Nevertheless, from another perspective, what is there to be read is provided by a particular culture, or by a group of cultures in one society. As the form of the object to be read is one of the crucially important aspects of reading, what is available or is made available for children to read is highly significant. So far I have focused largely on children’s interest in their reading. But it is the cultural environment which determines what is available; what is available is laden with the meanings of that culture. Making sense of the world happens in a world already laden with sense.
Before turning to a discussion of texts/objects quite directly ‘within’ literacy, I would like to explore briefly the question of how the shape of the cultural environment shapes the interest, and hence the actions, of child-readers. My two examples come from early stages of a child’s engagement with writing (Figure 3.5). One is writing in an alphabetic culture, the other is writing in an ideographic or logographic culture—namely Chinese. The ‘writers’ were both 3½ years of age.
As with all texts/objects, the children in their engagement with writing have to uncover for themselves the deep logic of each script. In the case of the girl learning alphabetic writing, several elements of the logic she has uncovered in her reading of print seem to me to be apparent in her outwardly made sign: this thing is linear; it has elements in sequence; the elements are connected; the elements are relatively simple shapes; they are repeatable. However implicitly this is learned, these seem to be the most fundamental aspects of writing that she has deduced from the models that she has seen. Of course, this is not the settled truth for her—these signs are subject of constant transformation, just as much as the arrangements of cushions, blankets, dolls, on the floor. But it seems the truth for the moment, and aspects of it will no doubt stay with her. Further, in fact incessant, analytic activity will change this constantly.
In the case of the girl learning logographic or ideographic writing another logic seems to be learned here. Again there is linearity; there are elements in sequence; the elements are not connected; the elements are in themselves complex shapes; they seem not to be repeated, each element seems distinctly different. As a logic about the deep meaning of written language, about writing, it is fundamentally different. I assume, though this is at this stage mere speculation by me, that the two logics have the most far- reaching consequence for notions of what language is, and what writing does. I will return to this issue in Chapter 4, though I will say here that it seems to me that the path of ideographic writing accords entirely with the meaning-making of children at this stage —the making of visual signs which directly represent the ideas that are of interest to them. With the increasing and rapid turn to visual communication this is also the more likely path for future forms of public communication.
However, at this stage my main point is a different one: we have here two 3½-year-old girls, one in England and one in Taiwan. Their daily experiences are set in quite distinct cultures, and their practices are shaped by what is normal in these cultures. Their interests are shaped by their culture. My two examples show, forcefully I think, how the already shaped cultural world shapes the interested engagement of children with their world. Both girls are keen to engage with the shapes of their culture: that is a shared interest. But that already shaped culture takes them, even at this early stage, in entirely different directions.
This is of fundamental importance. It describes and defines quite precisely the age-old debate about individual creativitiy and social determination. Both children are creative, transformative, in
relation to the forms of their culture; although the early writing of children learning alphabetic writing looks recognizably similar, yet this one sign/example is unique, none exactly like it exists, I am sure. I feel equally certain that this is so for the Taiwanese girl’s writing. It too, I feel certain, is unique; and will be recognizably similar to other writing by children in Taiwan of that age. The culture shapes interest, and it provides already shaped objects for that interest to work with. In working with these already shaped objects, children, like all makers of signs, are constantly innovative, creative, transformative.
As a further example of ‘what is there to be read’, consider the newspaper front page, produced by a 4-year-old girl (Figure 3.6). The text of the paper, read by her to her father, is ‘In John Prince’s Street someone got dead.’ On the one hand I am interested to see what a 4-year-old thinks a newspaper is; what her ‘reading’ of the genre of newspaper is. In particular I am interested in knowing whether she makes a distinction between drawing and writing, between print and image. My hunch is that Figure 3.5 Alphabetic and pictographic writing
she does not; I do not think that it occurs to her to think: I’ll first do some writing and then illustrate it with some drawing, or the other way round. I imagine that she is drawing both the print and the image; or writing both print and image. It is probably not a distinction that is sensible to her. In that she both exemplifies the normal disposition of a child of her age in our western cultures, and she prefigures accuratedly the state of public communication in the decades to come.
It is essential to become fully aware of this. We live in a world in which communication proceeds (as it has in many ways always done) in many modes, with language as writing becoming less dominant than it has been in many areas of public communication. Thinking and practices around literacy need to adjust to this fact, and become appropriate for the demands and needs of the children who will move into that new communicational landscape.
WHAT DOESREADING MEAN? A BRIEF