Ashley Pence
November 23, 2007
I realized that at the beginning of this project that I could choose from a wide variety of topics that dealt with literacy. The fact that I had so many options did not hinder my decision however when I chose my topic. It was as if I had already planned it in my mind and there really was not much that could change it. It’s true that my topic changed slightly from focusing mainly on poverty and it’s affects on literacy to a broader view that focused on family culture as a whole. The main idea was still a big contributing factor to the final outcome of the paper.
I was interested in this topic most importantly because I have witnessed it first hand. My foundation question about generational literacy allowed me to dive deeper into my own families history and how literacy has changed over time. I gained a greater knowledge of not only my experiences being a young adult in today’s society, but also learned about my families experiences as young adults when literacy was developing in them.
By living in the Appalachian hills of Eastern Kentucky I have also witnessed first hand the affects that literacy can have on individuals. My first thought was of my job at Grayson Rural Electric. The name in itself “rural” explains some of what we may expect to see in an area such as this. By accepting payments for electric bills I saw many people who could not fill out their checks. They would lay their checkbooks on the counter and ask me to fill it out for them, then they would sign it. The signatures were hardly legible. Each time I would witness this I would think about it, but I never thought that one day I would be writing about it. I also witnessed many who could not pay their electric bills, not just a one time thing, but each month. This led me to believe that these people were stuck in the cycle of what I referenced to in my paper as intergenerational illiteracy. Those who could not pay their bills perhaps had parents who were illiterate and therefore could not maintain or acquire a good job due to the lack of those skills. In return they had children who were illiterate and therefore could not maintain or acquire a good job for the same reason.
By witnessing those two aspects of family culture I was inspired to learn and write more about a topic that I feel is so important in today’s world.
