Orality and Literacy
Reflecting on Ong’s text Orality and Literacy, I think about my practice as a secondary school administrator and how the content of the reading applies in my context.
“You know what you can recall” (p. 33) – In oral cultures, the ability to reproduce information from memory was greatly prized. Ong describes the patterns different cultures used to share detailed stories from memory. Much of the computational power being used in oral cultures is described to consumed in the recollection of stories, processing of that information into reproducible patterns and applying the information to one’s surroundings.
Ong describes how the elderly are valued in oral cultures as they pass on the collective stories and knowledge (albeit with their personal selective editing of events) of those who came before (p. 41). Education was the passing of selectively edited and shaped knowledge as it applies to practical situations.
Moving into literate societies, where it became the teacher’s responsibility to pass the accepted printed knowledge (as determined by the regional authority), the linear script described in their notes, to the students.
I feel that now we are beyond both of these models, now in our schools; I would dare say that we consider memorization a four-letter word, and that the lecture is a practice that is strongly discouraged. The collective opinion is that there is no longer a need to memorize facts, dates and theories. Memorization and recollection are opposed from the inquiry-based skills and approaches touted as valuable for Millenials. Students are no longer expected to memorize anything. They are encouraged to ‘think critically’. The information repository that is the Internet has removed the memory component from learning and the necessity to recall. Trends in education towards ‘modern learning’ or ‘twenty-first century’ skills place a great deal of emphasis on student being able to use the collective intelligence of the masses to solve problems. Students are now expected to evaluate ideas, determine their authority, make connections between concepts and express their opinions. Statements such as “we are preparing our students for jobs that have not even been invented yet” are common and speak to emerging skill sets current educational trends are lauding as valuable.
Another parallel that I drew between the cultures of oral societies and our current ‘net’ generation was the idea of ‘collective amnesia’. In oral societies, as stories were passed from one generation to the next, selective editing occurred to remove details that were no longer relevant or en vogue. I wonder to what extent is this occurring in online ‘authoritative’ knowledge repositories (i.e., Wikipedia). The intention of these databases of knowledge was to gather the collective opinion of the masses and rely on multiple contributors to ensure the accuracy and validity of the content, but as new thought, knowledge and science emerge, how much has been discarded in the collective editing process?
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
Hi Michael,
I really enjoyed reading your post because you made some interesting connections between Ong’s (1992) article and the changes that are currently occurring in education. As you mention, recent educative approaches have shifted such that memorization is no longer the focus of lesson and students are now encouraged to think critically, analyze the information they are obtaining, and essentially become active learners.
Ong (1992) describes how the processes of conserving information is quite different when comparing oral and literate societies, however, I was still surprised to see some slight similarities in regards to the notion of relevancy. In oral societies, information or memories that are no longer relevant to the present are often cast aside or altered, thereby enabling the society to retain homeostasis (Ong, 1992). As I reflect on the rapid changes that are occurring in education today in response to the advancements of technology, it seems there is a similar pattern in removing or altering teaching and learning practices that are no longer relevant. For example, we are seeing more instructors moving away from the traditional lecture and adopting new strategies that enable them to present educational content in ways that are not only more relevant to students’ lives, but also to the ways in which they learn and share their knowledge. Seeing as most students now have the ability to quickly access a vast amount of information online, rote memorization is a practice that seems less suitable for students to develop ‘twenty-first century’ skills. I recently read an article on case-based learning and one comment that struck me as applicable to this post was that “if students can’t devise their own solution, they will not learn, even if they can recite some correct answer with 100% accuracy” (Kolodner, 1992). I can’t help but wonder if the increase use of the Internet and new technological tools have enabled us to create a worldwide community such that knowledge acquisition is no longer as independent as it once was in literate societies.
Kolodner, J. L. (1992). An introduction to case-based reasoning. Artificial Intelligence, 6, 3-34.
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
Hi Michael;
I also work in education and many of the students in the school where I teach are First Nations, so a major focus is on First Nations culture, which of course was traditionally an oral culture. What I find interesting is our need to retain cultural significance in our schools while we are, at the same time, devaluing traditions such as oral culture as a society. As a class, my students and I discuss the importance of oral communication and stories in various cultures, but the focus is really on the past rather than the present even in those discussions. While I recognize no one in British Columbia today could claim to be part of a primary oral culture, because of the cultural significance still placed on the oral tradition of passing lessons through stories by their clans, I believe many of the students I see have had exposure to a semi-oral culture and they recognize and respect, perhaps more than most, the importance of the information passed down by their elders.
As you have pointed out, Ong describes the importance and value placed on the elderly in oral cultures as they are the ones who pass on stories and knowledge to the younger generation. Rather than continue to learn from our elders, today’s younger generation teaches the older generation skills to do with technological developments and I wonder where our younger, digital-savvy generation is learning their moral lessons from? The internet? MTV music videos? Sitcoms and reality shows? The increase in technology certainly has made life easier in many ways for us – we are now able to live in an age where we do not have to do back-breaking work for endless hours in a day just to put food on the table for our families, but are we really better off?
Last year, I taught my students about geology and showed them a piece of obsidian. Before I even told them what it was, many were able to name the rock. Why? Not because they had been taught about it by their parents or teachers, but because, as they excitedly told me, proud to share their knowledge, “It’s in Mindcraft!” With this increase in technology, we have, as you have noted, shifted from a society that values oral tradition and the “…wise old men and women who specialize by conserving it, who know and can tell the stories of the days of old” to a society where the elderly and their stories and knowledge is not valued in the way it was in the past. Ong felt, even thirty years ago, that “By storing knowledge outside the mind, writing and, even more, print downgrade the figures of the wise old man and the wise old woman, repeaters of the past, in favour of younger discoverers of something new.” (p.41) – have those wise old men and women now, thirty years later, disappeared completely?
Forgot my references!
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.