a few weeks ago I was helping a young
woman in an after-school program she was
writing a paper on the country of Haiti
and the paper was unorganized and
frankly it’s sort of boring and she was
really frustrated with it so I asked her
just to close her computer and tell me
one interesting thing she had learned
about the country she paused for a
moment and then she got really excited
and said that she had a classmate that
was from Haiti and that she had had a
conversation with her and she had asked
her about the country as a whole and her
experience there and the answers she
said were fascinating I said great let’s
put this in the paper and she said no I
can’t use this my teacher said that I
couldn’t use my friends stories because
it wasn’t a serious academic source now
what would make her teacher make this
choice one that sapped this paper of any
connection to real lived story the
answer I think at least partially lies
in a word it is a word that is rarely
named much less questioned the word is
scripto centrism now scripto centrism
basically just means the privileges of
text especially in academia over any
other form or medium of knowledge if you
google it you will come up with around
1,200 results as a quick comparison if
you google cat memes you will come up
with over 18 million
it is not very popular but it is hugely
influential there was a man who knew a
bit about scripto centrism even though
the word wasn’t around when he was the
man was named Frederick and you may know
him as Frederick Douglass an escaped
slave from Maryland who taught himself
to read and write even though it was
illegal for him to do so at the time now
Frederick was a prolific writer and
because he was one of few slaves who
could write his writing is invaluable to
us but even he recognized that story
cannot always be contained in a text and
in his autobiography he wrote and I’ll
paraphrase that sitting in the presence
of slaves
singing slave songs would do more to
tell you about their experience than in
the reading of whole volumes of books
you see scripto centrism tricks us into
believing that all knowledge all history
all research paper worthy truths can be
contained in text we are told this
through our education system which is
driven by reading and writing standards
we are given statistics on entire
country’s education based solely on
their literacy rates our government has
endowed the written word with such power
that we go from telling people like
Frederick that he has done something
illegal when he is caught with papers to
telling others they are illegal when
they are caught without them
now surely reading and writing can be a
powerful tool sometimes even an
equalizer and it’s also true that books
can transport us to places that we’ve
never been but text was never the
problem
scripto centrism is it dismisses the
voices of those who can’t or don’t care
to speak in an academic way those who
don’t speak in standard English it
tricks us into believing that literacy
is synonymous with education it tricks
us
to believing that literacy means
objectivity but stories are persistent
they are crafty and they are finding
their way into the public discourse in
what some are calling the Golden Age of
storytelling never before have we had so
many mediums through which to tell and
hear stories and it is democratizing the
way we produce and consume them film has
expanded to allow award-winning movies
to be shot on iPhones podcasts and
YouTube are shifting the way we think
about public speaking and who has access
to it story sharing tools like
StoryCorps allow people to interview and
immortalize their family members just
with the power of an iPhone or a tablet
even snapchat and Facebook and Instagram
can be powerful story sharing tools even
though they are sometimes just used to
share cat memes last month I was leading
a storytelling workshop in a section-8
nursing home and I had a 94 year old
Russian immigrant who participated her
name was Inga Inga told me before the
session started that she couldn’t hold a
pencil because of years working in a
sewing factory and I said that was fine
she could still participate but when it
came time to write from the writing
prompts I gave or to draw Inga just sat
there sort of smiling and remembering
but when it came time to share she told
a beautiful story of herself as a young
child in Russia how she wanted so badly
to be like her grandmother that she
would dress up in her clothes and in her
shoes even though they were way too big
for her she said her grandmother dipped
chewing tobacco and that one day as Inga
put on her dress her grandmother came
out with a tin of fake snuff for her
made of cocoa powder and sugar so that
Inga could impersonate her more fully
maybe someday you will hear Angas voice
because next month I’ll be back at that
nursing home and this time I’ll come
equipped with the StoryCorps app so I
can record her stories I really hope she
tells the one of dressing in her
grandmother’s dresses and shoes dipping
fake snuff it would be a real shame if
you missed it
[Applause]
you
