Executive Summary 1: Literacy in Three Metaphors

Scribner, Sylvia. “Literacy in Three Metaphors.” American Journal of Education 93 (1984): 6-21. Print.

     In “Literacy in Three Metaphors” Sylvia Scribner attempts to define what the integral parts of literacy actually are and how they can be understood and applied to the education of people, domestically and abroad. She uses the word “essence” to describe what she is trying to define about literacy, but each context she places literacy in has its own essence. The three metaphors she uses are 1. Literacy as adaptation 2. Literacy as power and 3. Literacy as “state of grace.” Within these contexts, literacy takes on several different meanings and implications as to how to define literacy and what defines it. One common bond she claims all three metaphors have is that each entail a certain amount of social achievement and much needed social analysis is needed to fully understand them.

     She begins her exploration of this notion, beginning with “literacy as adaptation.” Scribner shows how literacy as adaptation is also literacy needed for driving an economy: “The necessity for literary skills in daily life is obvious; one the job, riding around town, buying groceries, we all encounter situations requiring us to read or produce written symbols....”Within the United States, as in other nations, literacy programs with these practical aims are considered efforts at human resource development and, as much, contributors to economic growth and stability” ( 73). Scribner is implicit that, within the adaptation metaphor, literacy is gauged by some aggregate of what is needed to function to do the aforementioned tasks. This, however, can be too uniform and individual literacy is neglected. The scale of determining literacy can't be based on a third grader nor a college professor.

     Scribner moves on to defining literacy within the context of power. She notes that, historically, literacy has been used to reinforce social or political hegemony. Scribner also explains how literacy has been a liberating agent for disenfranchised groups of society. Scribner goes on to mention Paulo Freire's progressive and influential philosophy that spreading literacy is crucial for social transformation. Scribner does, however, see this as being problematic. Her problem is with creating the aesthetic for spreading any given literacy program. What will work for one society may not necessarily work for another.

     Scribner's third metaphor, literacy as a “state of grace,” she admits, has religious overtones, but she places more emphasis on how literacy separates certain people from others. She notes how religions have always assigned a certain level of superiority to those who could read and understand their holy text, but she also explains that the same notion has ancient, secular roots: “Plato and Aristotle strove to distinguish the man of letters from the poet of oral tradition” (77). Scribner calls both the religious and secular versions of this superiority “book knowledge.” The questioned needed answered, she argues, is “how widely dispersed is this admiration of book knowledge?” The answer to that within the context of the “state of grace” metaphor will, somewhat, define literacy.