Making Sense of ‘Literacy’

I have been on call this week for Jury Duty. Each evening, I have had to check the website to see if my number is called. And well, yesterday, it was my turn to head to the court. Whenever I am going to a larger institution (a hospital, schools, the court), I think of all of the reading of the situation or reading of the world that I am navigating I need to do. Yesterday was no exception.

I have not been to this particular court before, so I was pretty nervous about parking, especially because on the jury summons as well as on the website that I had to check each night, there was a substantial amount of text about the parking situation. Once I arrived, I realized that it was not as big a deal as what they claimed.

The terms ‘literacy’ and ‘reading’ are often used interchangeably, but they are different. Literacy is more of an umbrella term that pertains to life and reading the world as well as reading text. Literacy encompasses more than reading text and extends to how we read and interact with the world we navigate.

These definitions were in my mind as I was reading my situation at Jury Duty. As I was waiting in the courtroom (there is a lot of waiting!), I was reading the body language of the people working for the court system. I was reading the others around me who were summoned for jury service. For example, there was a very chatty individual in the courtroom. He was trying to get others to talk to him about a host of different topics. After observing his behavior for a while, it became pretty clear that he was hoping to be read as disruptive and dismissed from service (about 30 minutes later he admitted that much to the group of us sitting around him).

Researchers have argued that literacy is a way of acting in the world. It’s an action that people use to structure relationships with other people as well as with social institutions. When I teach this definition to my students, I read them the book Tomás and the Library Lady by Pat Mora. In this book, Tomás, a young boy whose family is migrant immigrants traveling between Iowa and Texas, begins going to the library, which is a very intimidating place at first. It’s the actions that the librarian takes to make Tomás feel welcomed - that allow him to interact and engage with the institution.

Back to Jury Duty - I was impressed by how kind the people who worked at the courthouse were to us. They apologized when there was a substantial amount of waiting and gave an explanation as to why we were waiting for so long. It was the actions that they took to make the potential jurors feel less intimidated (and annoyed) throughout the day.

What are your thoughts about the term ‘literacy’? How do you understand and use this term with your students or colleagues?