Blog Reading Assignment 2

The only way that this person says to be able to study and find a definition for literature is through ethnographies. I had to look this up, but its the scientific description of the customs and cultures and people. Its a term I learned in my anthropology class. It makes sense that to understand what literacy is in our modern world you have to understand what people use literacy for. Most students in school hate assigned reading, but tend to read many different things, some of them not considered traditional reading. and many students hate assigned writing. I myself am not happy having to write this blog at 10:21 at night. Yet students write a lot outside of the school settings for their own personal use. The way people use reading and writing is definitely what literature is about. Students now use reading and writing as communication tools across an electronic medium. This medium is entirely new and  the experience has begun to change the language of writing. Texting and emoticons have created new ways of expressing thoughts and ideas. Should this new revolution be treated as writing and be included as literature? 

"We are inheritors- if unwilling inheritors - of another nineteenth century perspective, one of distrust of mass society and culture, if not simply of the masses themselves." I have heard many people think that the reading patterns of the youth today is degrading as they see them moving away from traditional reading. But should we judge the youth so harshly. After all, most of these kids are reading, but not reading what we want them to. A study in my English class that we saw took high school kids and measured how much they read the assigned reading and how much they read outside of class. The students read maybe 0 to 3 of the assigned readings that year, but outside the classroom the reading they did was closer to 20 books and higher that year. The youth today wants to read, but they want to read what they want to read. That isn't so bad an idea. There could be some books that are a must read for students, but the most important thing that should be accomplished is creating a culture where reading is accepted and enjoyed. We should not be shoving the classics down the throats of students who will then learn to hate reading and think themselves poor readers because of it.