Multiliteracies

What the hell is this guy talking about? And who can understand him?

The opening of The New London Group’s A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures discusses the potential of multiliteracies as a solution to a hierarchical and exclusive educational system that prepares students for participation in three societal spheres: “our working lives, our public lives (citizenship), and our private lives (lifeworld)” (65). This rather dense text dedicates plenty of energy to defining terms, and I think this is necessary since it describes (even advocates) a significant shift in the approach to education. Not only does this shift require us to question ideas about learning that prevailed when many of us were educated, but it does so in an always-already changing context. Whether we accept it or not, technology is changing not only education, but our working lives, our public lives, and our private lives as well. 

 I do not want to spend too much time (or any time) calling out these critics for “getting it wrong” or not being able to predict the future, but when they published this text in 1996, email was a relatively new thing. The New London Group saw, in email specifically, an opportunity to undercut the traditional hierarchies of the “old Fordist organizations” that “depended upon clear, precise, and formal systems of command” (66). According to the New London Group, a Post-Fordist model was already on the rise in the ‘90s, where “effective teamwork depend[ed] to a much greater extent on informal, oral, and interpersonal discourse,” and what they quaintly call “electronic mail” could facilitate such discourse (66). It was interpersonal and democratizing. Theoretically, an NYU student could email the University’s president John Sexton, and some have. 

But email has changed in the nearly two decades since this text was published. Sending an email to one’s boss or one’s boss’ boss’ boss is not simple, and without finesse, one could do damage to their reputation or career. Most of us have to learn whom to contact and how to do it. 

Now, I realize that I said I didn’t want to spend too much time on how the New London Group didn’t predict the future, and I did just that, but I by no means mention this to discredit the arguments and points in the text. On the contrary, such a constantly changing context for the discussion requires a lot of defining of terms, and this is why I appreciate the time spent doing so. If we don’t have terms to work with, ones that are somewhat malleable, but also new and specific enough to allow us to engage new topics, then the conversation ends as soon as the tides change. 

For example, early on in the text, the term multiliteracies is presented and defined. In their words, multiliteracies represent “the multiplicity of communication channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity” (63). To the text, this definition is important because it contains both the new term and the exigency of its use. The term itself aims to place pictures, video, the written word, spoken language and the dialects encompassed therein, and perhaps even media that the Group had not anticipated, such as Prezi all under the umbrella of literacy. The definition also includes why we should care. Opening the discussion of literacy to include non-written media allows for greater diversity in education and ultimately society beyond the classroom because those whose languages do not fit in with the “mainstream” could have access to literary discussions. As we will see, this stands to enrich both the underrepresented as well as the “mainstream,” since it fosters and demands a more well-rounded set of skills and knowledge. 

With this definition, we have some of what we need to continue with the text, but the larger discussion (the one beyond this text, and the one this text aims to influence) benefits as well. Precisely because this term is recognizable, it can fit nicely into conversations about literacy, and since it’s relatively malleable, it can survive changes in the conversation that its creators did not anticipate. I was able to include Prezi in my description, and Prezi wasn’t even a thing when the text was published. 

The New London Group moves on to explore the significance of multiliteracies in three spheres of Western life: work, the public sphere, and the private sphere, for which another new term arises. This term is lifeworld, and it encompasses more than the previous two spheres, as personal identity can be more overlapping and diverse in terms of the individual and family than work and citizenship. At least that is how I understand it. It is also my understanding that education is significant to all of these spheres because school prepares us (or in the eyes of the New London Group should prepare us) to navigate all of them.  

I will begin with the discussion of work life, since I touched on it earlier in this post. The text turns to a relatively new term at the time, PostFordism, to name an emerging or at least ideal corporate culture, which stood in contrast to “the old hierarchical command structures epitomized in Henry Ford’s development of mass production techniques” (66). By tearing down hierarchies and dismantling the production line model, in which each autonomous worker performs and knows only one or two tasks, workers must learn to contribute equally to a common end. This also requires (and I must say this is a little idealistic) that workers share the values and goals of their company, as without incentives or punishment, only genuine enthusiasm can inspire honest work. Multiliteracies allow for such a shift because social inequities long since excluded most from positions of power, and by eradicating those positions, each worker would have to be literate in multiple ways. 

In the public sphere of citizenship, multiliteracies must function in response to a shift in the 1980s from an argument between communism and capitalism (68). The fall of the Soviet Union spelled defeat for communism, and the question of the state’s involvement in public lives was open for capitalist interpretation. A liberalism “that eschew[ed] the state” (68) emerged, and it was up to the individual to secure his or her place in society, as the safety net of the state was gone, and many supported this. 

With the freedom to fail comes the need to normalize, as “[t]he perennial struggle for access to wealth, power, and symbols of recognition is increasingly articulated through the discourse of identity and recognition” (68, citing Kalantzis). 

This is a place where I admittedly struggle, so I’m filling in the gaps of my understanding with some wondering. It seems to me that this is what brings us back to the old, Fordist model of work. By normalizing, we can fit into the assembly line or office hierarchy more peacefully, and this is necessary without the support of the state because, well, we need health insurance. This would then put the onus on the state to become multiliterate. “Instead of states that require one cultural and linguistic standard, we need states that arbitrate differences” (69). Rather than imposing normality, states ought to allow citizens to navigate the multiplicities of public life. If they don’t, and if the US doesn’t socialize health care, I’m moving to Canada. 

Back to The New London Group. The most complicated sphere, or at least what I see to be the most complicated sphere, is the private, lifeworld, or the sphere of identity. Identity grows ever more nuanced as individuals identify as belonging to several communities all at once. With each community comes that community’s unique discourse, and “[w]e have to be proficient as we negotiate the many lifeworlds we encounter in our everyday lives” (71). Without the ability to be multiliterate, individuals risk a type of schizophrenia. 

But what are lifeworlds? The text defines them as “spaces for community life where local and specific meanings can be made” (70). Technology plays a role in the development of lifeworlds, and I think the nature of that role also helps define the term: “The new multimedia and hypermedia channels can and sometimes do provide members of subcultures with the opportunity to find their own voices. These technologies have the potential to enable greater autonomy for different lifeworlds, for example multilingual television or the creation of virtual communities through access to the Internet” (70, 71). Are lifeworlds, then, the selves we are when we are not at work or school? Are they a way of defining the differences that the school, the state, and the office must become multiliterate enough to support? I honestly don’t know. 

The New London Group next lays out a manifesto for how education must evolve to accommodate an inherently multiliterate human population, and I like the term manifesto as opposed to plan because, as I noted above, the context in which such a plan would play out is subject to changes that neither The New London Group nor we can anticipate. My blog post for this week will end with the groundwork that The New London Group has laid out, because any manifesto is subject to such drastic change.