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Mothers as Pupils in Health Care Settings

Robert A. Levine, Sarah E. Levine, Beatrice Schnell-Anzola, Meredith L. Rowe, and Emily Dexter

in Literacy and Mothering: How Women’s Schooling Changes the Lives of the World's Children

In this chapter the literacy-mediation hypothesis – that the acquisition of academic literacy influences health literacy and health navigation skills – is tested in the four-country data and the ... More

In this chapter the literacy-mediation hypothesis – that the acquisition of academic literacy influences health literacy and health navigation skills – is tested in the four-country data and the UNICEF Nepal survey. The hypothesis is supported by multivariate analyses, not only in regard to the comprehension of printed health messages but also in the comprehension of radio messages and in producing an intelligible illness narrative – though both of the latter are oral communication tasks. These findings suggest that literacy instruction in school promotes a woman’s health literacy and navigation skills beyond those that involve reading and writing, and point to a more general ability to communicate in bureaucratic settings like schools and clinics and to a tendency to accept the authority of health professionals. The UNICEF Nepal survey shows health knowledge and media exposure to be involved in the causal sequence.Less

More than Half of You Can't Read This

Peter Wright (ed.)

in Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing/Writers on Wolfe

Responding to a request by the Writers of the Future Contest on Palm Sunday, 1987, Wolfe demonstrates his love of puns by offering five predictions for the next twenty-five years: one for each ... More

Responding to a request by the Writers of the Future Contest on Palm Sunday, 1987, Wolfe demonstrates his love of puns by offering five predictions for the next twenty-five years: one for each finger. These include a balance of power between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.; the gradual de-emphasis of literacy in an education system training students solely for employment; television broadcasts dominated by sports and televised dramas performed by CGI actors; little sex outside of legally contracted marriages; and a literate minority that provides leadership in most areas. He sees a literate counterculture emerging to extend literacy amongst the disenfranchised.Less

Pre-industrial agriculture

I. G. Simmons

in Global Environmental History: 10,000 BC to AD 2000

The development of agriculture after about 10,000 BC produced human-directed genetics and environments. Though fire was still used, solar energy was garnered from more concentrated sources as crops ... More

The development of agriculture after about 10,000 BC produced human-directed genetics and environments. Though fire was still used, solar energy was garnered from more concentrated sources as crops and domestic animals. Wind and water power were also harnessed. Outside the cultivable areas, pastoralism might tap wild vegetation with tame animals. Emphasis was placed on extending the productive area in order to feed growing populations and demanding elites. Stratification permeates the structures of society and in parallel the natural world becomes classified into types of resource. Not all of these are for subsistence since pleasure gardens and hunting reserves appear. The invention of writing further confers power on selected elites and also allows worldviews to be transmitted which confirm an hierarchy of the world in which humans are exceptional and entitled to the use of the rest of Earth's materials.Less

Sources of radicalism

Tom Woodin

in Working-class writing and publishing in the late-twentieth century: Literature, culture and community

Working class writing and publishing workshops had their origins in the counter cultural trends of the late 1960s. By the 1970s they engaged with urban communities where there was a strong class ... More

Working class writing and publishing workshops had their origins in the counter cultural trends of the late 1960s. By the 1970s they engaged with urban communities where there was a strong class consciousness. This chapter charts the way in which working class culture became a significant source of new ideas and practices. In particular, the cultural role of schools, adult education, community organising, adult literacy, popular history and the labour movement are examined in relation to the emergence of a movement of working class writing and publishing workshops. In each of these areas, ideas about culture, technology and tradition were being reworked in order to foster popular cultural participation.Less

A beginner reader is not a beginner thinker

Tom Woodin

in Working-class writing and publishing in the late-twentieth century: Literature, culture and community

The writing produced by adult literacy students emerged out of a distinct educational and cultural setting. Student writing itself represented a significant example of learning. The writing itself ... More

