Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 9 - September 14, 2020
Lest those from the West believe this to be something that happens over there, certainly not here on the home front, think again. Former editor of Christianity Today, Andy Crouch, concludes the Americas are changing fast to a “fame-shame” culture.
highly literate people who can analyze text and learn from it are a definite minority across the globe.
“Enter a stream at the turn; enter a boat at the port; enter a country according to its customs.” —Cambodian proverb
According to Kutner et al., ninety-three million Americans or 43 percent of the US population at that time could not follow directions using a map.
the International Orality Network and Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization estimated four billion people over the age of fifteen or “two-thirds of the world’s population are oral communicators”—people who cannot read or prefer not to read, people with a different learning preference than one relying on print alone.8
Parker reported: “Functionally illiterate persons comprise 68 percent of those arrested, 85 percent of unwed mothers, 79 percent of welfare dependents, 85 percent of dropouts, and 72 percent of the unemployed.”11
SLIFE—Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education.
Some missiologists call them “oral preference learners”14 and have discovered that even those with higher levels of education can be oral learners,15 just as did Sweeney in a study of Malay university students.16
West disagreed with the term “oral preference learner,” claiming orality is not “a ‘preference’ (as if an insider cultural participant could choose or not choose oral style), but . . . an identity.”17 Gee explained, “Saying that someone is in an ‘oral culture’ does not mean that they and other members of their culture are not literate; it means only that their culture retains a strong allegiance to thematically based, culturally significant face-to-face storytelling.”18 Continuing, Gee noted, Along with storytelling, though, the pervasiveness of orality may be signaled by interpersonal
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They learned by more than just oral means, so why label them as such?
According to Foley, “Orality alone is a ‘distinction’ badly in need of deconstruction, a typology that unfairly homogenizes much more than it can hope to distinguish; it is by itself a false and very misleading category.”
I chose to adapt the SLIFE term (Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education) coined by DeCapua and Marshall and call the participants Adults with Limited Formal Education (ALFE).27 In the course of this study of ALFE learning strategies, I also hoped to locate a more positive term for the participants and describe them according to their preferred way of learning.
a few educational researchers view western teaching and learning, along with literacy training, as instruments of colonialism and oppression.40 Some educational scholars reject the advantages of literacy and the belief that illiteracy is directly associated with poverty and other social ills.41
The notion that traditional cultures living in harmony with an orally-toned worldview are characteristically quite distinct from cultures that have fully embraced the technologies and affordances of literacy, and that these distinctions might have relevance for literacy and academic instruction of students from oral environments, is a notion that has largely escaped the attention of educational researchers and policy makers.43
learning is the complex, often ubiquitous, cognitive/psychomotor/social/affective process of gaining knowledge, skills, values, and beliefs which includes “interaction between what is known” and what is yet to be acquired.
Orality, “as analytic concept, involves a mindset, a whole attitude towards reality and experience.”58 Orality is a complex cultural construct much broader than a state of non-reading and whose learning patterns I hope to more fully comprehend through this study.
this dissertation explored the intersection of sociocultural and contextual factors and how ALFE learn.
This is a helpful framework for describing the scope and intent of the study.
Even though the Khmer Rouge destroyed many works of literature, the nation does have a well-established written script and literature; therefore, Cambodia is not a primary oral culture according to Ong’s definition mentioned in chapter 1.176 Rather, the kingdom of Cambodia has faced poverty, war, and genocide, and has historically not been as concerned with formal education as have neighboring nations.
Ong’s work greatly influenced writings on orality—to the point many pieces seem to be a repetition of his thoughts—like Ongites spouting Ongese.225 In describing this phenomenon, I mean no disrespect but rather desire to emphasize the dearth of original research with oral learners.
A literature professor, he only developed a conceptual study. Cruikshank had similar misgivings, stating, “I recall reading Ong, Havelock, and Innis years ago, intrigued by their arguments but troubled that none of these theoretical giants had actually spent much time talking with oral storytellers.”
neuroscience researchers Kosmidis et al. determined “semantic processing strategies” to be equivalent in literates and nonliterates.229 Dias et al. also recognized both schooled and unschooled participants could “reason from unfamiliar premises” with prompting.230
literates and nonliterates reason with similar strategies.
Many seem to view orality/illiteracy as merely a liminal state on the path to literacy.
However, my main concern is for oral learners in their present moment. How do they learn without reading skills right now? How can we teach in an effective manner according to the ways they naturally learn, whether a person chooses the road to literacy or not?
Comparing oral literature and that composed by literates, Finnegan viewed orality as a “huge and complicated subject—far too complex to be reduced to trite classifications or the categorization implied when we facilely define certain groups as ‘non-literate’ and unthinkingly go on to assume consequences from this for the nature of their thought.”267
Works on storytelling and the use and power of narrative are equally abundant—in the fields of neuroscience, science, communication, management, persuasion, development, qualitative research, and education as well as teacher education and professional development.275 Applied orality proponents in the field of missiology have also latched onto narrative with fervor and rightly so. Works on storying come from Boomershine, Bradt, Colgate, Corcoran, Koehler, Loewen, Lovejoy, McIlwain, Norwood, Pederson, Reinsborough and Canning, Robinson, Salisbury, Singerman, Slack et al., So, Stahl, Steffen, and
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In a critical examination of the literature surrounding orality in Christian circles, one would not be amiss in concluding many of those writing seem to equate orality with the use of narrative. However, orality involves much more. In fact, even the word orality seems problematic, an attempt to supply an antonym for the word literacy. In my years of experience with oral learners, I have noticed they are not exclusively oral. They can be quite visual or kinesthetic. They can also be social and observational in their learning.
missiology. Madinger’s treatise on orality rightly proposed a more holistic approach, including more than storytelling.278 His diagram incorporated elements he called “seven disciplines of orality” that should frame oral content. However, I see his diagram as more of an outsider’s etic approach to orality than one directly incorporating researched elements from the emic world of an oral person and their needs.
