Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Selfe, "Technology and Literacy"

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention." CCC 50.3 (1999): 411-436.

Selfe wages an argument about uptake, attitude, and attention toward technology in the field of compositions studies. She opens with characterizations of boredom and avoidance, suggesting that many in the field presume technology to be antithetical to the humanist project of composition studies. Selfe warns of the "perils of not paying attention," citing statistics about the ubiquity and tendential force of technologies (70% of jobs with a BA will require familiarity with computers, etc.).

The largest portion of Selfe's talk is concerned with the 1996 Clinton-Gore administration report called Getting America's Children Ready for the Twenty-First Century, which committed to unprecedented expenditures on technology in educational settings (amounts disproportionately high when compared to spending on more conventional literacy initiatives). Selfe's contention: we haven't paid attention to it (481). Furthermore, she finds it disconcerting that, as of 1999, there were no published statements on technological literacies from MLA, NCTE, CCCC, or IRA. Of course, technology literacy initiatives don't necessarily change the conditions of access interfering with literacy education.

Selfe goes on to support her claim that literacy is always political (424). Clinton-Gore commitments to technology spending are directly tied to larger motivations for keeping an advantageous position in the expanding global economy, which increasingly depends on such technologies (Gore: the Global Information Infrastructure is a "metaphor for functioning democracy"). Boost in education, then, are part of a complex "economic and political agenda."

Compositionists must pay attention across scales, both to the larger forces of technology change, and also to local sites and situated knowledge. She calls this change in scales "attention to action," and it involves "paying critical attention" to a long list of sites and activities: curriculum committees, standards documents, and assessment programs; professional organizations; scholarship and research; all levels of classrooms and courses; computer-based communication facilities; school systems; school board elections, pre-service and in-service ed programs and curricula; libraries, community centers and other non-traditional public places.

To wrap up, Selfe notes that humanists and scientists both have much to gain from more critical attention to technology in these multiple sites.

"Given this situation [insights from CCCC colleagues], however, I find it compellingly unfortunate that the one topic serving as a focus for my own professional involvement--that of computer technology and its use in teaching composition--seems to be the single subject best guaranteed to inspire glazed eyes and complete indifference in that portion of the CCCC membership which does not immediately sink into snooze mode" (412).

"Allowing ourselves the luxury of ignoring technology, however, is not only misguided at the end of the 20th century, it is dangerously shortsighted" (414).

"As composition teachers, deciding whether or not to use technology in our classes is simply not the point--we have to pay attention to technology" (415).

"By paying critical attention to lessons about technology, we can re-learn important lessons about literacy" (419).

"In other words, the poorer you are and the less educated you are in this country--both of which conditions are correlated with race--the less likely you are to have access to computers and to high-paying, high-tech jobs in the American workplace" (421).

"Thus, the national project to expand technological literacy has not served to reduce illiteracy--or the persistent social problems that exacerbate illiteracy" (423).

"A situated knowledges-approach to paying attention also honors a multiplicity of responses to technological literacy" (430).

Terms: persistence of print (413), "pay attention" (413), Bordieu's "doxa" (415), educational policy (416), myth of literacy and large-scale literacy projects (419), illiteracy (428), Haraway's coyote way of knowing (429), local knowledges (430)

Related sources:

Bordieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge UP, 1977.

Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley; U of California P, 1985.

Latour, Bruno. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Trans. C. Porter. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.

Posted by Derek Mueller at September 13, 2006 8:22 AM to Writing Technologies