The writing produced by adult literacy students emerged out of a distinct educational and cultural setting. Student writing itself represented a significant example of learning. The writing itself tended to be simple and clear representations of working class life and voices. The experience of ‘failure’ in education was a powerful one that formed the basis for personal expression. Experience was seen to put the student in control. Political issues and writing beyond the third person were also encouraged, with mixed results. In the changed context of the 1990s, new stories based on humorous episodes helped to represent students as normal rather than oppressed. Yet social justice continued to inflect the writing and there were attempts to move students into the wider network of writing groups.Less

Going public

Lionel Laborie

in Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and religious experience in early eighteenth-century England

Chapter 4 explores the debate around enthusiasm in late Stuart England. After looking at the French Prophets’ millenarian assemblies, during which they performed Biblical allegories and miracles, it ... More

Chapter 4 explores the debate around enthusiasm in late Stuart England. After looking at the French Prophets’ millenarian assemblies, during which they performed Biblical allegories and miracles, it considers how enthusiasts and dissenters took advantage of the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 to promote their beliefs. With their claims to divine inspirations and insight into the future, the French Prophets sparked a spectacular battle of pamphlets of at least 150 extant titles in just three years. This controversy contributed to the early Enlightenment debate on the nature of enthusiasm. It shows how beliefs in witchcraft and demonic possessions persisted beyond 1700 and how satire became a weapon against enthusiasts in general. The case of the French Prophets would later serve as a precedent against the Methodists in the mid eighteenth century.Less

Introduction

Nick Mansfield

in Soldiers as Citizens: Popular Politics and the Nineteenth-Century British Military

In common with its companion volume - Soldiers as Workers – Class, employment, conflict and the nineteenth century military (2016), this study argues that class is the primary means of understanding ... More

In common with its companion volume - Soldiers as Workers – Class, employment, conflict and the nineteenth century military (2016), this study argues that class is the primary means of understanding the topic. Focusing on rank and file soldiers it concludes that they were not a separate caste. Instead, soldiering was often just a phase in civilian working lives. The nineteenth century was overshadowed by the mass mobilisation required for the generation-long French Wars and concurrent Industrial Revolution, with emerging working-class popular politics. The chapter reviews developing working class literacy and subsequent growth of rank and file memoirs, which are an important source for this study. The chapter stresses the importance of the new barrack system in the UK and the growth of British Empire, both of which had profound consequences for British society.Less

George Eliot’s Anachronistic Literacies

Mary L. Mullen

in Novel Institutions: Anachronism, Irish Novels and Nineteenth-Century Realism

This chapter focuses on narrative metalepsis in the novels of George Eliot, the most central figure in studies of Victorian realism and often the standard through which Irish novelists are deemed not ... More

This chapter focuses on narrative metalepsis in the novels of George Eliot, the most central figure in studies of Victorian realism and often the standard through which Irish novelists are deemed not realist enough. But William Carleton’s and Charles Kickham’s ethnographic realism allows us to understand Eliot’s provincial realism in a new way: as divided rather than integrative. In novels that encourage institutional consolidation, Eliot uses narrative metalepsis to question modern institutionalism’s drive toward futurity. Adam Bede (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) produce a form of anachronistic literacy—a mode of reading and remembering that collapses historical distance as it celebrates the immediacy of the past—to question women’s fraught relationship to modern institutionalism. Eliot’s embrace of anachronism is surprising because her novels seem to produce a form of historicism grounded in path-dependency: in her novels, past choices tend to constrain present decisions. But, in novels that otherwise confirm the existing path, Eliot’s anachronistic literacy creates radical ruptures that mobilise anachronisms to imagine otherwise.Less

Between Idealism and Pragmatism: Postwar Hong Kong’s Official Film Culture

Jing Jing Chang

in Screening Communities: Negotiating Narratives of Empire, Nation, and the Cold War in Hong Kong Cinema

Chapter 2 traces the development of Hong Kong’s official film culture during the 1950s and 1960s within the contexts of the documentary film movement, the imperial legacy of the British Colonial Film ... More

