Part One:
A New Literacy Agenda and Its ChallengesYou already know that I admire and appreciate this book, and perhaps I can be more concrete about why as I explain what Selfe does in the first two chapters and why that writing is important. For those of us who are "fans" of Selfe's scholarship, Chapters 1 and 2 provide a useful overview of the kinds of arguments she has been making over the past several years: that while technology can allow us to rethink literacy and pedagogy, we don't often use technology innovatively; that our uses of technology need to be accompanied by critical thinking and inquiry about the social and cultural ramifications of those uses; and that our work as educators does not end with helping our students learn to use computers, but rather that our students' use of computers is a starting point for critical thinking about technology and literacy and culture--critical thinking that we are professionally and ethically required to foster.
Selfe brings these closely related concepts (technology use, critical thinking, literacy education) together in Chapter One when she introduces a tension between two definitions of the term "technological literacy," a tension the rest of her book addresses. "Technological literacy," as defined within public discourse, refers to the ability to use technology. The Technological Literacy Challenge (TLC), a Clinton administration-sponsored program, is the extended example Selfe uses to illustrate this skills-based definition of technological literacy and its failings. The inherent problem with the skills-based definition of literacy in general and the TLC in particular is that they reproduce, in Selfe's words:
A better defininition of "technological literacy," however, and the one that Selfe's book promotes, is this:
- A "literate" segment of society . . . who will yield the country's leaders and productively employed workers.
- An "illiterate" segment of society . . . on whom our culture relies for the most undesirable tasks in our society and who will continue to suffer disproportionately from persistent social problems like poverty and crime.
- A stable citizenry that continues to be sorted hierarchically into social subgroups based systemically on links between race and class and the related effects of differential literacy levels, educational opportunities, health environments, and access to technology.
- A citizenry that believes in the potential of high-tech literacy instruction to make lives better, to ensure progress, and to provide a route to economic prosperity. . . . (9)
. . .a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating. (11)This broader definition of "technological literacy" enables us as educators as well as our students to engage more deeply in understandings of technology uses within our culture and offers us the opportunity to effect social change.In Chapter Two, Selfe shows how this definition of critical technological literacy exposes a shallowness in our public discourse about technology. She points to popular books that set up a two-sided discussion about the benefits and problems with technology. One way of talking about technology is to note its efficiency and promise for making the educational system better. In this line of thinking, technology is the means by which America can realize a better-educated, more skilled workforce. Another way to talk about technology is as a blight on education; students spend too much time watching television and playing video games to become critical thinkers.
Selfe points out that both discourses about technology--"technology as literacy boon" and "technology as literacy bane"--are reductive:
The presentation of such a choice is, at many levels, a false one and, even worse, one that misdirects our energies and attentions. Such representations, especially when they are structured within the reductive confines of a binary opposition, distract us from the more complicated project of identifying the related social dynamics that underlie the technology-literacy link. Even worse, such a representation gives us an excuse for avoiding our responsibility to address the effects of this formation. (37)The problem Selfe sees with this discussion is that it centers on whether or not to use technology, rather than on a discussion of what such use means for social structures and education. Her point is so clearly made and so convincing that we would be smart to refer these chapters to parents, government officials, and administrators who shape educational policies and decide on technology funding. And refer these chapters, too, to our colleagues, so that they better understand what is at stake for teaching and learning with and about technology. If more people saw discussions of technologies in the way that Selfe does, we might be able to make lasting and meaningful educational and societal reforms.
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