"People working and writing within communities need help, and they know it. But they do not need certain kinds of help" (63).

Reading this, I thought, "Wow. That seems kind of like common sense." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this could probably be ignored by people working in communities. To use the example from the book, community member Barbara says that it's helpful when experts present scientific information and facts, but people from universities come out and just want to talk to them (63). What do people hope to accomplish by just talking to community members? Are they trying to give them a voice? Because it seems to me, the people in Harbor already kind of have a voice. They just need more information to make their voice and rhetorical tools more powerful.

This got me thinking about the Cushman piece. What if Cushman had just gone into the community and talked to the residents and then published her findings. I think the piece would've been much less convincing. Instead, the lived in the community and worked with the residents. She helped them navigate the complex social services system. She gave them the kind of help and expertise they needed.

So if experts go into a community like Harbor and interview the residents about the effects of the pollution and then publish their findings, sure it gives the community a voice, in a way. But it also takes their voice away, and makes them less able to write for change.

Meandering through Jeff's book...

As I’m reading Jeff’s book, Community Literacy Programs and the Politics of Change, I’m struck by several things:

1. The idea that “the meaning and value of literacy is situated within specific institutions and that in order to change the meaning and value of literacy, features of a given institution must change” (p 4). So this is a book about change…
2. In the first paragraph of the “Institutions” section (p 7-8), it seems Grabill is asking researchers to consider CONTEXT. Duh, right? That seems like a simple idea, but, just as questioning the meaning of “community” might be the catalyst for new ways of thinking, so too would considering context when researching literacy. Really, how could this be considered otherwise.
3. I like the definitions of literate institution: “a space that requires certain literacies to function effectively; and literacy institution: “a space that provides literacy instruction.” As someone new to literacy studies, this terminology will help me make sense of things.
4. Brian Street’s quote really resonated with some of my own questions that have arisen while teaching WRA 150. “The question that concerned us was: if, as we argue, there are multiple literacies, how is it that one particular variety has come to be taken as the only literacy?” (p 17). I guess I struggle with the question of what is literacy, and honestly, before I arrived at MSU, I, like probably 98% of the population—and 100% of my students here—considered literacy as the ability to read and write. I wonder, possibly due to a comment made by a professor I encountered last semester, what happens when everything becomes a literacy? Does that somehow devalue reading and writing? Probably not, though…it probably just puts it in a better place…okay, so much to think about…It kind of helps when Jeff writes later “the important question really isn’t what literacy is but rather how it came to be” (18). For now, I suppose, the pressure is off…
5. I’m interested in “technocratic literacy,” because I think that was the model under which much of my primary and secondary education would fit. I wonder if this is something that must be “overcome.” Often, I realize that my thinking is quite limited. I don’t question ideas, theories, authorities, as much as I probably should, and I wonder if this is a result of the education my generation received. If so, how can I change the way I think? It seems rather foundational…
6. I’d love to explore the idea of literacy as “an object, a possession” (34).
7. I thought it interesting when Jeff indicates that he interpreted the classroom structure as “a limited and limiting set of literacies, the students, in contrast, see a type of liberation, or at least some satisfaction” (43). This makes me think back to teaching a small classroom of basketball players. Although so much of the theory I have read suggests that students don’t learn by rote, but rather, by acquisition, when working with these students, I started with the parts of speech, which they memorized. Boring? Yes. But, the comments I got back from their coach was that for the first time, the players said they felt like they had learned something important, something they assumed the rest of the literate world knew. This sense of empowerment encouraged them to begin thinking of themselves, however marginally, as writers.

Some quote that I found particularly interesting include:

1. “Institutions, in other words, are written, and if they are written, they can be rewritten” (8).
2. “A focus on institutions in the process of understanding literate activity, then, entails a focus on power” (9). It's all about power, isn't it?
   
3. “It is probably impossible to find or design a community literacy program outside institutions” (10). Hmmm…
4. “[Literacy] theory locates the meaning and value of literacy” (p 17). Okay, so that's what it is. Good to know.
   
5. Literacy theory does three things: “It can present an understanding of how people acquire the ability to read and write. It can present a picture of how people actually do read and write. It can and often does present an argument for how one should think about reading and writing” (p17).
6. “By placing literacy in its own box, theorists successfully have isolated literacy as a variable, thereby “neutralizing” it with respct to its various functions in specific contexts” (51).
7. “Freire writes that when one is confronted with the reality of oppression, guilt or rationalization are not appropriate final responses. Rather, one should take a position of solidarity, which ‘requires that one enters into the situation of those with who one is in solidarity; it is a radical posture…[and] means fighting at their side [the oppressed] to transform the objective reality which has [oppressed them]’ (1992, p. 34). Solidarity is an important and complicated principle in liberation theologies…in liberation theologies and for Freire, solidarity is an ethical position and commitment which enable the articulation of a ‘we,’ the construction of a community. A position of solidarity requires that one stop seeing the oppressed in abstract and generalized terms and see them as human beings inhabiting concrete realities and possessed of real needs. Solidarity requires, Freire (1992) writes, that one stop making ‘pious, sentimental and individualistic gestures and risk an act of love’ (p. 35)…Love and solidarity are impossible within a literacy discourse which sees individuals as non-persons or as objects of knowledge (and power). Love and solidarity are possible when individuals are seen as subjects of their own lives and learning.” (52-53)

Community Metadata

Briar Hill is the old Italian ghetto on the North Side of Youngstown, Oh. Most Italians in Youngstown either grew up there or are related to someone who grew up there. Brier is aptly named since it is in fact a hill. A fairly large hill. Most of the Italians live below St. Anthony's Parish, and most children who grew up there went to parish school with the mean Italian nuns. For those unfamiliar with Italian nuns, the stereotype is true across the board. At the bottom of the Hill are the mills. If you don't mind my romanticism, God and Steel pretty much define these people.

Must have been the water.

The reason I mention this background is because the people of the Hill can't be talked about as a community without talking the institution that inspired its geography. "Institutions are people; they are the systems by which people act collectively, whether you call that system a school, a particular corporation, or a community literacy program" (Grabill, 2001). An institution are not ambiguous, but they are not clear either. Institutions are not visible, but their shadows are everywhere. Institutions are nothing more than metadata. And their shadows appear when that data is queried and used.

This institution identifies these people as Italian, Working-Class Catholics, and that Metadata gets recalled in their literate actions like in naming and praying. For instance, I have more than one relative who is named either Anthony or Antonio. Whenever I lost my stuffed dolphin as a child, my mother (a student of St. Anthony's Catholic School) told me to say the prayer of St. Anthony, patron Saint of all things lost: Dear St. Anthony please come down. Something is lost and cannot be found.

This mainly refers to souls but it works on stuffed dolphins as well.

The interesting thing about this community is that there has been a mass exodus. But, the institution has carried over as with the Prayer of St. Anthony or saying Salute when toasting to a drink or saying Boun Natale instead of Merry Christmas.

Delanty's reflection on transnational communities works on two levels here. 1. Italian immigrants move to Youngstown. 2. Italian Americans move from Youngstown to the Suburbs. Some followed the jobs. Some fell in love with muggles (non Italian types). Others ran out of room for their kids. "In many ways the original homeland is a very distant memory, especially for the second and third generation who may no longer speak the primary language of the ethic community" (Delanty, 2004). My father once told me I wasn't Italian, I was American. I also have a degree in the Humanities. Talk about falling far from the tree. Do you think anyone in my family has ever said Metadata.