Many years ago, I managed to successfully complete my developmental English course at Northern Virginia Community College as I embarked on my journey through higher education. Up until that point, I had never read a book on my own and I did not recall being engaged in literature throughout high school. Having read an entire book called “Kindred”, on my own in the developmental English class, sent exciting energy through my spine. I felt victorious, because I knew I was on my way to climb the ladder of academic success. That is until I barely passed my English 111 course with an average grade of “C”. I was bummed; I agreed with my teacher that I read and wrote like a “foreigner”. I spent the next year returning to my old ways of viewing the literacy problem; it was my fault for failing to do well in my ability to derive meaning from text.
It was not until I found myself completely engrossed in literature in my American Lit class, that I realized the significance of constructing meaningful interpretations and engaging in critical thinking/reading with the text. My American Lit professor asked us to “deep dive” into the text. At first, I was completely lost. I viewed him as someone who did not understand difficulty. I thought learning (reading, writing, and thinking) came easily for him and he was completely removed from “people like me”. To my surprise, he never gave up on me. He believed in me and he believed in what he was teaching. He approached various methods to assist me to deep dive in the meaning behind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words, “The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.” I had a very difficult time looking past the printed words on the page to see the implied message. I was fearful of failing or admitting that I did not understand the text, so I avoided talking in class. I regarded Emerson’s words so highly that I did not feel that I could question and/or challenge the author’s viewpoint. I wanted my professor to end my misery by simply revealing the meaning to me, but he did not tell me what he thought the line meant, which would have been viewed by Blau as a mistake. Blau states, “…such instruction encourages students in two mistaken beliefs. First, it encourages them to believe that they are incapable, without more advanced and specialized training, of reading the difficult texts I have ‘tough’ them. Second it encourages in them the equally mistaken belief (especially counterproductive for those who will become teachers) that they have acquired something that can be called worthwhile literary knowledge by possessing notes on my readings.”
The hidden subtle message behind Emerson’s words did not emerged to me until I released my dependence on authority’s interpretation (my professor) and I learned to believe in myself as a sufficient reader in approaching difficult texts, which is labeled as “performative literacy”. I am now able to see the lack of the seven traits Blau describes as constitutive of performative literacy that distinguished me as a reader in my early educational years.
| Capacity for sustained, focused attention | I did not give careful and sustained attention to text, because I did not think I was capable of understanding the text. “…when simple lack of appropriate effort is treated – as it often is – as a symptom of cultural illiteracy or insufficient mastery of some subskill of reading, students are likely to be offered forms of instructional assistance that support inattention and confirm the students’ own mistaken notion that they lack some specialized body of knowledge or reading skills that distinguish them from their teachers.” (Page 211) |
| Willingness to suspend closure | I avoided difficult text. Therefore, I did not engage in literary analysis in fear of being wrong. It was easier to be lazy and give up by formulating weak explanations. “Expert readers…are more willing to endure and even to embrace the disorientation of not seeing clearly, of being temporarily lost.” (Page 211) |
| Willingness to take risks | I did not value my responses to texts in order to “talk back” to text. I did not know that I was allowed to interact with text or question it. Willingness to take risks is, “…to offer interpretive hypotheses, to respond honestly, to challenge texts, to challenge normative readings. This characteristic is closely related to a willingness to entertain problems, and both of them are functions of what we might more globally identify as intellectual courage.” (Page 212) |
| Tolerance for failure | I viewed my failure to comprehend the text the first, second, or even the third time as my own insufficiency, which prevented me to sustain my efforts until the confusion became lucid. “…one of the principal differences between expert readers and those who appear less skilled is that the more accomplished have a greater capacity for failure…framing their failure but as part of the difficulty that comes with the territory of reading difficult texts.” (Page 213) |
| Tolerance for ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty | As a reader I looked for security, certainty, and the path of least resistance. “The least competent readers tend to confuse intellectual sufficiency with certainty and completed knowledge, and are inclined to equate uncertainty with ignorance, and ambiguity or paradox with confusion.” |
| Intellectual generosity and fallibilism | I did not remain open to new and alternative perspectives and meanings – one of barriers of critical thinking. “The strongest readers will generally argue persuasively for their own readings of texts and be able to demonstrate the deficiencies of arguments for alternative readings…In this process they also show themselves to be fallibilists, persons capable of changing their minds, capable of learning from their encounters with other readings to look in a new way and therefore to adopt a perspective that is more comprehensive than their own former vision.” (Page 214). |
| Metacognitive awareness | I lacked metacognition – I was not aware of my own thinking, my own comprehension, or how to strategically correct my confusion of text. “…a major difference between strong and weak readers has to do with the way that strong readers monitor the progress of their understanding as they move through a text, self-correcting as necessary and recognizing when they need to reread or refocus their attention or take some other step to assist themselves in understanding what they are reading…they are less likely to feel defeated by difficult text.” (Page 214) |