RJ7: First Glance Summary of Archives

The archives at Gee Library are facinating and informational, but also more extensive than requird by the project.  As I looked through the articles, I noticed many different topics, few of which were relevant to literacy in general.  However, there are many oppurtunities for background information and extraprospesctive insight on selective fields of literacy studies.  A look at my comments and reinforcement from the digital section of the archives has centralized my research question around the idea of formal versus informal literacy.  This idea has been further reinforced by the oral history transcripts.  The teachers in these interviews were very passionate about learnig and teaching, and Ms. Bowman was particularly excited concerning English.  The common theme in these personalities as exprexxed through the interwies seems to be a general distaste for standardization and selective information.  Mr. Jackson was, in his terms, “old school,” and used to being in a learning environmenr focused more around knowledge of concept than of specific instance.  He idolized a teacher (W. L. Mayo) who once said, 

“The pupil sits at the feet of the instructor and accepts without thought or question, everything that is said. He takes notes on the lecture, then goes to his room and memorizes them. He learns to follow, not to lead; to accept the opinions of others, not to think for himself; to read the results of their investigations, not to make these investigations for himself. Such is not education.” (East Texas Normal Catalogue 1896, 71)

People learn more efficiently on thier own than entirely out of a text book.  My research is geared toward comparing the two environments.  How do people use literacy on their own, and how are they taught differntly?

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