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Literacy comes in steps, baby steps. Each person learns at
his or her own pace, gradually stepping closer and closer to the
fullest extent of cognitive literacy. Although some people start
with smaller steps, all learners can reach full cognitive literacy
through plenty of trial and error, with guidance along the way.
The steps in achieving full cognitive literacy have plateaus that
learners reach at varying stages of their lives.
The first plateau of literacy is the cultural literacy stage.
Learners reach this stage by interacting with others and
by immersing themselves in their culture. The second
plateau of literacy is the stage of foundational knowledge.
Foundational knowledge consists of the basics: reading and
writing. Following foundational knowledge is the plateau of
separated critical inquiry, where learners begin to accumulate
the skills necessary for critical reading and critical writings
as skills distinct from one another. The final plateau that a
learner reaches in order to obtain full cognitive literacy is the
metacognitive stage of literacy where the learner begins to
juxtapose critical reading, critical writing, critical thinking, and
in-depth oral communication to create the highest level of
cognitive ability.
Cultural literacy is best explained through the ethnographic
approach that Shirley Brice Heath uses in her Ways With
Words. Heath examines Trackton and Roadville, two very
different towns in the Carolinas. Heath spends two chapters
on “Learning How to Talk in Trackton” and “Learning How
to Talk in Roadville.” Before children start school in Trackton,
they are more or less ignored by the adults; it is up to the
children to make themselves heard. When they are babies,
their cooing is only referred to as noises:
When infants begin to utter sounds which can be
interpreted as referring to items or events in the
environment, these sounds receive no special attention.
Trackton adults believe a baby ‘comes up’ as a talker;
adults cannot make babies talk (Heath 75.)
To Trackton residents, children learn inherently through
immersion in the cultural society. Children in Roadville also
learn from their culture but in a different way from the children
of Trackton. In Roadville, a child’s first word is a matter of
excitement in the community,: “Young mothers often take the
first ‘da, da, da, da’ sounds from the crib as ‘daddy’ and report
the ‘word’ proudly to the father” (Heath 121). While the
towns Heath is describing have different ways of bringing up
their children, both produce children who possess the cultural
literacy necessary to move to the next step.
Not all children reach the cultural literacy plateau by the
time they start elementary school. The scenario of Trackton
and Roadville is just one example of the positive influence of
culture. In some instances, children are not exposed to cultural
contexts while young. For example, the mother of a friend
of mine in high school decided to take in foster children. She
took, care of two young children, ages one and three, who
were never played with or even talked to as babies. These
children, when they reached kindergarten, were unable to form
complete thoughts based upon cultural contexts. They had
been deprived of the cultural information that even children in
Trackton and Roadville experienced.
The second plateau that a person may reach in a literate
development is the stage of fundamental literacy. Fundamental
literacy can be described as the basic skills, reading and writing
at the simplest level. From an early age, many children are
taught the alphabet as a means of learning how to form words
verbally and in sentence form. Although Eleanor Kutz and
Hephzibah Roskelly see the fundamental basics of learning the
alphabet as less important than reading for meaning, I see the
basics as a necessary step in achieving full cognitive literacy.
Learning to read and write at the most fndamental level is very
similar to learning a foreign language after one has mastered
one’s own. There is no possible way that one could fully
understand the language studied without first knowing how to
pronounce the letters of the alphabet and then phonetically
producing the words of the language. Only once the most
necessary basics have been mastered can a person go any
further in the steps of literacy. Rosemary Deen and Marie
Ponsot, co-authors of The Common Sense, affirm, “Writing does
not [so much] teach us to think or require us to plan to think,
as if does help us to think with and through it as we do it” (3).
Deen and Ponsot see this fundamental task of writing as a way
of making people think. In order to be able to think critically,
one needs to first know how to read about and write about
what one is going to think about.
The next step in a person’s literate cognitive development is
the learning of critical reading and critical writing. In his book
Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose refers to a student who has not
yet reached this level of critical reading. Bobby, a student at
UCLA, has trouble finding meaning in a lecture. To Bobby,
History is dates and facts: Who invaded whom? When?
With how many men? And Bobby could memorize
this
sort of thing like a demon. But social history, the history
of moods and movements and ordinary people’s lives,
left Bobby without a clue. (Rose 4)
Bobby is an example of a student who cannot read or
comprehend at a critical level. In order to read critically, a
learner must extract some meaning from the text he or she is
reading. Even if the reader does not develop the meaning,
as long as the reader can find what the author is trying to
say, he or she is then critically reading. Critical writing is
developed when the learner is able to read critically and
respond to questions about the text that ask for more than
just a regurgitation of the facts of the story. A learner who
can read critically and write critically can find meaning in a
text and write about that meaning only. More precisely, at the
plateau of separated critical inquiry, learners cannot yet make a
connection between reading and writing about what they see in
the reading.
The fullest extent of literacy is at the final plateau of
full cognitive literacy. A learner who has reached this stage
of full cognitive literacy can understand the cultural contexts,
can read and write at the most fundamental level, can read and
write critically for understanding and literal meaning, and can
then synthesize the levels of literacy to create a meaning of his
or her own. Anne E. Berthoff, author of Forming, Thinking,
Writing, describes the metacognitive abilities of someone who
has reached full cognitive literacy. Berthoff asserts,
writing is a matter of learning how to use the forms of
language to discover the forms of thought, and vice versa.
By conceiving of meanings not as thingsbut as
relationships, you can avoid the futile question of which
comes ‘first’ –the chicken or the egg, the thought or the
language—and explore instead the mutual dependence of
choosing and limiting, identifying and differentiating,
finding and creating form (21).
Berthoff believes that a learner can juxtapose reading and
writing to better create a meaning pertinent to his or her self.
The best way to represent Berthoff ’s ideas is through this
metacognitive essay. During the first workshopping session
for this paper, I had only written two pages of summary,
as opposed to the critical inquiry that was supposed to take
place in the essay. Through the help of Jan and Tara C. in the
workshop, I was able to create a metacognitive masterpiece.
Instead of focusing on the patterns of my thought in the first
draft, I focused on the way that I said things. After many
drafts, I was able to reach full cognitive literacy with this essay.
Full cognitive literacy is a juxtaposition of critical reading,
writing, thinking, and talking. In order for someone to reach
this level, the individual must master the skills of the levels
below. People do, however, learn at their own rate, and some
may reach their fullest cognitive ability very young, while others
may not reach it until late. Because of varying circumstances,
some may not ever even reach the highest level. Whatever the
pace, to be considered fully literate at the cognitive level, one
must advance through all these stages.
Works Cited
Berthoff, Ann E. Forming, Thinking, Writing. New York:
Boynton, 1988.
Deen, Rosemary, and Marie Ponsot. The Common Sense.
Portsmouth: Boynton, 1985.
Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways With Words. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy.
Portsmouth: Boynton, 1991.
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