From Novel to Novelty...Something New to Think About

Last semester I read at least a total of twelve novels for my English classes, so I became quite comfortable with responding to fiction in various required essays. I must confess, I haven't read from a text book (or more technical-type articles) in a while, so it is challenging to think of how to respond to this week's readings, but I will attempt to make sense of them! =) I got a bit bogged down in the What's in a List? article, but I did find it fascinating to consider how ancient peoples seemed to use lists in many of the same ways we do today. It may be a stretch, but it makes me think of a class I took last semester on Passing literature, which involved looking at different novels involving African American characters in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who "passed" for white in order to have access to the same privileges as those in white society. In many of the texts there seems to be a need within the characters (and in society around them) to be classified as "white" or "black." Characters who grew up thinking they were white (because their skin was white and their parents had passed for white) and find out they are black almost always begin trying to classify themselves and/or their parents in a new light. The communities in which these characters live have no place for racially mixed individuals (perhaps like Goody's example of dew needing to be classified as either of the earth or of the sky?) , constantly classifying and discriminating them based upon a black/white binary. In thinking of the practice of list making in ancient cultures, it seems that the tendency to classify objects (and people) in our world is innate within human beings. I can see how it is a good and necessary practice for things like scientific advancement, but I can also see how the tendency to classify can be corrupted and used to divide communities along racial or economic lines.

It is also interesting that Goody's article was aimed at pointing out how list making would have contributed to the more general cognitive development of list-making peoples, while the Unpacking Literacy article seemed to be attempting to prove the opposite in the case of reading and writing skills. This article challenged my thinking because I have been influenced by the idea that reading and writing necessarily improve the mental faculties in a general sense. The study that Scribner and Cole performed seemed to demonstrate that the skills of reading and writing in the contexts that they are used within the Vai people contributed to the development of specific skills, but not necessarily to the all-around improvement of the intellect. Even after the evidence from the studies, however, I am still wrestling with this one. I tend to think that the practice of reading and writing does not just make better readers and writers, but better thinkers. That's not to say that people who can't read and write don't think as well as those who do, but I believe that reading (and especially writing) help people to process their thoughts and even to learn more about who they are and what they believe through learning about the world through reading and expressing their thoughts through writing.

So, my questions are:

Do reading and writing improve the mind in ways that go beyond the academic setting?

Do you (the class) think it is important for schools to continue requiring/teaching a a traditional approach to writing (the essay, for example), or do you think changing modes of communication make this kind of writing unnecessary?