The Text User

I found Chapter 5 to be the most interesting because it explains the relevancy of literacy as something that everyone needs to live a productive, fulfilling life.  It begins by discussing how everyone reads for a “wide range of purposes” to function within a community and be a productive member of society.  I have always been a practical person and I tend to relate everything I do for some means to an end.  This type of personality definitely shows when I teach as I constantly try to reiterate to my students how learning certain information is valuable to function properly as a human and enrich one’s life.  So when I have to teach literacy in the future I will refer to this chapter as it helped me understand how to make my understandings in alignment with the students’ meaning making process.

One aspect of this chapter that was captivating was how it explained the difference of reader purpose versus author purpose.  It discusses how many authors write books for a variety of reasons that leave the reader to imagine on their own or create their own purpose for exploration.  However, many teachers “use works of fiction for purposes not necessarily intended by the writers.”  An example of this that I have had experience with (and Wilson explains as well) is when teachers hand out worksheets and questions to think about before students have already read the material.  This only limits their exploration and doesn’t allow them to use the text how their brain would have intentionally found purpose for before the teacher’s contamination.  It forcefully directs learners to use the material in accordance with the teacher’s scope of literacy and pedagogical style.  Teachers seem to create underlying purposes not intended by the original author in the first place.  I think it is great to have children analyze the text and formulate ideas and opinions about the author’s work but this chapter is a reminder that many teachers are shaping this process to their own perspectives due to the demands by standardized testing and higher administrative forces at hand.  Children are supposed to be text users not robots who are told how to use the text.

I completely agree with Wilson in which she later discusses integrated curriculum concerning text users finding a purpose to their learning.  She talks about the negative effects of how literacy is often taught in independent conditions separated from other subject matters.  She states that “sadly, all too often, literacy learning is taught apart from the rest of the curriculum as if it is serving some purpose of its own and is not related to the children’s lives.”  She is absolutely right and we as teachers must teach literacy simultaneously while learning other important school subjects so the purpose is ultimately clear.  We should teach students how to read recipes with numbers and fractions at the same time they are learning to make these dishes and study these mathematical concepts.  It only makes sense that students should find purpose in the text as it relates to authentic situations that can benefit their lives and allow them to understand how reading and writing can lead to overall power and achievement in a positive light.