From Daniell's book

According to historical studies by Jack Goody, Harvey Graff, and Daniel Resnick and Lauren Resnick, spiritual and religious motives have traditionally impelled human beings to seek literacy and, in America, to enact statutes that require it. All over the United States, adult literacy workers testify to their students' religious motives for learning to read. (37)

This has got me thinking about literacy and history and about how to situate my project historically. The question is not about literacy and religion or spiritual motives, but about literacy and work and/or professional motives. The question is how to see what these people are going through as part of a long tradition of literacy leading to work--of seeking literacy instruction for work advancement.

My guess is that this extends back to post Civil War days. Brandt has written about veterans and literacy after WW II. What is this tradition and how do i trace it and situate what my participants are doing in attending NSC as a part of this longer tradition?

LITERACY and WORK

Another important breakthrough--if, in one of these chapters, I am going to assemble or analyze my participants literacy histories, who is going to help me with this--to make sense of their stories of school and literacy development? I might consult that article I shared with Tom last year about masculinity and literacy, from C's.

From the chapter "Power as Positive and Available":

I think that this passage is really useful for helping me frame my own project:

Given the social nature of literacy, then, viewing the Mountain City women's uses of reading and writing as only individual practices would impoverish our understanding of what their literacy is, what purposes it is put to, and how it works in their lives. The Mountain City women's literacy is shaped, disciplined, invited, and constrained by their participation in the Al-Anon group. This literacy is therefore aimed at the attainment of inner peace, personal growth, and emotional maturity, all attributes of the Al-Anon concept of spirituality. Yet, the Mountain City women's literacy, both individually and collectively, is shaped, disciplined, invited, and constrained by the traditions and practices of the larger society as well. That is to say, while the literacy of the women who talked with me is sponsored by their Al-Anon group in their particular historical time and place, it is, or has been, sponsored, as well, by other institutions--schooling during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; the roles of women in families, marriage, and society; religion; and the workplace. All these reinscribe the kinds of behaviors, including literate behaviors, acceptable for women in our culture. (127)

There is a lot there that I can borrow....

Paying attention to how actual people use reading and writing in a particular time and place for specific purposes, under specific material conditions, expands our academic views of literacy, of texts constructed and construed, and of the human beings who read and write. (150)

There is no literacy standing apart from context that can make us smart or free...My study shows...that the qualities acquired with literacy are specific to the uses of literacy. Literacy doesn't cause; it enables. (151)

Inquiring into the uses and functions of literacies in the lives and work of people outside the academy might also help us study more effectively the literate practices of our students. (155)

The more we know about writing, about literate practices, and about oral discursive practices among actual writers and readers, both inside and outside the academy, the better work we will be able to do at both the theoretical and practical levels. (156)

When we "uncouple" literacy from schooling, as I have tried to do with this work, it becomes easier to see what motivates people to write and what purposes people have for writing when they are not compelled to. One of those purposes, my study shows, is to be part of a group striving for a common goal. (158)

For the Mountain City women, reading, writing and talk are integrated into the rich mix of their relationships. In contrast, school, an early and formative sponsor of literacy, often presents reading and writing as solitary, isolated, and isolating activities, the purpose of which, all too often, eludes students. (158)