This week in class confused me at first. I wasn’t sure if I was understanding the message.

(Get it!)

The quote,”A self created in Literacy is a lesser self” is interesting, because the idea that not being able to read makes you smarter because all the knowledge you need to know is memorized. Whereas, literate persons will look up said knowledge. I believe that literacy can limit our abilities, because we spend more time researching than discussing and discovering. However, just because someone is illiterate does not mean they are smarter. We discussed “The medium is the message”, and if the information or message you receive from the medium is only partially true, and you teach or argue off of those facts, one can still create a lesser self. Illiteracy can sometimes be based in ignorance or false information.

We also discussed the idea of writing created two selves, the “writing self” and the “reading self” and we posed the question:

“When you are reading to yourself, who are you reading to?”

When reading to yourself, you are not necessarily reading as much as comprehending and taking in information, compared to reading aloud where you are not really taking in information. If “the medium is the message” and the message is whatever knowledge you receive from literature, does literacy actually create a lesser self (as literacy is democratizing access to knowledge)?