Paul's Paper 1
From Mizzou Wiki
E. D. Hirsch said, “We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about education… We ignore the air we breathe until it is thin or foul. Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social intercourse.”(Quoteworld) Cultural literacy is background knowledge that writers may assume their audience already knows. Cultural literacy is related to another term: cultural competence. Cultural competency can be defined as the ability to interact with people of other cultures. Cultural competence has four components: awareness of one’s cultural views, and one’s reactions to other cultures; Attitude towards cultural differences; knowledge of the beliefs and practices of other cultures and skills to facilitate cross-cultural interaction. Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, made a video with the help of two hundred of his students. The video discusses issues facing college students, using statistics gathered from his class. In addition to discussing issues college students face, Wesch also brings up issues of culture. He shows that college students are still better off that people in other countries financially. One of the main points of his video is the effect technology has had on education, which he seems to believe is negative. As a result of the development of technology and the ease of information retrieval because of the Internet, educators must revise their methods of teaching both cultural literacy and cultural competence.
Wesch’s video brings up many points. The first issue the video brings up is the large size of classes. Almost all of my classes have been large lectures. The video also points out that very few teachers actually know students names. When an average class size is over a hundred, teachers can’t be expected to learn their students’ names. However, in my experience, having little personal interaction with teachers hasn’t been detrimental to my learning. As long as a teacher is able to teach the material they need to cover, not getting to know students doesn’t seem like an issue to me. The video then brings up the relevance of course material. One student says, “I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me. Only 26% are relevant to my life”. The video also brings up the issue of attendance. I know what it’s like to skip class and not do assignments. It can be difficult to motivate oneself to attend class when the class is about something that doesn’t seem relevant to life or one’s major. The issues and experiences of Wesch’s student’s are similar to mine, but the video isn’t necessarily a reflection of the experiences of all college students.
Wesch seems to have created the video with people who don’t know what it is currently like to be a college student in mind. However, the video doesn’t represent all college students’ experiences. The video does a poor job of illustrating the life of a college student. Some of the issues it brought up were similar to my experiences, but offered a very simplistic view of college life. After watching the video, someone unfamiliar with student life might be led to believe that most students skip class and don’t do assignments. In the video, Wesch focuses on the negative aspects of technology. The video claims that students who bring laptops to class often browse the Internet or read Facebook. Again, this is only true of a small portion of students in my experience. Most students don’t use laptops during class, and of those that do, not all use them to do things unrelated to the class. If the video really was created with the intention of improving its viewers’ understanding of college student ecology, it does a poor job.
One of the key points of Wesch’s video was the relevance of material to students’ lives. Many general education classes seem like they don’t matter, but they actually teach cultural literacy and cultural competence. Cultural literacy is background knowledge that an author might assume the reader knows; a reader needs a wide range of knowledge in order to understand different material they may read. General education courses are an excellent opportunity to expand students’ cultural literacy. College is also an excellent place to develop cultural competence. Most college campuses are very diverse, with students and faculty from many cultures. Interacting with people from other cultures is an excellent opportunity to develop culture competence. Courses that cover other cultures are also an opportunity to learn about other cultures, and possibly become more culturally literate. However, with the development of technology and the Internet, and the ease of finding information, colleges may need to rethink their teaching strategies.
The end of Wesch’s video focuses on the effect technology has had on the classroom. The video states that, “Some have suggested that technology can save us…” However, the video then states that students who do bring laptops to class often use them to browse the Internet and read Facebook. The video also quotes Josiah F. Bumstead, “The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind.” Bumstead is referring to the chalkboard. Wesch points out that using a chalkboard is more interactive. The teacher must move around and students must actively copy information. However, chalkboards are missing many features that technology can provide. There is no simple way, using a chalkboard, to provide photos, images, or videos. While PowerPoint can integrate all of the features missing from a chalkboard, used poorly it encourages students to simply copy information and then stop paying attention. Used well, technology can be beneficial to the learning process. Sites like Blackboard allow students to submit assignments online and make course documents easily available. Another aspect missing from traditional education is networking. Wesch’s video uses Facebook as an example of distractions caused by technology, but Facebook and websites like it are also beneficial.
Through the Internet, information is easily accessible. With search engines like Google and websites like Wikipedia, information is so easily accessible that someone who knows where to look can find information about almost anything they may be looking for. With information so easily accessible, it is easier than ever to develop cultural literacy and competence without formal teaching. The Internet has had a pervasive effect on our culture, but the education system hasn’t made many changes to adapt to it. Our culture’s reliance on technology and the Internet may not be a good thing, but it does allow us to experience other cultures more easily. Through social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace someone can interact with people from different cultures. Does someone who can simply Google something they don’t understand really need to have all of the relevant background knowledge memorized? It probably couldn’t hurt, but educators should consider that the information they are teaching may not be as relevant as it used to be, and attempt to present it in a way that students will find interesting.
Wesch’s video addresses many of the issues that college students face. The video focuses on technology as a distraction, however, Wesch does point out some of the positive aspects of technology. The blackboard he writes on has a list of things the blackboard is missing: photos, video, animations, and networking. These are all things that can be provided by technology. For the most part however, Wesch ignores these benefits and focuses on technology as a distraction. Most educators haven’t adapted their curriculum to make use of technology, which has led to technology’s use as a distraction by students. The Internet makes information easy to find; it also makes it possible to communicate with people from other cultures. If developing cultural literacy and competence is the main goal of general education classes, but students can develop both on their own time through technology, then the classes should be changed to be more relevant. Technology is only the distraction Wesch presents it as because our system of education doesn’t use it as effectively.
QuoteWorld. June 27 2008.
<http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/6587>
