Is literacy just about reading and writing - pen and ink - words and, well, words? What does it mean to be literate? I stepped in the daunting doctoral direction this week. My first stop is a discipline based literacy course that began with an analysis of the texts that we manage in different spaces. Looking at my life from that perspective, my concept of literacy has grown. Is a text only written? Can it be a picture? an expression? a backroad? an antelope? a sigh? What does it mean to be literate? The simple definition of literacy is the ability to read and write, yet somehow that definition crosses into another definiton that somehow encompasses and fully expresses the first definition: competence or knowledge in a specific area. We must be fully literate in the spaces we occupy to be successful. The world is a space we occupy, a space where we compose texts and read or ignore texts. I did discover I ignore the texts of broken faucets and toilet seats in the space I occupy most. Others respond efficiently to those texts. I step over them, adjust them so I can use the sink and toilet awkwardly but get the job done. What texts do we ignore, can we ignore and still be successful and literate in the spaces we inhabit? Am I willing to confront the fact that I do not just inhabit my hometown but inhabit the world? Am I willing to conquer global literacy or will I adjust the seat or put a cup under the leaking faucet to manage the global texts I face each day?
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