 

I also pause as I consider the readings this week and an apparent theme of the Resource Guide for a Do-It-Yourself Education.  The author appears to be a proponent of experiential learning, and makes a compelling case for why it may be found by some more relevant than classroom education.  While I don’t agree that classroom education should be entirely ruled out, I do support her belief that experiential learning can be quite valuable.  While experiential learning and embodied knowing do not necessarily carry the same meaning; the discovery of both has caused me to consider how powerful our experiences and emotions can be when it comes to how and what we take away from our learning.  Often it is because we experience it that the learning holds as much meaning as it does. 

So when asked whether or not we are looking too far into hidden meanings and where we find them, I counter with the question of should we as educators ever stop looking?  Learning can be found in such a variety of places, I am myself learning this anew every day.  And while the viewer (or reader) may take away a message that is not quite what the author/illustrator intended….I beg the consideration of the fact that learning took place at all.  Consider that while the graffiti artists found in the Sao Paulo article hope to create emotion and awareness in the people of their society; I thank them for the emotion and awareness it has created for me in looking at graffiti in a whole new way.   

Literacy, in all of its approaches, provides an opportunity to deliver powerful messages.  It is the viewer’s Discourse(s) that aids in their experience of the message.  Through praxis and theory, we are attempting to understand all that may aid in creating awareness within any one individual.  “Any experience can become part of your education.” (pg. 156)  And as educators, should we not attempt to understand the variety of ways in how one can experience and glean meaning from any text that surrounds them? 

Embodied Learning

I found the article by Christine Woodcock linking "ways of knowing" for me. Embodied knowing is something I have experienced in feminist ideology and theory. The discussion is often concerned with how the Western dominant paradigm of knowledge is constructed as privileging the mind as the sole source of human learning and experience. (Postmodern analysis also takes on how knowledge is constructed and shared.)  Woodcock, however, linked these concepts to literacy events for me and brought my awareness to how we make sense of everyday practices to a deeper level.  There are many "texts" in the world that are hidden and I would venture that many of them are hidden and remain hidden because of how they are connected to the body. Despite our "enlightenment" and tendency to think "clinically" about the body, we still prefer to skim lightly across the surface of its way of knowing.

Why is this? Right now I have a couple of thoughts on this based on this week's readings. One of the questions we were asked to consider concerned the "power of literacy" and whether by looking at literacy through praxis, art and other less traditional means, we were going too far. To peel back the layers of meaning when I am studying something, I frequently pull out my huge Oxford Dictionary. I am fascinated by words and love to tease out nuances of meaning by "rewording" something I am reading by inserting the thematic word from the dictionary in place of the word in question. In this instance, "the power of literacy" became "the power of competency."

Back to Woodcock, who argues that there is a disregard for personhood in literacy practices, and that the body must "be treated as invested with personal meaning, history, and value that are ultimately determinable only by the subject who lives within it."  I would argue that literacy (competency) is an individualized phenomenon and that being literate within a situated discourse/text means making meaning of that situation that allows one to grow, to learn, and even to overcome.  This brings me to Precious Jones. Precious had to go beyond learning ABCs and how to form letters on a page - how to read. She had to 'make sense' of what her embodied experience had taught her. The dialogue of her struggle - recorded through her journals and poetry - allowed her the space, and the method, to become 'literate.'  However, the process was exceedingly difficult for her, difficult for her teacher and others in the class. It was also difficult for us. Why do we skim over embodied ways of learning? They are just hard, and we feel out of control of the learning environment. We don't know how things will turn out. The only way out is through. Ironically, that is also an embodied learning experience, the birth process.

Is literacy all things to all people? I would argue that literacy is a highly individualized construct and that is the common thread in these readings. Moreover, the ability to make sense out of our embodied experiences leads to competency, and that is something we all desire. Embodied learning then, can empower competency.  

Mural Placement

     Looking at murals in class was soothing; when it comes to the arts I am easy to impress.  I do enjoy painting large surfaces, making a slightly dingy wall come to life again and I can paint a mean stripe; our master bedroom looks like a “circus tent” according to my husband.  Yet last year I was asked to co-teach an art class for the first time and my discomfort was palpable.  Detailed painting to me means window trim.  Thankfully the art teacher upon whom they dumped me was a generous man.  Today I want to share what is right in Richmond that I’d never known about until I became an art “student”.  Perhaps you’ve all seen the g40 murals, maybe you even drive by one each day, but me… well I was never a student of the arts before.  Had I driven past one before I may have been charmed and amused by the “graffiti”, admittedly I never would have thought that a world famous artist had done the work and that I should slow down or even stop.  I guess it is safe to say I am now enchanted and educated.