Chapter 2 traces the development of Hong Kong’s official film culture during the 1950s and 1960s within the contexts of the documentary film movement, the imperial legacy of the British Colonial Film Unit, and the colonial rhetoric of film literacy. In particular, it uses such Hong Kong Film Unit-produced short features as Report to the Gods (Dir. Brian Salt, 1967), starring local opera talent Leung Sing-por, as archival sources to argue that the colonial regime’s relationship with Hong Kong’s population was not a static vertical imposition of the “culture of depoliticization,” but one that was shifting and characterized by manipulation, misunderstanding, and negotiation amid bipolarized Cold War tension. I argue here that British Hong Kong’s involvement in filmmaking activities expose the top-down imposition of a colonial regime as well as the transformative nature of colonial rule during the Cold War period of the 1950s through 1960s. Official film culture should not be seen merely as tools of colonial governance or a means of indoctrinating subject audiences, but rather was part of an overall “strategy for survival” as well as an integral component in the process of screening the local Hong Kong “colonial” citizenry during the Cold War.Less

“Can You Hear Me Now?”: Frontier’s Integration with the Global Economy

Marko Dimitrijević and Timothy Mistele

in Frontier Investor: How to Prosper in the Next Emerging Markets

Discusses the integration of today’s frontier markets into the global economy and how technology and education in particular will accelerate this integration.

Poor, Black, and a Teacher: Loyal Black Revolutionaries and the Literacy Campaign

Devyn Spence Benson

in Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution

Chapter 5 returns to domestic struggles and explores the iconization of Conrado Benítez, a murdered volunteer teacher, to reveal how the Cuban state mobilized images of black martyrs to celebrate the ... More

Chapter 5 returns to domestic struggles and explores the iconization of Conrado Benítez, a murdered volunteer teacher, to reveal how the Cuban state mobilized images of black martyrs to celebrate the resolution of the fight against racial discrimination. Cuban newspapers, literacy campaign publicity, and oral histories from this period demonstrate a shift in revolutionary discourses on race. Revolutionary leaders closed official conversations about racism in 1961 when they proclaimed that the new government had eliminated discrimination and linked continued racism to counterrevolution. The story of Benítez and the way he was used as the figurehead for the literacy campaign epitomizes these shifts. Revolutionary leaders constructed a narrative about Benítez’s life that celebrated the incorporation of black soldiers into the nation while simultaneously limiting black citizenship to loyal and grateful clients of the state. This move shut the metaphorical “door” on debates about racism out of a fear that the issue would be divisive and threaten the national unity needed to defeat threats against the new government like the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by U.S.-supported Miami exiles.Less

From Community School to Traditional

Sam F. Stack

in The Arthurdale Community School: Education and Reform in Depression Era Appalachia

This chapter discusses the gradual transition of the Arthurdale School from an experiment educational institution to a more traditional one following the departure of the progressive contingent of ... More

This chapter discusses the gradual transition of the Arthurdale School from an experiment educational institution to a more traditional one following the departure of the progressive contingent of educators. It discusses the changes and the similarities of the philosophy and practices of the changing school and community as well as some of the contradictions between progressive rhetoric and actual practice. Following the departure of Clapp and her progressive contingent, the school became part of the local Preston County school system. The chapter addresses the leadership of Grant Nine, who took over for Clapp and agreed with some aspects of progressive education philosophy. Among the teachers, George Beecher and Fletcher Collins went to Elon College in North Carolina. Collins continued his work in folklore collection and Beecher his work in science curriculum. The chapter discusses two important reports, one written by the Arthurdale high school faculty and the other by faculty from the College of Education, West Virginia University, showing distinctive differences in philosophy and in what should be the future direction of the Arthurdale School.Less

Fatherland or Death!: Setting the Revolution's Foundations, 1959–1962

Luis Martínez-Fernández

in Revolutionary Cuba: A History

Chapter 2 looks at the decisive first four years of revolution, tracing and analyzing the manifold challenges it faced domestically and in the international arena. It traces the processes through ... More

