Adolescent literacy

[kimberkit]

I recently read an article that defined "adolescent literacy" as the ability to comprehend and make meaning of writing in a variety of mediums: internet-speak, newspapers, textbooks, email, fiction, nonfiction.

So, I have a confession to make: I am functionally illiterate. I don't follow the newspapers faithfully (Matt T had to explain what the big fuss with the Karl Rove case was), because it makes me feel helpless or angry to see the news half the time, when I don't plan on going into politics. I don't speak AOL. I can read nonfiction well enough, and comprehend it, but I don't give a damn half the time because it usually comes across as academics farting around, and, as far as I can tell, not doing much to save the world, even if they sometimes have interesting theories that may or may not work.

I think the point of the article was that adolescents have to differentiate between all the mediums they're inundated with, but that really should have taken a sentence.

Anyway. Either I'm a sad failure of the education system, or "adolescent literacy" is a meaningless term. Probably some of both -- I really should be more interested in watching the world fall apart by the seams, rather than wondering what I can do to save it, and I probably should be less disrespectful of the intelligentsia. And "adolescent literacy" is just another buzzword replacement for "secondary reading fluency and knowing how to tell academic writing from non-academic writing."

Comments

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

oh! and to respond to your actual point, oftentimes, kids aren't aware that they aren't parsing a sentence when they're not interested in what the sentence means. That is, you get this phenomenon: "Miss, you told me to read those pages, and I did. What do they mean? I don't know. But I read them." Kids don't usually understand the difference between decoding and making meaning without having some kind of motivational interest behind understanding what they're reading -- or that's the argument, anyway, and it's valid enough. But it does put the burden of "literacy" on the teacher.

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

That is to say, the article is NOT completely off its rocker, however stupid I find it, because there IS a link between motivation to read and unable to read, even if they happen to be two different phenomenons.

A kid who says, "this article is boring" as an excuse to not read the thing because it IS boring is very hard to tell apart from a kid who says "this article is boring" because they are functionally unable to read it. See what I mean?

I know that sometimes, when reading boring ed articles, I'll realize that, two pages later, I haven't understood anything I've read because my mind's gone elsewhere and I don't care, or I don't want to care. So it's arguable that, if I were a less motivated student, and didn't take out a pen, highlighter, and force myself to rephrase what whoever-it-was said, then I'd fall behind significantly. What if that had happened in elementary school, and I hadn't had a teacher to spark my interest in getting through texts? I would've flunked, because there's no way I would've started rephrasing stuff in margins on my own.