 

      A little background… Art Whino is a D.C. based art gallery which looks for fresh new talent from around the world and has a large existing base of artists, some 1200 total.  Little did I know that Richmond had a new art district, but in art class I learned how 12 of the world’s top muralists from Art Whino were invited to Richmond in April of 2012 to create 20 large scale wall murals .  Some of the murals appear to be bright, colorful and playful, like the bunny above.  Others, like the robots below, most likely represent the human condition when we become entranced by electronics, be it television or film.  Somehow I doubt the depth of the bunny’s message, but am looking deeper at the robots image.  The placement of the murals teaches us even more about the images.  The bunny located on the bright brick surface on a street corner, where nice cars park and the tree hangs over, give me the security of thinking this is fun.  Yet the robots embody a deeper thought process, the placement more somber causing a viewer to think before smiling.

 

 

       I consider this image, found on 18^th Street, to be more reflective of the area.  Although clean and tidy in appearance during daylight, I wonder if the dogs come out at night.  Perhaps they even wear protective gear when they search for scraps.  Although I have survived living in Boston and Philadelphia, I gravitate to trees, not pavement, and certainly not vacant lots.  After living in the tri-cities area for fifteen years I know little of Richmond.  I cannot tell you if a block from this dog mural is a Hyatt or a Marriott, all I can do is consider the art's placement and ponder the artist’s intentions.

       These Angry Woebots amuse me.  I wasn’t sure of the artist’s intention with the beady, but blue eyes.  Were we supposed to think of angry panda bears I wondered?  And so I looked up the artist.  Maybe I’d learned something in art class after all; I wasn’t far off the mark.  The artist, Aaron Martin, is described as famous for his “stressed out emotional pandas, which represent the story of struggle”.  Still I struggle not to be amused and wonder more about the area surrounding the mural.  Is this a wall that once was covered with neighborhood graffiti and now a slightly lighter approach was offered?

       My favorite mural is found on 1501 West Main Street by a Belgian artist, ROA.  The first mural is found in Richmond, the second one is the one I discovered when trying to learn more about this artist.  I’m not sure why the animals appeal to me, on their backs and suffering in the city, but I love the tail leading to the window, as if it were a fire escape one could slide down.

    

       His twelve foot rabbit in Hackney is a subject of disagreement.  Though the business owner had given ROA permission to paint, the Hackney Council wanted the “grafitti” painted over.  ROA’s reponse was that he wanted to re-populate the city with animals.  The Hackney Council felt it was their job to keep the streets clean and threatened two years ago to follow through sending the business owner the bill.  A petition of 2000 saved the rabbit.  Again I considered the placement; it reminded me of a cute, quaint street, maybe not wealthy, but I wondered why the Hackney Council considered the rabbit “unclean”.  The rabbit though attracted 2000 with a powerful message to remain.

    Perhaps as an “art teacher” (Ha, ha) I learned a little more about enjoying the view, but as a literacy student I now view the placement of the murals too.  Take a drive and see what our city offers.  I am planning a second drive, with a second view.  And if I haven’t lost you yet, you might want to visit youtube to take the Richmond tour and see the artists at work.  Enjoy.

Temporal framework

Tunnel of Skulls in Sao Paulo

This week I intended to blog about time.  Connecting time and literacy practice in a way that reveals the temporal properties of text, e.g., the Tunnel of Skulls graffiti, was something I had never before considered.  I thought it would be an excellent topic to explore in our blog.  Throughout the week, my post morphed into something very different as I read and connected ideas on time, culture, and literacy.  Eventually, I had to stop, complete the assignment, and hit the Publish button.   The result is a tangled journey that eventually comes back to literacy and text.   

I thought I would begin with ways I see a temporal framework woven into our lives (the temporality of life?).  I am acutely aware of the passage of time as I age.  I am a  multi-tasking, schedule-driven kind of person.  Time, in a linear sense, has a  past, present, and future.  I also think of it as a resource that I "use."  I hate to "waste" time.  Lemke (2004) refers to this kind of time as energy, the kind of time we measure with metrics such as minutes, hours, heartbeats, seasons.  I think of it as "clock" time, though clocks may not be every one's measurement tool.  Bill talked about his friend who measured time in terms of  incarceration periods.  Most of us use a watch, calendar, or smart phone to keep a schedule.  Some people use chunks of time, such as morning, afternoon, or evening.  In other words,  metrics represent the tempo of time: time does not exist at a constant rate for every one and every thing.  We discussed this in class class, citing different tempos such as heartbeats or protons and electrons in an atom.  I have different clocks running in my life: the weekly schedule of  VCU classes, my daily routine, my breathing when I practice yoga.

