I was reading Bee Bee’s blog entry on the metaphors she had come up with for Literacy, & something triggered me to think of Literacy as the followings:
Literacy as Empowerment
I think when one is literate, one is able to see many things & issues in a wider way. By this, I mean that one may be more able to see certain things in more than one perspective, for one is most probably exposed to more knowledge as compared to another who is not as literate. Having said that, I was just thinking about some people who are considered literate in terms of educational qualification, but are still unable to see things in different perspectives; whereas there are some people who are not as educationally-qualified but are able to envision things in different perspectives.
The aforesaid seems very contradictory to the heading, Literacy as Empowerment, as we see educationally-qualified people are unable to see things in different perspectives as compared to others who are not as qualified as them. So, being literate, in this case, can be said to encompass more than just educational qualification, for it is probably just but one of several other criterions to determine if a person is literate or not. When one can see something in more ways than one, this person is more likely to be considered literate as compared to someone who manages to see something in only one way, even though the latter is more educationally-qualified.
Thus, in this sense, Literacy empowers one. One is able to be in control of oneself as well as the situations or people s/he faces.
Literacy as Subjugation
This is on the other end of the spectrum when comparing it with the metaphor above. In this case, Literacy is purely deemed as being literate in things that are taught to a person through the education system. The education system, to me, seems like an institution that is set up by the government to socialise people into the norms of the society. Thus, if a person just learns all the things that the education system has provided for him/her, s/he is pretty much a product the society has ‘manufactured’. This person is therefore pretty much subjugated to his/her social position which the society has placed, him/her. This is also known as hegemony, as devised by Antonio Gramsci.
With that, the person who is ‘literate’, in this case, would be helping the society to perpetuate all the norms which the society is inculcating.
Looking at the two metaphors, I would say the 1st metaphor is probably seen as undesirable, the the 2nd one as desirable to any government, as they certainly wouldn’t want people of their own country to go against everything that they are inculcating as norms.
In the case of an individual, I would say the vice-versa would be more desirable as one would get to see how people in a society is being made to see norms in their own society as the most natural things, as if created by God.
Read mor about Hegemony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
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Hello Alen,
ReplyDeleteI like the two metaphors above but I would like to raise a question about the second metaphor,Literacy as Subjugation. Are you referring to Singapore's education system? If the answer is yes, who will be the ones who perpetuate the ideologies of the elites and dominant groups since there is hegemony at work? The teachers(including myself)?
Hey, that is a new perspective, good job Alen!
Hey Bee Bee, thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteWell, Literacy as Subjugation, in fact, can be applied to any education system in the world so long the teacher teaches his/her students into adopting & accepting all societal norms, & that the person who is receiving the education learns everything that is taught to him/her in a passive manner.
And sad to say, most teachers are indeed one of the many perpetrators when it comes to perpetrating ideologies in general, for as I mentioned in this blog entry, schools are viewed by many as institutions to socialise people to the societal norms.
Having said that, there're definitely teachers who would do things in a different way by getting their students to see how abnormal societal norms can be. Raising awareness about it is one thing, whether these teachers will go further to get the students to do anything about it, however, will be another.
I wonder how many teachers would actually go the extra mile to do the aforesaid? Or would they be trying their best to cover as much of the syllabus of any subjects as possible?