A few years ago, I taught a writing seminar at a nearby university. Before I assessed students' writing skills, I wanted to find out where they stood on literacy debates. I gave them two essays. The first discussed the relationship between texts and contexts and criticized the elevation of standard English above nonstandard forms. The second lamented that today's students are not learning the basics of reading and writing, grammar and spelling. I anticipated that each student would resonate toward one idea or the other. When I asked which essay they agreed with, they surprised me with an almost unanimous answer: Both.
At the time, I was frustrated; I worried that students were not analyzing both arguments fully. But now, I realize that they were right. Whereas I automatically assumed that the two articles contradicted each other, these 18-year-olds recognized that they were complementary. Yes, literacy is about connecting the words on the page to the world we live in. And yes, literacy is about proper spelling.
Now that a synthesis of reading approaches is becoming the norm, my students' analysis seems even more prophetic. Not only are we balancing different approaches to reading, but we are also expanding the definition of what literacy means. Students read and interpret not just words on a page, but also icons on a computer screen, images on TV, and graphs and charts in newspapers. But although we incorporate different kinds of literacies into the classroom, we do not eliminate any of the "old" literacies. We still expect students to learn the alphabet and to read and write in the traditional way.
In the 1998 National Research Council report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, the authors recognized this rising demand for different kinds of literacies: The definition of full-fledged literacy has shifted over the last century with increased distribution of technology, with the development of communication across distance, and with the proliferation of large-scale economic enterprises. . . . High school graduates need to be more than merely literate. They must be able to read challenging material, to perform sophisticated calculations, and to solve problems independently.
As technologies advance, schools are working hard to keep up with these needs. The U.S. Department of Education says that in 1998, teachers and students used 8.6 million school computers—about one computer for every six students—compared with 1992, with one computer for every 13.7 students.
At the same time, 10 million U.S. students are classified as "poor" readers. According to the NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card, 68 percent of 4th graders in high poverty areas fall into this category. In addition, 35 percent of U.S. kindergartners begin school unprepared to read. Policymakers have taken to heart such statistics, and 20 state legislatures have recently passed child literacy laws. As students in poverty struggle to overcome odds, all students are required to do more. The pressure is on.
This issue of Educational Leadership addresses these changing demands. Several articles consider nontraditional forms of literacy: Lynn Arthur Steen defines quantitative literacy as the new literacy for our "data-drenched" world (pp. 8–13); George D. Nelson describes the importance of science literacy (pp. 14–17); and Decker Walker looks into the future at our ever-expanding technologies (pp. 18–21). The issue also covers the reading issues, from a conversation with neuroscientist Sally Shaywitz (pp. 26–31), to a look at the reading wars by professor Rona Flippo (pp. 38–41).
My students, a practical group, would have agreed with these expanding definitions. But can today's students do it all? And who will slip through the widening cracks?
One dissenting voice in our class came from an African American woman, Tiffany, who insisted that grammar and mechanics were more important than that other "fluffy" stuff. Although I understood her point, I gently tried to get her to think about literacy in a different way. The poet W. B. Yeats, I told her, was only a mediocre student, and all his life he struggled with grammar and spelling. Yet he became one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Without missing a beat, the young woman said, "He was a man. And white, too. There are different rules for different groups of people."
Without knowing it, we entered into a cultural studies debate, a "literacy" in which Tiffany proved to be extraordinarily fluent. That is, in addition to being an excellent speller.
