James Paul Gee response to Douglas Rushkoff

What sort of humans will digital media make us? As we approach this question there is a lot to be learned from the long running study of literacy. Literacy is itself, like digital media, a technology for meaning making and social organization. In the mid 20th century scholars argued that literacy made people modern, rational, humane, and smarter (and lowered the birth rate). In famous work, Eric Havelock had argued that alphabetic literacy had transformed ancient Greece into a more rational society, giving birth to logic, philosophy, science, and democratic politics.

Later scholars, however, argued that literacy has no uniform affects on society and that what happened in Greece was more specific to the overall context of Greece at the time. After all, modern Germany was one of the most literate cultures in history--especially in the sense of "high culture", the arts, and literature--and gave rise to the Nazi movement. As George Steiner said, what Germany taught us is that "the humanities don't humanize"--or, perhaps, we should say, they don't necessarily humanize. ...

Later work on literacy also showed that lots of effects attributed to literacy per se are actually effects of schooling, especially the modern form of formal schooling we know in the West and which has spread nearly everywhere. Literacy is shaped in certain ways by school and it is this context that gives rise to many of the effects of literacy that we say we value (e.g., "logical thinking"), not literacy per se. Literacy in the shape of other sorts of values and practices gives rise to other effects. For example, school-based literate people if asked which of a saw, wood, and a hammer "go together" say "saw and hammer", because they see the question as about "tools". Non-literates tend to say "saw and wood" because they see the question as about functions and not categories like tools. We are primed to take the first response as "logical" and "smart", but the second is as well.

Finally, modern scholarship on literacy has shown that certain sorts of literacy practices become caught up with social class and become institutionally endorsed as routes to success in society. The essay is a good example. Being able to write essays was long seen as the epitome of an educated person, was long associated with elites, and eventually became a route to mainstream school-based success for others. Indeed, traditional school-based literacy has been called "essayist literacy". Many such practices, like the essay, become "gates" to sort people long after their primary functions in society have changed or died or been replaced by other forms.

Another example is Shakespeare. Jonathan Rose has studied the reading habits of the British working classes through the rise and fall of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial period to the 20th century. Before Shakespeare became a canonical subject in school, working class people read him as a sign they were as good as their "betters" and were fully capable of understanding the motivations of the kings and queens Shakespeare wrote about. Once Shakespeare did become canonical in school, reading him in certain ways became associated with "education", class, and getting through gates in society. And many people began resisting reading him.

Literacy is, as we all know, a force associated with "gaps" in school and with equity problems. Certain sorts of practices with literacy-- not literacy per se--become associated with school success and success in society and these practices get mastered much quickly and better by more privileged people and their children, largely because of practices in the home, rather than in school. As a society we have found it immensely hard to remove these gaps (and standardized testing/ accountability are not removing them).

The study of literacy suggests the sorts of questions we ought to ask about digital media: 1) what effects (good and bad) do they have in different contexts? 2) How are these effects institutionally endorsed or not? 3) How are practices with digital media caught up with social class and how are they or will they be used as gates to success in society? 4) Are some of the skills we use as gates to success "out of date" but still being used to sort people? 5) What is and will be the role of homes, not just schools, in creating "gaps" in how richer and poorer kids learn and use new "digital literacies"? 6) The "essayist mind" endorsed by school and society had certain values and ways of seeing the world--what will be the new "digital mind" or "digital minds"? 7) How is literacy, not replaced, but changed and transformed by digital media? What are the powers of the two in tandem? 8) How are the "lost functions" of literacy replaced by digital media (e.g., note how the functions of memory in an oral culture were replaced and deepened by literacy, with lots of value added, but some real loss)?

Let me say, at the end, that alphabetic literacy was probably the single greatest technology ever invented by humans and it is never going away. Far from weakening its position in society, in many cases digital media strengthen it. You cannot play Pokémon if you can't read and lots of pre-readers want badly to play Pokémon.