Mark Bauerlein
Part 2
A good portion of the 7741 course has had us viewing images, statues, videos, logos and other numerous visual “texts.” My take on the process and the purpose of these exercises is that we were being taught to make overt or to articulate normally unspoken assumptions about visual media, because these are the “texts” that our students are most interested in. I really became of two minds about this during the course of time and due to my concurrent reading of Bauerlein’s book. One of my sticking points was this question: If our students are already struggling with basic literacy skills, why jump to interpretations that require more advanced literacy skills?
Bauerlein paraphrases the kind of justifications put out by the techno-literati in this manner:
No longer should we worry whether kids read enough books or not. Instead, we should recognize a new order of reading and text in the world, a newfangled cognition and knowledge. They don’t read books? Well, they read other things. They don’t know any history? Well, maybe not history recorded in books, but they know other kinds.
Bauerlein goes on to debunk this notion, with aplomb, asserting that corporate America has to “spend approximately $3.1 billion annually on in-house literacy tutoring.” I could go on and quote Bauerlein a lot more but his book has already been written. The so-called “new literacies” are on the rise, we are led to believe, but the examination of “e-literacy” reveals instead that both a-literacy (the habit of being able to read and choosing to not do so) and illiteracy are what is really ascendant. It’s a struggle I now find myself part of, daily, as I order my two younger children to turn off the TV, put away their iPods, and pick up a book, finish that chapter. The attractions of “screen time” are irresistible and alluring. I no longer wear a watch, myself, utilizing instead my own iPod touch, which brings wit it more music than I was ever able to choose from when I drive, a movie or two, some games to while away a moment of boredom, my email (when I’m in a WiFi zone), a camera and photo album in one, a calculator, a voice recorder (yes, I use it when I do interviews), and my favorite newspapers.
The interesting things about my iPod use is that it is constant and that it supplements but does not supplant my traditional literacies. My mind has already been trained to access information in a particular way, so I am constantly referring to Wikipedia, calling up written texts, and reading electronic letters, more than any other use. Not so my children. If anything, I feel that they need to reduce their dependence on visual mediums. I have a YouTube account, but once the initial novelty wore off, I barely visit the site now. My kids are constantly streaming movies and other content from Netflix, so much so that we are considering upgrading our internet bandwidth so that the adults can get their work done online.
It is a war: a cultural war, and as teachers we are both in the thick of it, and biased observers aghast at the casualty rate. It is no wonder that I became so ambivalent about the 7741 course. However, what changed me, a little, has been my direct experience with digital media processes and products through our assignments. At the same time, I am aware that I bring to visual literacy and digital media, skills that were honed the hard way and according to Bauerlein, the only way. I served my time in the trenches and can now command a view of the battlefield that I don’t believe my students will ever have if the new literacies are the only ones they acquire. And I know already that getting my students to read the way I do is a challenge that no one in their right mind would tackle. Then again, I prefer long odds.
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