- Despite what you may think, a Success story does not emphasize the success of the individual or improving their reading and writing skills. Really, it emphasizes the success of literacy; viewing it in a useful way with economic, cultural, social, and political success. Success stories are used as a way to understand the author’s own understanding of their literacy experiences. They generalize literacy and how it can lead to future success. These types of narratives occurred in 30% of the episodes. Students tend to tell Success stories more often than other literacy stories because the assignment itself tends to ask for such a response. I actually agree with this. Alexander writes how the assignment used in the study asked the students to examine their experiences with literacy and how it has shaped them into their present stance with literacy. This brings the writers to the thought that it has to be about a successful experience. Why would someone want to show the reader that, because of past literacy experiences, they are actually more “illiterate” than when they started? The prompt leads the students to want to write about something compelling and powerful. From my sample of literacy narratives that I had read from Rising Cairn, most of the literacy narratives had a success story somewhere in their narrative, confirming the data that Alexander had collected and analyzed.
- A Victim literacy narrative shows the author going through negative experiences with literacy. Unlike the Outsider, the person tends to cast blame for having these bad experiences, for “[taking] the fun out of reading and writing” (Alexander 615); the Outsider still has negative experiences with literature from not being able to fit in with a third space, but does not cast blame on someone, or something, else. According to Alexander’s findings, the Victim narrative is the second most written about narrative, with about 19% of episodes being categorized as such. These types of narratives tend to be written by students who have had bad experiences with literacy. These students most likely write narratives like these because they “provide alternative ways of viewing our literate lives” (Alexander 626). When compared to Success narratives, the Victim narratives show the other side of literacy. They are a challenge to success; not all literacy narratives have to be written in a positive light. Students may want to get their story out there, to show that not all experiences are successful and that it is okay.
- The Rebel tells stories about being misunderstood by educators. They do “not necessarily dislike writing or reading but attacks and rebels against established beliefs and institutions” (Alexander 615). This means that though they personally did not have a problem with literacy itself, they may be against the school system or teacher. These stories tell tales of when the person rebelled against the norm. These types of narratives occurred in only 5% of the episodes, making it the second to last least common cultural narrative; running before the Outsider narrative which also occurred only 5% of the time, but only had 36 episodes while Rebel had 39. The Rebel narrative is so rare because no one really likes to rebel. From the moment we were brought into the world, we are told what to do, and if we went against the rules, we would be punished. It is against the norm to go against what you are taught, to resist what we are told to do. It is against our nature, we have always followed the crowd; it is rare to find someone who is brave enough to step outside of it (which in turn makes the Rebel so rare).
- There are literacy narratives that do not fall under Alexander’s coding schema of Success, Hero, Child Prodigy, Literacy Winner, Victim, Outsider, or Rebel. These narratives fall under Alexander’s “Other” narrative. These narratives are simply that that do not fit under any of the cultural narrative categories that Alexander had set up. These narratives only occurred in 7% of the episodes that Alexander analyzed and recorded.
One thought on “Reading Alexander 2”
Q1. Pretty solid on the literacy success story – though I think the narrative does tend to say that acquiring literacy leads to individual success, so your point of emphasis at the start might not quite be right. The connection to Rising Cairn stories is very thin, with little specific detail. Connections to Rising Cairn stories should include introduction of the story’s author and title, orientation to the narrative, description of key episodes and some direct quotation and discussion of the material you bring into your answer.
Overall, good on the descriptions of the narrative; very thin connection to RC.
Acceptable
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