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| Learning Lesson 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ESE 300A Reading and Writing in the Content Are | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Keith Scott | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I'm immediately struck by the play the writers of Content literacy: A Definition and implications [sic] and Content Area Reading give to newer definitions of the word, literacy. McKenna and Robinson lament the shift of the meaning of the word from that which describes expertise in reading and writing to something which describes subject knowledgeability, as in computer literacy. The Vaccas simply acknowledge the obvious--that literacy has expanded meanings nowadays, not necessarily good or bad. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| An immediate reaction I have to these readings is the concept of aliteracy, or the lack of a reading habit, as explored by the Vaccas.(1) McKenna and Robinson take an express a different viewpoint about this lack of reading, and I'll discuss it further on. I'm reminded of a conversation I recently had with a 5th grader I'm working with at St. Anthony Park Elementary School in St. Paul. H______ has a very low IQ but she functions at a productive level. She rarely misses an assignment, she always does her seatwork, is seldom absent, but because of her relatively high level of productivity, she's ineligible for special education services, in spite of her low IQ and the poor results she attains on her work. She consistently scores below 50 per cent on her homework assignments, quizzes, and tests. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recently I helped her with a worksheet that had questions about a read-aloud story we'd just had in class. She consistently answered each question by rephrasing the question into a statement. Consequently, because there was no depth or any sort of thought at all put into her responses, (she had simply committed the mechanical act of reversing subject and predicate), she missed every one. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yet when I directly questioned her, she was able to provide correct answers. I encouraged her to read more deeply, and to think about whatever it was she was reading, and she asserted that it [reading] was something she did not like to do, and that she never chose to do it on her own. She read what was assigned, and then somewhat cursorily. She actively chose aliteracy, for whatever reason. As defined by the Vaccas, H_____ " . . . is among those who have the ability to read . . . but choose not to."(2) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I believe it is fair to say that the Vaccas would preclude such mandatory kinds of reading such as reading the mail or street signs from this sort of consideration, and it may be fair to say that reading anything without joy would not exempt one from the club of aliteracy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| While McKenna and Robinson don't speak to aliteracy per se, they strongly allude to it, and we can infer that they ascribe to it a somewhat different meaning. To them, this failure to read is not a state chosen by the would-be reader, but a condition imposed upon the would-be reader by a lazy teacher, one who may make short-shrift of reading or writing assignments, in effect, waiving the literacy requirement. It may not be inaccurate to say that whether aliteracy occurs by the choice of the subject or the teacher's laziness, the results are the same. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mostly their article is about content literacy, the focus of the first chapter of the Vaccas' book. Content area literacy is defined by the Vaccas to be, " . . . the ability to use reading and writing to learn subject matter in a given discipline."(3) McKenna and Robinson support that conjecture by restating it--"[content] literacy represents skills needed to acquire knowledge of content . . .. "(4) A key difference is the Vaccas' discussion of issues of diversity, including cultural and linguistic differences, such as language and dialect, and achievement differences. The second response I'm compelled to make concerns the introduction of the concept of learned helplessness, especially by the Vaccas.(5) There was no discussion on how these issues impacted content literacy at all in the work by McKenna and Robinson, but they did list a number of myths which apologists have used, in my view, to contribute to learned helplessness. These can be gleaned from a perusal of the subheading in their article, and would include such things as their assertion that content literacy is not the same thing as content knowledge. One can acquire content knowledge without content literacy.(6) It would seem that to argue otherwise would be to put the cart before the horse. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This is not a dismissal of their article. It is helpful to be mindful that a teaching practice based upon the concepts presented in a single article, and without the reflectivity one acquires from a more expansive education and life experience, would be narrow at best. In conclusion, this essay discussed two implications brought forth by these readings, with aliteracy being one, and the concept of learned helplessness being the other. This essay also presented a definition for content area literacy. Perhaps the first step in helping H_____ is to define the problem. |
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| 1. Vacca and Vacca, p.15. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Ibid, p. 15. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Ibid, p. 15. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. McKenna, ___. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5. Vacca and Vacca, pp. 13-14. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6. Mckenna, ___. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||