Learning is always an individual moment,
even within a socio-historical context . . .
I can see why this is a popular
text, anthologized up and down. After
reading it, I found a pretty deep stream of posts by students explaining how
much they identified with the personal narrative that Akinnaso tells. I’ll admit that I’m in that camp. The rise of the academic in the world of the
ostensibly anti-intellectual is a narrative that I’ve pinned on myself, not
vainly but self-immolatingly to be more than a little dramatic about it.
The questions that Akinnaso addresses
are important ones, though nebulous and not really satisfactorily answered: how
and why do some individuals choose to use literacy to shift their intellectual
and social standing? Is this literacy
creating new consciousness or facilitating the growth of an already-burgeoning
awareness?
The lack of a complete answer to the
first question leads to some discrepancies in the second though. For much of the essay, Akinnaso seems to
believe that the answer to the latter question is that literacy creates new
consciousnesses in the individual, though it seems like his story almost
contradicts him – instead suggesting that the initial choice of literate
practices as a hobby acted as a spark that literacy grew and shaped into a new
way to view both language and the world.
His interest in literacy existed prior to the start of his pen pal
relationships, for example, and even though he notes that he participated in
these activities and then his “ability to read and write had transformed [him]
beyond [his] immediate environment,” it seems instead that an initial
motivation existed and the practice refined and reshaped his understanding of
what it meant to be and act as a literate person. In this way, Akinnaso’s autobiographical
sketch seems almost akin to Mao’s description of the dialectic of theory and
practice in “On Practice.” The material
conditions of colonized life put him into contact with the literacy practices
of the colonials; his shift toward the intellectual sphere accompanied his
rejection of his father’s place in the mode of production; this led to his
changed perception of the world, which led to his rupture with local culture,
etc etc.
But that’s only tangentially about
reading . . . bring it back a little . . .
There were specific assumptions
about reading that Akinnaso clung to though, ones that rile me both
intellectually and autobiographically.
He describes four levels of reading, each building on the previous one,
but always in terms of response. With
each reading, the metaphorical implications of the text become more clear, but
not the initial reading of the text. For
Akinnaso, the first reading is at the literal level and therefore is missing
important elements of the text (no argument there) but there is never a point
in which this literal reading is added to.
It’s as if the initial reading is clear but must be seen on further
symbolic, socio-cultural, or archetypal hues on later readings. For Akinnaso then, reading is very much like
looking at an allegorical religious painting – the literal depiction of a
shepherd fending off wolves from his flock is inherently clear (which in
reality is often not the case if the image of the shepherd isn’t already
familiar) while the association of this image with Jesus’ protection of his
followers from Satan isn’t acquired until later when the viewer learns the
tricks of applying other codes to the text.
The literal content is clear from the first reading and further
investigation is only about uncovering other deeper and more sophisticated
readings.
This is where I split from Akinnaso
(and where I would venture to guess that his narrative splits a bit from
reality). Every memory I have of
acquiring literacy involved incomplete readings of the most literal level of
the text – what I later described to students as swinging on a vine blindly
through a jungle, groping wildly for something else to grab. Eventually, I would find something
solid. In Goethe’s Faust it might’ve only been a few lines here and there while
Milton’s Satan usually provided me with rebellious and angsty sentiments in
amidst obscure Old Testament tirades.
However, I continued through the texts, reading incompletely but
progressively.
In the classroom . . . sort of concrete .
. . still a little abstract . . .
Akinnaso raises the important issue
of choice though, one which we dismiss as nebulous or wild at the cost of both
ourselves and our students. For me,
choice was always easy to inspire when I was a 7th and 8th
grade teacher – they’re such little kids at that point that it’s easy to get
kids excited about anything – and less so in 9th grade and
beyond. Universally though, I’ve seen
that engaging kids with texts that seem too difficult works if you set it up as
an almost-insurmountable challenge, then show them ways to make meaning from
those texts. I remember having that
experience with Poe and Shakespeare in my early years teaching, using the
annotation method I was developing to help struggling readers make meaning out
of texts that seemed totally inaccessible, then having that experience again
teaching Hegel and Marx to upper-classmen.
It’s much easier for students to choose
to engage in intellectual work if they choice seems like a viable option.
Of course, the colonized choice that Akinnaso made is
arguably different than the choice that students make to engage in literacy
practices – his was a preference of an invading culture over his native
culture, a shift in values, even a rejection of his father’s system of logic –
but as anyone who has taught students from working and lower-class communities
might have noticed, the difference isn’t as great as we might think. Although there were powerful intellectual
forces in my upbringing and I’ve encountered the same in the lives of several
of my students, most economically disadvantaged students are also educationally
disadvantaged because to engage in certain literacy practices often means
choosing an alternative culture – the culture of the bureaucrat or the manager
or the teacher (an insidious authority figure in many lives) – over their
own.
The
challenge, of course, is to allow students to choose literacy practices that
will enable them to act as agents of both their communities and themselves
without surrendering anything authentic in the process. I don’t know if
Jacotot’s Ignorant Schoolmaster
non-method is the answer. I don’t know
if the counterpublic writing of things like Anne Gere’s “Kitchen Tables and
Rented Rooms” or Frank Farmer’s After the
Public Turn are where it’s at. More
questions than answers in this second half here.
If,
as Mao and so many others are pointing out, the interaction with the world
reshapes ideas which reshapes the way we interact, etc etc, is the notion of
dialectics antithetical to the notion of maintaining a sense of self while
learning?
