QIWN FRASER UNIVERSITY

Summer Semester 1998 ?

EDUC 341 - 3

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J. Jenson & F. Ibañez-Carrasco

Literacy, Education and Culture

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Office: TBA

Tel:

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291-3395

E-mail: jjenson@sfu.ca

DO1.00 ?

ibanezc@sfu.ca

PREREQUISITE

60 credit hours

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course provides an introduction to the study of literacy and illiteracy from an interdisciplinary perspective (i.e.

education, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication and cultural studies). We will be looking at the

origins of western literacy, its implications and consequences (i.e. the preservation and transmission of memory), the

types of institutions formed around it, its functions and uses. This course, then, is intended to engage you in thinking

critically about what people mean by literacy, why it is thought to be important, and what is supposed to be

accomplished by promoting it. It is also intended to challenge widely held assumptions: that literacy is a simple

concept, that its possession is an unquestionably good thing, that people need higher levels of literacy to succeed in

society, that illiteracy may be cause for poverty, criminality, immorality, accidents and disease and, correlatively, that

literacy makes for a more democratic, prosperous and virtuous society.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, you should have an interdisciplinary overview and understanding of literacy, its beginnings

and its development, the conditions of its use, and its impacts upon us. You will have developed an awareness of the

varied functions and uses of literacy for individuals, institutions and social groups as well as awareness of the

constellation of definitions traditionally and currently given to literacy.

REQUIREMENTS

• Course logbook (20%)

• Participation, attendance and e-mail (20%)

• Three 5 page essays (10% each).

• A final literacy project (30%).

REQUIRED TEXT

Kintgen, Eugene, Barry M. Kroll. & Mike Rose (Eds.) (1988) Perspectives on Literacy Southern Illinois University Press.

Selected essays will be placed in a course box in the Centre for Educational Technology (CET).

RECOMMENDED TEXTS

Freire, Paulo & Donaldo Macedo. (1987) Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey

Publishers, inc.

Olson, David R., Nancy Torrance & Angela Hildyard (1985) Literacy, language, and learning: The nature and

consequences of reading and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Castell, Suzanne, Allan Luke & Kieran Egan. (1986)Literac

y

, societ

y , and schooling. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Manguel, Alberto. (1996)The History of Reading. Toronto: A.A. Knopf.