Focusing on the anthropology of gesture, Jousse had experience with illiteracy, contrary to Ong. His mother and most in his birthplace were non-readers. Fortunately, West revived Jousse’s ideas in a recent presentation urging the “re-eventing” of theological education.286
In considering other elements besides storying, Keysser recounted using the “acted out Word” successfully when preaching was not well received in New Guinea in the early part of the century.296 Moreover, Moon maintained we “look for discipling methods in all the wrong places” in dealing with oral learners.297 In his work with West Africans, Moon investigated the use of rituals.298 His dissertation researched using proverbs,299 and he quipped, “We become what we hum,” “rituals drive meaning to the bone,” and “drama stands the Word of God on its feet.”300 Similarly, McIntyre directed his
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According to Foster, African songs function as the carriers of oral theology.308
to Ong’s dichotomized listings contrasting orality and literacy seems to be a standard mantra. A number of works addressed communication and orality—dealing with Bible translation, communication style, culture, preaching, and use of media.321
In the sensitive climate of western education, one concern has involved naming oral learners, a concern I also expressed in chapter 1. Brod used the term “non-readers.”326
Through classroom observation and mentoring teachers, we have identified reasons why SLIFE may not succeed, despite these excellent recommendations and strategies. We argue that these are only pieces of a larger puzzle. What is needed is an overall reconceptualization of the education of SLIFE.339
They continued, “When SLIFE enter the US schools, they are confronted with a contrasting way of approaching learning and organizing knowledge.”340 What happens when expatriates go to other cultures in teaching capacities? Something similar happens in reverse.
Noticeably lacking, however, are a few types of studies, such as the history of orality in missions. Steffen and Terry analyzed the flow of McIlwain’s work in biblical storying362 from the Philippines outward, but there is scant research on the use of narrative in mission work through the centuries.363 Missing as well are works in areas like oral hermeneutics or ways for oral learners to study non-narrative Bible portions. The only examples at present are Swearingen364 and Chifungo.365
They maintained, “Literacy . . . is something like a public good in that a literate agent confers a positive externality on the illiterate agents in the household by sharing the benefits of his or her literacy.”375 Therefore, in their estimation drawn from data in Bangladesh, the idea of proximate (proximal) illiteracy versus isolated illiteracy was of major importance. Their wise concept for group-oriented cultures could bring an efficient strategy to literacy programs, helping target households with no access to one literate person, as opposed to trying to teach every person to read.
Diouf, Sheckley, and Kehrhahn questioned, “What, when, why, how, and from whom do adults in African villages learn?”377
Thompson’s study considered “preparing the western-educated literate to be effective in the transfer of knowledge in traditional West African nonliterate communities.”379
According to research, non-print learners and print learners think differently.390
However, none of these studies addressed how adults with limited formal education learn, especially in the Cambodian context.
as for researched oral ways of learning, there is more of a lacuna.
The purpose of this ethnographic GT study was to understand the ways of learning of oral Cambodian adults or those with limited formal education—that is, how oral Cambodian ALFE learn or acquire new knowledge, beliefs/values, or skills.
The affective dimension of ALFE learning took me by surprise, changing my heart forever toward those who have few opportunities to learn. I imagined my research would be a more of a cognitive journey, but it was an emotional one from the first interview onward.
In response to the central research question, “How do oral Cambodian adults with limited formal education (ALFE) learn or acquire new knowledge, beliefs/values, and skills?” the one-word answer would be connection. The central theme that emerged was one of connected or relational learning or learning by socialization.
ALFE preferred learning from people instead of learning from print.
Scholars have proposed many types of learning—observational, dialogical, conversational, experiential, and problem-based, to name just a few. Each kind of learning focuses on the means and tends to ignore the vehicle by which the learning is accomplished. By contrast, ALFE seemed to concentrate heavily on the vehicle—the person—in learning.
For the participants, connected learning seemed to be a holistic inclusion of all these forms of learning with an emphasis on relationship or connection. Figure 10. Components of connected learning.
them. As Einstein explained, Knowledge exists in two forms—lifeless, stored in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.500
As Marrs and Benton related, the foundation of such an emphasis is relational.502 However, what emerged from this study was more holistic than merely applying connected knowing to ALFE learning.
In his study of Thai Christians’ understanding of God, Taylor concurred with the findings of this study: “The Thai have a tradition of learning from people rather than from books.”512 In the 2013 Participate study of “people’s experiences of living in poverty,” the researchers found that relationship was a key to sustainable development.513 Similarly, Bigelow explained in her study with a Somali diaspora group, “Orality does not just denote communicating through listening, speaking, orating, and reading poetry; in the deepest sense, it refers to a way of life entirely organically fashioned on
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