Another property of time is spatiality: places in the past, present, and future where we existed, exist, or will exist.  Lemke says we create these spaces when we occupy them in time (2004).   My way of framing spatiality is in terms of music.  Music is sound: a wavelength (tempo) located on a particular frequency (space).   Sound occupies the space; we can recreate that wavelength and frequency and hear the same note. In another way, we can return to a place in time  through our memory.   Spatiality can be art, like reverse graffiti in the Tunnel of Skulls.  The artist cleans away soot each week to reveal the past, to show us that the skulls are still there.  If skulls represent death, then death is future and past.  "I wanted to bring a catacomb from the near future to the present, to show people that the tragedy of pollution is happening right now" (Alexandre Orion, graffiti artist).  Spatiality can be seen in our blog.  It occupies a space in the virtual world.  We can put ourselves in any post at any point in time.  We can edit that post (change the past?) but it will still exist in its original form somewhere on the Web.   Our blog is multi-dimensional, existing in one space while we exist in another.  Spatiality can be past, present and future; in can be multiple, connected places in the virtual world.


If we look at time with a critical sociocultural perspective, we can see how the dominant culture imposes a tempo on society.  We need to get to work by 9AM, we need to drive 65 mph,  we need to meet deadlines and maintain schedules.  We speak of the "hectic pace of life."  We sometimes need a "day off" to spend time occupying a quiet space. We move through spaces, often in a blur, trying to keep up with the imposed social tempo.  Perhaps we can "slow down" on the weekend and enjoy a different pace with family and friends.  Different groups, cultures, and countries have different tempos.  The tempo of life in Prince William County is not the same as the tempo in San Salvador (as I'm told).

I read an interesting book called A Geography of Time (Levine, 1997), recommended to me by another ESOL teacher as a possible way to explain why many adult ESOL students are late to class.  In Geography,  Levine and his research team studied time in 31 countries and developed broad profiles depicting the "pace of life."  Some of the metrics in the study included walking speeds and clock accuracy (maintaining schedules, arriving "on time" to meetings, etc.).   A composite score ranking "the overall pace of life" was assigned to each country, with a low number being a quicker pace.  Of  31 countries studied, Switzerland was  # 1, the United States was # 16, and Mexico was # 31 (Levine, 1997, p. 131).

Levine correlated different variables with the pace of life ranking. One interesting correlation existed between  "faster" countries (those with lower scores) and larger economies.  Levine delves further into the pace of life issue by exploring how it applies to individuals.  He categorized the way people experience time as either living in the future, the present, or the past.  A future orientation means the individual spends time preparing for what comes next.   I consider myself to be someone who lives in the future.  Most of the people I know dwell on what will happen tomorrow, next week, with their retirement, etc.  We hear everyday on the news how our financial future is bleak and we need to take action.  There is a focus on what will happen next, not what is happening now.  Most of the fast paced countries have people who live in the future. (I'm over-simplifying Levine's work in an attempt to be brief.) Imagine the power and influence of a quick-paced country of individuals who live with a future orientation.  These Cultures imbue power and set the fast (efficiency-oriented?) tempo that correlates to their larger economies.  OMG, I'm about to enter Gee's  "new work order-fast capitalist" Discourse!

The temporal framework of a culture is powerful.  I experienced this first hand when I moved to Hawaii.  There was a perceptible slowness to life.  No amount of Mai Tais could help me get in sync with the local tempo.  I was irritable and felt  misunderstood.  I did not like living there (the space) despite it being one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  I was not well liked at work, I was accused of being impatient and pushy.  Literacy tasks were challenging because I was unsure of what was expected of me.  Indeed, time is connected to literacy in a profound way.

When I think about the various countries and cultures of adult ESOL learners (my program has over 50 countries represented), it seems logical that some may come from differently-paced countries and  be living with a present-mindedness.   I think this affects their ability to set learning goals, plan a course of study to complete a GED, or decide upon a career path--all very future-oriented tasks.  I'm making broad statements for the sake of brevity; my point is that some literacy learners may experience time in a different way than I do, than their employer does, than Northern Virginia does.  I am teaching by my clock, and it's out of sync with students' clocks.  I'm already "in the future" when I walk into the classroom; students are "in the moment"--or at least they will be when they finally arrive (smile).  Perhaps a present-minded person can't plan for the future any better than a future-minded person can navigate life without a calendar. 

In my view, the temporal framework of a culture creates tension on literacy practices.  Whether in a classroom or at work, we are immersed in the pace of life around us.  What is around us may or may not be in sync with our tempo and spatiality.  We can see, feel, and experience temporal-spatiality in  different ways such as art or this blog.  We can perceive it when we cross into a differently-paced cultures.   In my experience it takes time to adjust our personal clocks, and I'm not sure everyone can do this successfully.  Maybe I need to go back to Hawaii, drink a few Mai Tais, and conduct some research!

Aloha! Susan     

Lemke, J. (2004).  Learning across multiple places and their chronotopes.  AERA Symposium.
Levine, R. (1997).  A geography of time. New York: Basic Books.