Literacy Revolution?

Henry Petersen

Ms. Hammerbeck 100 O

In Clive Thompson’s article (Clive Thompson on New Literacy) is simply a discussion of literacy in today’s world. In the first paragraph Professor John Sutherland mentions Facebook, and PowerPoint. Both are essential tools in today’s learning system. Whether it’s through high school, or even in grade school. Children are being exposed constantly to new forms of technology even in their early years. In Sutherland point of view, these tools for learning and communicating with family and an audience have “turned language into bleak, bald, sad shorthanded”. Andrea Lunsford not only disagrees with Sutherland, she thinks that what we’ve been experiencing for the last 10 years is the beginning of a “literacy revolution”. She also points out that people have started writing more since the internet has come around. Not only have people been communicating more but they have also been writing more than any person in the past has written. In most cases people disliked writing because they had to write with just some pen and paper. Now they get to type with many other tools at their disposable. Anyone would get straight out of school, and head to work, “….they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.” (Andrea Lunsford) She also points out that since most people communicate over such sites as Facebook, it’s more public, people are always trying to get their point across, and family will communicate more with the only boundary being the internet.

Kairos is a form of speaking to others, not just one. But a whole active audience. Similar to a debate but its public. Like a very large discussion. Greeks did this, and the name comes from the Greeks. Thompson in his article states that most writing is meant to be in the form of as though it’s directed to an audience. Coming from a recent high school graduate, nearly everything that is written in an essay, for whatever project it’s all directed towards an audience. Even if the teacher weren’t to say what the essay it to be directed towards. Its installed in most brains of the people at schools is it must always be written to an audience. In her recent work Lunsford claims that there was no texting speak in any first year essays. But then again this research is being done by an elderly woman that has no business criticizing the texts of other students. To be through, Lunsford would’ve had to know about texting in the age groups that she’s studying. Of course no smart student at a Stanford university would dare write an essay of which determined their grade, which would contain any texting lingo in it. That’s just plain silly.

Thompson states that throughout the development of technology involving television, the online media, or even video games. That writing has been happening even more than it ever has been. This is true, however there is the generation of students that will coast through school, and life without taping the keyboard at their school. So as literacy continues to accelerate, it also is being maintained by the people who simply don’t like writing. At all. The most important thing is that “today's young people know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing” (Thompson)