Humanities Base Text

I have learned a lot by reading all the short stories included in the Humanities Base Text. Each story talked about literacy on a community or individual, but there were different lessons to learn from each situation.

Shirley Brice Heath discussed the literacy situation of an entire community, how this type of society takes on a different stance on what it means to be literate and that you can still live and make a living without being fully literate. I was surprised to see that even the upper-class of this community is not even trying to make a change with literacy, but has accepted the fact that many people do not know how to read and will alter to meet their abilities.

Jonathan Kozol was very interesting to read, to see the poor conditions that the citizens of East St. Louis live through as someone in the “bluffs” is prospering. I have learned that cities are made up of rags and riches, many of the rags not being helped but ignored by the riches. The issue of schooling was not new to me, but I found it interesting to see how bad the conditions of the schools are that bad. The government could make such a big difference if they could just even add more teachers or supplies or better equipment for their science labs. It’s not even worth going to school for some of these children. I have definitely thought about the issue of schooling in a new way. The fact that there is the facility of a school doesn’t mean that that town is getting an education. These kids were able to go to a school with enough books to go around or enough to take home and get homework. There also isn’t a good laboratory or athletics department. Even though the school offers these, there are not enough supplies to make it beneficial. It was interesting to talk about how the environment that someone lives in effects their lives so much. The pollution in East St. Louis is insane to see how it damages so many houses and creates more problems than are needed for these citizens.

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” brought new aspects to the Humanities Base Text. It brought the aspect of heritage, family and place in society all intertwined through literacy. Most of the other stories that I am used to reading previously and in this book are all specified to how literate people are and what conditions are progressing or hold them back, but “Everyday Use” brings about new reasoning. I learned that the family’s prosperity and relationship helps and hurts people’s thrive to become educated and wealthier, like Dee. I never thought of literacy in this way before, it made me think of how things that I go through every day, like dealing with my family, can alter my determination and therefore literacy.

Frederick Douglass wrote a basic story that I have read many times in high school in both history and English class. “Leaning to Read and Write” acts as a great reference for literacy in both courses by being about a slave learning to read and write. There are many great lessons in this story, but being about a famous slave, it has most likely already been taught previously.

Overall, I thought that everything in the Humanities Based Text is a great story that covers all the different types of literacy. There was a lot to learn, from literary aspects coming from the small community to the government to family heritage to slavery. Although there were a few things that were not new to me, they were all interesting to read and those that were new added to my knowledge of how literacy takes a role in all the different parts of the world.