[56 1/2 Main Street: 22] Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy - My thoughts/questions
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56 1/2 Main Street ยป 56 1/2 Main Street: 22 Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy - My thoughts/questions

Now, after completing my final project, I find myself still wanting to search out answers to questions I still have. I also find myself still writing a blog! (I'm going over to the Dark Side, it seems). I have been reading about Walter Ong and his work. The man was a genius. So far, I have read of his life/work in Wikipedia, as well as a review of his published work, Orality and Literacy, by Art Bingham. What follows are some of my thoughts and my questions regarding some of the concepts Ong discusses in his work.

Ong states that even a small amount of education in writing transforms people's mentality. There is a shift from the "holistic immersion of orality" to "interiorization and individuation." I am curious as to whether this phenomenon is paralleled or evident in the psychological/cognitive development of children, and I wonder if there is any link between their development and their education and their learning to read. There was a 'shift' in both cultures and people that was most evident with the advent of print. People were at one time "aural/oral thinkers/perceivers," and they became more visually centered as they were immersed in a literate culture.

My question: Is there a recognizable and identifiable change in children's thinking and cognitive development due to their learning to read? I found Kendra Cherry's report/summary regarding Piaget's four stages of cognitive development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development lists of four stages that include the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.

The sensorimotor stage occurs before the age of two, so that stage would not be affected by the acquisition of reading/writing skills. The preoperational stage, between the ages of two and six, is marked as a crucial time of language development. At this point, children do not understand concrete logic and cannot manipulate information mentally. They are egocentric, unable to take the point of view of other people.

Children in the preoperational stage do develop the ability to use symbols. Their abilities increase throughout this stage, and this is evidenced by their increase in 'pretending' while they play. A broom becomes a horse. Children pretend to be someone else as they play the role of 'mommy,' 'daddy,' or other people in their lives.

The next stage, the concrete operational stage, typically begins at age seven and continues until age eleven. This is when most children would be learning to read. Children in this stage of development actually gain an understanding of mental operations. They begin to think logically about concrete events. Cherry states, "They do have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts."

Inductive logic is not a problem for children at this stage of development. They can go from specific experience to recognizing/forming general principles. Deductive logic, however, is still a bit beyond them. It is difficult for children to use a general principle to predict or determine the outcome of a specific event.

The final stage of cognitive development, according to Piaget, begins at age twelve and continues into adulthood. The ability to think about abstract concepts develops, and the skills of logical thinking, deductive reasoning and systematic planning are usually first seen in this stage.

I found nothing that would indicate any changes in thinking brought about by a child's learning to read/write. I had hoped to see if there was some cognitive change that might be attributed to acquiring the skills of reading and writing. Perhaps this shift in thinking and the shift from being aural/oral creatures to visual 'thinkers' that Ong discusses might be evidenced in the cognitive changes Piaget outlines. In my limited knowledge/experience, I didn't seem to find much to support this idea. It could be that because children are raised/immersed in a literate culture with its dependence on visual cues/visually-based thinking, there would be no such observable change.

Regarding the "transformation of human thought from a world of thought to a world of sight," our sense of hearing is not as acute as our sense of sight. In a report entitled, Sensing a Change in the Environment, Maya Pines of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute states that the brain activity associated with our sense of sight involves about full one-quarter of the cells of the cerebral cortex. This would suggest physiological evidence that we humans are 'hard wired' for sight much more than for hearing.

We are not a species that is typically known for keen hearing. The fact that we have the ability to see colors while many other species cannot, along with the proportion of our brain that is dedicated to processing visual info might suggest that our sight is the stronger of the two senses. Ray Amara of the Institute for the Future makes an interesting point when he compares sight to hearing. As he discusses digital sound compared to digital sound in his post on gearslutz, Amara says that very few of us can listen to a specific wave frequency of sound and name the frequency. Sound waves vibrating at 440 vibrations per second create the pitch we call 'A.' The ability to identify specific sound frequencies, a very rare ability, is known as perfect pitch. When it comes to identifying specific light frequencies, relatively few of us have any trouble identifying 'green' or 'blue' or 'red' or even 'dark red.'

Of course, we may have lost some of our hearing acuity along the way. In addition, I would assume that somewhere along the line we were more likely to be prey as well as predator as opposed to our present pride of place at the top of the food chain. Wouldn't we humans have been able to SEE a threat long before hearing it?? Maybe the point here is that when regarding communication, receiving info, and 'learning,' the shift from hearing to sight had such a big impact because our sense of sight is much stronger. Maybe we simply needed the technology in place to allow us to use this stronger sense, and in doing so, our thinking not only changed from sounds to sights, it also became more efficient and more effective. And, maybe not.

I believe an example that effectively shows this shift is the way we learn and then perform music. Presently, it is the musician who quickly and successfully 'plays by ear' who is seen as the exception when compared to other musicians. These musicians are considered to be an anomaly, a throw-back. Their skill at hearing a piece of music and then accurately playing that piece is marveled at by others, and it is considered an enviable ability/talent. It is clearly not the 'norm.'

Most of us do not have that ability. We've been immersed in a literate/visual culture. We even have classes that teach 'sight-singing,' looking at a printed piece of music and singing what is shown. There obviously was a time when all music was 'played by ear.' And this phenomenon of accurately reproducing what we have heard (or not) is not limited to musicians. Nearly all of us have either heard of, or played, the game of "Telephone." The first player comes up with a 'message' and whispers it into the ear of the next player. That player, in turn, whispers it to the next, and on and on the message travels until the last player states the message for all to hear. We giggle at the convoluted final product. We're giggling at our inability to hear and then accurately remember and reproduce what we have heard.

Have we given up some of our hearing acuity as we became visual creatures? Or, have we always been a species with a more highly developed sense of vision and we merely needed the appropriate communication technologies in place, technologies such as reading, writing, and printed text, to more fully take advantage of this sensory advantage?

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