Typing Out Loud

Education is never neutral. It is never neutral because our philosophers, from Jefferson to Dewey to Giroux, have always connected it to our ability to perpetuate and participate in a democratic society. Our pedagogies, therefore - or how we go about educating - are necessarily embedded with ideologies that are attached to our definitions of participation and our capacity to participate in that society. The value or meaning of participation coupled with our ability to participate is what determines, in any given era, notions of literacy.
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It is helpful, when attempting to understand literacy, to differentiate between having specific literacies and being literate. Literacy, for example, has extrinsic, not intrinsic value that accumulates only as a companion to the process of becoming literate. Being literate is the result of what one does with the literacies that one has, and this in turn reflects value back onto literacy. As an analogy, if I learn five languages but have nothing interesting to express (write, speak) or do (think, translate, travel) with any one of them, then the value of that language acquisition is nil. The value increases, though, alongside my application of the languages. Literacy has reflected value.
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Rigid notions of literacy are hinged to a straightforward encoding and decoding of print: can I read, do I understand what I’m reading, can I write? Can I process this calculation, can I summon pertinent others as needed? . . . Thinking about the nature of text today and where it fits within our understanding of literacy. Text that moves, that incorporates video and sound and simulations - that is not simply text, but intertextual. In George Landow’s words, "virtual, fluid, adaptable, open, capable of being processed, capable of being moved about rapidly, capable, finally of being networkable - of being joined with other texts." What skills should contemporary literacy measurements be assessing? How do technologies (because we are speaking of technologies) and cultures interact to change ideas about the nature of literacy?