Connecting the Extracurricular with Bull?

I’m going to start off with something in common that Gere and Eubanks and Schaeffer share, something important to each essay, but for different reasons. I’m talking about the concept of peer review. The success of the writer’s workshops that Gere described in her essay was dependent on the process of review by the writers’ peers. I think I hit on that point in one of my discussion postings on the essay. By having other members of the writer’s workshop read and review their compositions, the writers have the opportunity to improve their skills and fine tune their work. Peer review is critical since the writers involved don’t have the luxury of an instructor. Peer review also plays a role in the Eubanks and Schaeffer essay. In this case we are speaking of articles published in peer reviewed academic journals. When academics publish they are seeking to stand out among their colleagues as experts and achieving a high level of intellectual discourse. This leads to the employment of bullshit, or more kindly, jargon. Academic writing loaded with jargon is inaccessible to many readers. The use of jargon might even be purposeful in order to sound more scholarly, or to impress simply with the use of words. A difficult concept explained in a difficult matter must have taken a highly intellectual and literate person to produce right? So we have another difference highlighted. Gere’s essay points out writers working to produce a written product that will appeal to the members of their own communities. It must be easy to understand and have the ability to communicate with a larger group. Academic writing is targeted to a small group (academics, and typically just those in the same field) so it is deliberately obtuse and perhaps not the best form of communication.
Literacy is a concept with different levels. How do we define literacy? Is there a different definition in the academic world than there is in the world at large, the “real” world? The writers of jargon filled articles written for their peers may have a certain idea of who is literate. A literate person can read and understand and possibly refute the academic work. If this is the level of literacy required to be considered literate, our definition goes too far. I am going to favor a definition of literacy that is more inclusive. Literacy is knowledge, any level of knowledge, and the desire to expand that knowledge. Eubanks and Schaeffer describe a world of exclusive literacy. If you can’t understand us, too bad. If that is the attitude, then I am tempted to throw in an epithet. The Gere article describes literacy of a more inclusive nature. The writers are putting down words and improving their skills, all the while becoming more literate. Writing is about communication, not exclusion. I think we can even turn the concept of literacy around and say an academic work, full of jargon and obfuscation is its own kind of illiteracy, communicative illiteracy.
I think as we go on I may find ways to defend my inclusive idea of literacy a bit more. As a future special education teacher, inclusion is a big focus, finding someone’s capabilities and emphasizing those capacities. Why not take the same approach to literacy and find how we can make everyone literate to the fullest extent possible?