woman in an after-school program she was
writing a paper on the country of Haiti
and the paper was unorganized and
frankly it’s sort of boring and she was
really frustrated with it so I asked her
just to close her computer and tell me
one interesting thing she had learned
about the country she paused for a
moment and then she got really excited
and said that she had a classmate that
was from Haiti and that she had had a
conversation with her and she had asked
her about the country as a whole and her
experience there and the answers she
said were fascinating I said great let’s
put this in the paper and she said no I
can’t use this my teacher said that I
couldn’t use my friends stories because
it wasn’t a serious academic source now
what would make her teacher make this
choice one that sapped this paper of any
connection to real lived story the
answer I think at least partially lies
in a word it is a word that is rarely
named much less questioned the word is
scripto centrism now scripto centrism
basically just means the privileges of
text especially in academia over any
other form or medium of knowledge if you
google it you will come up with around
1,200 results as a quick comparison if
you google cat memes you will come up
with over 18 million
it is not very popular but it is hugely
influential there was a man who knew a
bit about scripto centrism even though
the word wasn’t around when he was the
man was named Frederick and you may know
him as Frederick Douglass an escaped
slave from Maryland who taught himself
to read and write even though it was
illegal for him to do so at the time now
Frederick was a prolific writer and
because he was one of few slaves who
could write his writing is invaluable to
us but even he recognized that story
cannot always be contained in a text and
in his autobiography he wrote and I’ll
paraphrase that sitting in the presence
of slaves
singing slave songs would do more to
tell you about their experience than in
the reading of whole volumes of books
you see scripto centrism tricks us into
believing that all knowledge all history
all research paper worthy truths can be
contained in text we are told this
through our education system which is
driven by reading and writing standards
we are given statistics on entire
country’s education based solely on
their literacy rates our government has
endowed the written word with such power
that we go from telling people like
Frederick that he has done something
illegal when he is caught with papers to
telling others they are illegal when
they are caught without them
now surely reading and writing can be a
powerful tool sometimes even an
equalizer and it’s also true that books
can transport us to places that we’ve
never been but text was never the
problem
scripto centrism is it dismisses the
voices of those who can’t or don’t care
to speak in an academic way those who
don’t speak in standard English it
tricks us into believing that literacy
is synonymous with education it tricks
us
to believing that literacy means
objectivity but stories are persistent
they are crafty and they are finding
their way into the public discourse in
what some are calling the Golden Age of
storytelling never before have we had so
many mediums through which to tell and
hear stories and it is democratizing the
way we produce and consume them film has
expanded to allow award-winning movies
to be shot on iPhones podcasts and
YouTube are shifting the way we think
about public speaking and who has access
to it story sharing tools like
StoryCorps allow people to interview and
immortalize their family members just
with the power of an iPhone or a tablet
even snapchat and Facebook and Instagram
can be powerful story sharing tools even
though they are sometimes just used to
share cat memes last month I was leading
a storytelling workshop in a section-8
nursing home and I had a 94 year old
Russian immigrant who participated her
name was Inga Inga told me before the
session started that she couldn’t hold a
pencil because of years working in a
sewing factory and I said that was fine
she could still participate but when it
came time to write from the writing
prompts I gave or to draw Inga just sat
there sort of smiling and remembering
but when it came time to share she told
a beautiful story of herself as a young
child in Russia how she wanted so badly
to be like her grandmother that she
would dress up in her clothes and in her
shoes even though they were way too big
for her she said her grandmother dipped
chewing tobacco and that one day as Inga
put on her dress her grandmother came
out with a tin of fake snuff for her
made of cocoa powder and sugar so that
Inga could impersonate her more fully
maybe someday you will hear Angas voice
because next month I’ll be back at that
nursing home and this time I’ll come
equipped with the StoryCorps app so I
can record her stories I really hope she
tells the one of dressing in her
grandmother’s dresses and shoes dipping
fake snuff it would be a real shame if
you missed it
[Applause]
you
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