Domains of Literacy
In the essay, “Literacy Practices” by David Barton and Mary Hamilton, the authors identify a main issue on the philosophy that literacy needs to be seen as a social practice with an explicit set of defined and embedded propositions. The question of whether or not people are aware that literacy exists is addressed as well as the unobservable nature. When people think about, discuss and make sense of literacy, it is paramount that they consider the role that written language has in our country’s culture. Literacy practices are driven by individual and societal values, opinions, emotion and relationships. We embody our individual definitions of what literacy means to us. However, what we feel inside becomes palpable through social processes as people make connections with one another and form bonds based on mutual ideas. It’s our relationships with other people that define our views on literacy.
Literacy practices are an unobservable concept of literacy. “In the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy.” (Barton and Hamilton 7) These behaviors are unobservable due to the fact that they include personalities and attitudes. These…show more content… In our society, we have social institutions in our families, churches and schools. Some settings have more structure out of necessity but all of them are governed by rules, attitudes and standards. Education is perhaps the most powerful institution with its dominant practices and exemplified power. According to the essay’s authors (Barton and Hamilton) the educational system is packed with literacy activities and practices which are structured and routine in nature. These are acquired and mastered by students as young as three and four years old with the recognition that literacy has purpose and is valued by our families, communities and society as a