Scribner & Cole

What implications does this have for schooling and literacy?

The biggest implication of this article is that it opens up an arena for serious discussion about literacy not just in school, but its place in American society as a cultural activity. It also provides people with a frame for debate about how literacy can continue to fit in the educational setting and what would be the appropriateness of integrating the way students use current technologies to facilitate their literacy.

I think Scribner & Cole said it best, " The most challenging question...how to balance appreciation for the special skills involved in writing with an appreciation of the fact that there is no evidence that writing promotes "general mental abilities". We did not find superior "memory in general" among Qur'anic students nor better language integration "skills in general" among Vai literates."

The beginning of the article starts by setting up the premise for the study they conducted with the Vai, group of people from northwestern Liberia. Essentially, due to a variety of educational and social policies, students' writing skills are on the decline. Although the article does not go into great detail about the possible reasons, the assumption is that a decline in writing implies that the ability to think and or process information in very specific ways will be affected.

The research conducted is in and of itself has very important implications for how we perceive literacy skills and its correlation with learning, thinking, and higher order processing.

Literacy is a "hot button" issue and Scribner & Cole article attempt to tackle the idea that those groups of people that possess literacy are better abstract thinkers and that they have the ability to think beyond the contextual world. On the reverse side, those groups of people who do not possess literacy are "crippled" and their language is stuck in a "primitive" stage.

The findings of the research provided a lot of "food for thought", it put writing into a different category. Writing is not just for some, but an activity that can be used in a variety of contexts with a wide range of groups. As future teachers, this article demonstrates that writing can be a useful tool and that there can be ways to integrate new technologies with current technology.

An example, is the blog allowing students to express them utilizing a forum that they are comfortable, not only provides them with a safety net, but it allows other people to exchange, share, and argue points with others they may not normally.

An implication of this article is that in indirectly provides a frame with which to place groups of people who come from non-literate or newly literate cultures. In the past, there was a tendency for those from literate societies to look down upon those "less fortunate".
This article indirectly posits that those from non-literate societies are not necessarily "mentally crippled" in terms of abstract thinking or that they are not able to decontextualize or possess better memories than groups of people from non-literate societies.