We're In the Midst of a Literacy Revolution

Mike Sauter sends in a piece from Wired profiling research by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford, from which she concludes that we don't need to worry about computers and the Internet causing a decline in general literacy. "[Lunsford] has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples — everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring. 'I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization,' she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it — and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."

Comments

And Today is Reading Rainbow's Final Broadcast

[Colonel Korn]

But you don't have to take my word for it!

"The show will cease airing on PBS on Friday, August 28, 2009 after 26 years on the air."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Rainbow

duh duh DUH!

Re:I agree

[Attila Dimedici]

I

It makes a lot of sense. This idea of their being a golden age of people hand writing letters to each other is bullshit for the vast majority of the populace.

l.

There was such a golden age. It's just that no one is alive from that time anymore (nor has been in my lifetime). According to several historians, the armies that fought in the Civil War were the most literate armies in history up until sometime right around the year 2000, and possibly since (the show I watched discussing this was produced between 1996 and 2004--I don't remember more accurately than that).

Caught in a headline

[joeflies]

the headline makes an attractive statement - that the computer revolution is improving student's writing.

The headline failed to mention that the students in the analysis were all Stanford students, and the article buried that information in the middle. At first it states that the research was done at Stanford, and then reveals that the samples were all Stanford students.

Given that Stanford is a world class college institution, analyzing the progress of their writing is way too narrow of a sample size to say that all young people are improving their skills.

What about people who don't make in Stanford? What about the kids who don't make it to college? Are they a part of the writing revolution too? Or are they left behind while we make tantalizing headlines about the elite students of America? The article summary would lead you to believe that this revolution is about general literacy.

Re:The sins of youth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.
- Hesiod, 700 BC

Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.

- Assyrian tablet, 2800 BC

We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect
their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently
inhabit taverns and have no self control.
- Egyptian tomb, 4000 BC

Re:Liar.

[ColaMan]

Words are tools for thought

Precisely. Text-speak has a stunted vocabulary, simply because it was designed to be easily input and had to work around a 160 character limit. There's nothing wrong with that, there's a clear need for it in that particular context.

The problem is that once it escapes from the mobile environment it bears a nasty resemblance to Newspeak - extremely limited sentence structure, very few adjectives or adverbs. Once you lose the ability to describe something adequately, you're screwed. You can't easily pass your idea or experience on to someone else - worse, you can't even adequately describe it to yourself. Recall that one of the goals of the government in 1984 was to shift the language in a direction that made it impossible for people to think rebellious thoughts.

But I'm sure there won't be any problem with dealing with a bunch of frustrated people who lack the language skills to be able to share their point of view adequately. I'm sure riots and wars were started for completely different reasons.