I am obsessed with Inonibird’s artwork featuring the gods of ancient Egypt. I was especially excited about this image, in which the artist rendered Thoth with the “the more you know” sign. I like it because I don’t need to be able to read Egyptian hieroglyphics in order to recognize the message. It’s one of the more unique aspects of literacy, that one is able to recognize certain ideas via the way that they are pictured. And while it is certainly limiting to only use pictures to represent ideas it’s an interesting type of literacy that we are in possession of.
Even before we are able to read we are able to recognize the difference between the men’s room and the women’s room, because we are taught from a young age by our parents to understand what the symbols mean. I guess it’s like Scribner’s adaptive literacy, in that it’s a functional type of literacy. I think of the signs around campsites, which as someone who doesn’t camp often, I find difficult to understand. But I could adapt if I had to by employing the social aspects of literacy and asking for clarification from those around me. That’s kind of what I got from Street’s article, the idea that literacy is social, not technical. We can’t fully gasp literacy if we only learn about it in a classroom, and even in that case it’s impossible to restrict literacy to one environment.
