Socol Literacy as Tyranny

Running Head: Literacy (as) TyrannyIra David SocolMichigan State University

Literacy(as)Tyranny

Ira David Socol is a doctoral candidate, Research and Teaching Assistant and SpecialEducation Technology Scholar in the College of Education at Michigan State University.His primary research interests include Universal Design Technology and the socio-cultural intersection of technology, education, and understandings of disability. Heteaches undergraduate and graduate courses in technology implementation in generaleducation classrooms, and presents globally on technology and education.Ira’s previous experiences include training in art and architecture, service as a member of the New York City Police Department; work in computer networking in schools anduniversities, a brief stint in journalism, and many other professions. He is the author of one short story collection, A Certain Place of Dreams, and one novel-in-stories, TheDrool Room. He blogs at http://speedchange.blogspot.comApproaching education from a post-modern, and post-colonial perspective, and assomeone who struggled in his K-12 and university experiences, Ira tries to bring astudent-centered focus to his research and teaching, believing that our goal is to createaccess to opportunity, and to allow students to find the path to that opportunity which isappropriate for themselves.

Literacy(as)Tyranny

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AbstractIs the way we teach literacy in schools, and the technologies we choose for literacy,imperialist in nature? Using a form of post-colonial literary analysis, and a writing formdesigned in itself to challenge our “universal” assumptions of literacy, this research seeksto broach the subject of whether our commitment to literacy, and “print-literacy” (or “print-like literacy”) is designed to liberate students or to force them into in to narrowlydefined compliant roles.The investigation uses a broad spectrum of sources – from literature, educationalresearch, history, and media to pull apart the essential links between literacy, technology,and concepts of colonialism.

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11. Theft and LiesThis paper has eleven parts. Each has been assigned a prime number, though the numbersare in no discernible order.In doing this I have stolen ideas from both

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

by Mark Haddon

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and Producing Erotic Children by James Kincaid, which isChapter Thirteen of

The Children’s Culture Reader

(Jenkins, 1998).

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Although in bothcases, those authors’ decision to persist in a similar scheme may have rationales differentfrom mine. There also might be a bit of theft from Dave Egger’s

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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– at least in the sense of an overweight introduction.Kincaid’s eleven parts are described as, while not “carry[ing] the same importance;nonetheless, they are exactly symmetrical and harmonious.” And his eleven parts do notinclude his description of the eleven parts – which is set apart as an introduction – as in

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

. But I will not do that. The “Introduction” or “Preface” or whatever you choose to call this, is a literary device which attempts tosuggest that the entirety of a text is not equally important to the understanding of thattext. This is not just a surprising position for any author to take; it is a normative literaryconvention which seems to demand some kind of investigation.By citing both works of fiction and academic articles in an academic article, and usingthem in the same way, I am actually threatening certain potential readers and the worldview that they bring to reading – just as I did at the beginning by using the words “theft”and “lying.” This is intentional, of course. As is the initial quotation of a decidedly post-modern author. As is this sentence structure.I might have used a different number of parts from Kincaid – I deeply considered seven,with it’s undertones of magic and Vegas and Mickey Mantle, and thus, perhaps, deeper undertones of sex and alcohol, but I chose to stick with eleven.Prime numbers made sense as well. Not just for the seeming assault on our tendenciestoward linearity, but also because, while they are clearly divisible – can not 151 bedivided as 10x15.1? – we have been taught to see them as unique ideas – separate andindivisible, and that does seem like a lovely conceit.Eleven is the number of players on a football team, though only one is allowed to use hishands to touch the ball within the confines of play on the specified field. Though these

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Haddon, M. (2002)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

. Doubleday. London. p. 11

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Kincaid, J. (1998) Producing Erotic Children. In Jenkins, H.

The Children’s Culture Reader

. NYU Press, New York. p. 241

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Eggers, D. (2001)

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

. Simon & Schuster. New York. p. ix

Footnote

Footnote: Footnotes are used in this paper alongside other citation forms, and these notes do not usecitation shortening forms, rather they repeat full information. This is done to support future editing of thisarticle or quoting from this article, or using this article as a source of the texts quoted herein. Theassumption is that this will never be a completed, fixed, text, and the structure of the citations should reflectthat truth,