An Amateur Can Also Be Considered Literate.
During today’s class, I honestly searched my dictionary very rapidly with the speed of light to find out what exactly “Literacy” means. The definition that we learned today wasn’t enough for me to fully understand about the meaning of literacy. After I found the general term of literacy, which was “the ability to read and write”, I was relieved and I was ready to discuss about literacy with confidence. Then, I faced another issue because the type of literacy that everybody suggested was not really related with the ability to read and write. My head was suddenly filled with so many question marks. ‘We are talking about literacy, but why is everybody talking about music, movies, animals, religion and stuff?’, ‘Does literacy have another meaning beyond what I just found in my dictionary?’, ‘What the heck? What does beer have to do with literacy?’ I felt like I was sucked into a black hole. However, the more we discussed about it, I started understanding about the meaning of literacy and I realized that its term can be used broadly as something we are an expert at. What I experienced today is one good example of literacy for me, because it was the process to know the way of being in particular context like “literacy”.
When I came back home, what I did immediately was read Malcom X’s literacy autobiography to make sure the meaning of “literacy” that I’ve been learned (actually slightly sensed) does agree with its definition. In Malcom X’s case, the term of literacy was more focused on various areas such as his develoment of language ability, his knowledge of black people's society, and a view of seeing the world. As we learned that literacy is affected by economics, histories, politics, and cultures, politics that locked him up in a jail affected his literacy, and the culture of the jail that was severed from society also gave him abundant time to read books and gave him opportunities to be a pro at those things. His literacy autobiography gave me a chance to establish a thought of literacy for myself. I focused more on the "PROCESS" where he became a expert at those fields than the fact that he became a leader of black society as an expert knowing the rampant racism in the society. Literacy in my opinion is not only applied to an expert at something like its recent use among people. Neither is it the people who have a reputation in one field. It is a process to gain knowledge about something where we can see the person's effort.
I was temporarily illiterate about the topic of ‘literacy’ in today’s class, but I could eventually know it by communicating with people, listening to the explanation of my professor, and seeing examples in the class. Definitely similar past experiences in understanding in particular contexts were accumulated in me and developed my present reading and writing. As I mentioned above, the type of literacy could be very widely applied to many fields like fashion, digital, and pop culture. When it comes to literacy in writing, I believe that it can be obtained naturally as I experienced today. I don’t think anyone needs to be frustrated because they are not literate in writing because we are always cumulating literacy experience by reading and writing every second and minute. From my point of veiw of literacy, it at lest includes the process where an amateur is becoming an expert at something.