Chapter 2 looks at the decisive first four years of revolution, tracing and analyzing the manifold challenges it faced domestically and in the international arena. It traces the processes through which the guerrillas and civilian rebels dismantled the old military, political, and civil society institutions while creating revolutionary institutions such as the mass organizations and a single party dominated by communists. It also covers the deterioration of U.S.-Cuba relations and Cuba’s growing alliances with China and the USSR. These realities, along with a massive exile of Cubans, fostered events such as the imposition of a trade embargo against Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Missile Crisis. The chapter evaluates the accomplishments of the revolution by assessing the Agrarian Reform, the Literacy Campaign, and the expansion of medical and education services. It also examines the revolution’s shortcomings by considering government repression, executions, censorship, and food rationing.Less

Enlisting Citizens in the Military Mobilization of the Nationalist State

Yan Xu

in The Soldier Image and State-Building in Modern China, 1924-1945

Xu discusses how conscription laws, army textbooks, and the New Life Movement propaganda helped the Chinese Nationalist state construct the soldier figure in the 1930s. These supplementary materials ... More

Xu discusses how conscription laws, army textbooks, and the New Life Movement propaganda helped the Chinese Nationalist state construct the soldier figure in the 1930s. These supplementary materials aided in configuring the citizenship ideal the Nationalist Party envisioned of their soldiers at Whampoa. In addition, literacy education was pivotal to morality and virtue, and thus was implemented into programs for the soldiers in order to educate the young individuals who previously had not been or were poorly taught. Despite these attempts, much of society did not respect and attempt to emulate these soldiers because of their social status and the fact that they still had few rights.Less

Introduction

L. Stephanie Cobb

in Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts

The Introduction focuses on the differences between ancient and modern experiences of martyr texts. In particular, it explores how ancient audiences might have received these stories: aurally within ... More

The Introduction focuses on the differences between ancient and modern experiences of martyr texts. In particular, it explores how ancient audiences might have received these stories: aurally within communal settings, particularly in church settings. It examines the ways martyr texts employ techniques of oral delivery to engage audiences emotionally. It differentiates the cultural contexts of modern and ancient audiences that affect the ways the texts can be understood: what cultural knowledge is required to engage fully with martyr texts?Less

1959–61: The first flush of revolution

Kumaraswami Par

in Literary culture in Cuba: Revolution, nation-building and the book

This chapter examines the three years of the initial Revolution, the years of redefinition when the new literary culture emerged from experience and the developing ideological consensus. The pace, ... More

This chapter examines the three years of the initial Revolution, the years of redefinition when the new literary culture emerged from experience and the developing ideological consensus. The pace, scale and depth of the early changes were so significant that they warrant detailed attention. The discussion argues that the first period stood clearly apart from the following three decades, concluding that 1961 was clearly the end of one phase and the start of another, because the first phase of uncertainty and unfocused enthusiasm was closed by the ending of the Literacy Campaign.Less

Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook

Emily Wingfield

in Aspects of knowledge: Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages

Emily Wingfield’s chapter examines treatments of Queen Margaret of Scotland (d. 1093), beginning with the Life written by Turgot, prior of Durham, at the request of Margaret’s daughter the English ... More

Emily Wingfield’s chapter examines treatments of Queen Margaret of Scotland (d. 1093), beginning with the Life written by Turgot, prior of Durham, at the request of Margaret’s daughter the English queen Matilda, a work that highlights Margaret’s literacy and learning; Margaret’s role as reader and writer is shown to be emphasised also in later treatments. The subject of this chapter is thus not a branch of knowledge but the perceived learning of an important female individual and the significance of that learning in constructions of her as a saint. The chapter examines the way in which books function as vehicles for Margaret’s sanctity and political power and suggests that the Life itself is designed to model the life of a learned and holy queen for Margaret’s daughter, Matilda. Wingfield then considers how later verbal and visual accounts of Margaret develop this tradition so that she comes to function as an advisor of princes as well as princesses, her sanctity being shown to inhere ‘quite specifically, in her literacy’.Less