Critical Literacy at WorkAuthor(s): Glynda HullReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 43, No. 7 (Apr., 2000), pp. 648-652Published by: International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40017484 .Accessed: 30/11/2011 14:47

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Critical literacy at work

Glynda Hull

NEW WORKPLACES

& LITERACIES

The young woman walked to the front of the room, overhead trans- parencies in hand, and announced, "Andy, you ask a question, you gonna die!" As the laughter from the group subsided, she began to read aloud the answers that she and her team had composed to a list of ques- tions about how to measure the qual- ity and productivity of their work.

Number 1, "the leader"; number 2, "the time that the board is finished"; number 3, "each board has a standard time"; and number 4 is "no meeting and training are excluded"; number 5, "standard time over actual time."

Staring determinedly at the over- head and reading her rapid-fire an- swers, she showed little enthusiasm for participating in the activity and made her way back to her seat with a grin of relief when the ordeal was done. This might have been a scene from school, were the subject mat- ter King Lear or chemistry, but this performance took place in a high- tech workplace in the Silicon Valley of northern California, USA. There frontline workers, most of them re- cent immigrants, were learning to compute productivity and quality scores for their work groups and to present their data about problem solving and goal setting before their fellow workers. During this particu- lar meeting every presenter (except one, whom we will meet below) followed suit. Revealing their anxi- ety, or perhaps their resistance, in nervous laughter, barely audible voices, or demands for no ques-

tions, they all read their responses and sat down.

These were remarkable perfor- mances in many ways. We shouldn't underestimate the amount of courage, self-possession, and wherewithal it takes for newcomers (both to a country and to a high- performance workplace) to (a) appropriate the discourse of "self- directed work teams" and (b) add to the already intense and exhausting work of circuit board assembly and contract manufacturing the literate

requirements of record keeping, data gathering, and problem solv- ing. But let me turn to a perfor- mance that is, I believe, more remarkable still.

Mr. San (pseudonyms are used for all workers) took his turn in front of the room and began this way:

MS: Okay. (Puts transparency on the overhead projector.) Our team name is, uh, Turbo, Team number 31, and the area is First Mechanical and Handload. Shift day, and my coach is Engineer Kartano. Okay. Quality. First Mechanical and Handload. We're not yet ready, we'll start soon. Why? Because I just received the Standard Time from the office. I could not base my calculation without the Standard Time. I don't know how the others were able to calculate without the Standard Time. But I'll show you lat- er on the table of Standard Time that you can base it on.

A few seconds later Mr. San returns to the issue of Standard Time, reiter- ating that he's unable to provide an- swers to the questions on the ©2000 International Reading Association

(pp. 648-652)

648 II Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43:7 April 2000

overhead because his team doesn't have correct Standard Times.

Okay, any questions so far? Maria is one of my people, and I assigned her to gather all the, uh, data and records. Again, we have not entered any data because of the availability of the Standard Time... but we'll start... this coming Monday. And what is the Standard Time? I'll show you later.

Finally, the dramatic moment arrives. Mr. San displays a transparency con- sisting of a mass of numbers in a grid, far too small to read, but unmis- takable in import. He reveals a new set of Standard Times, or the times allotted to workers for completing their various production tasks. Mr. San's pride is unmistakable:

And how is productivity calculated? Standard Time again. We have the Standard Time. We have to base it on that. Divided by actual time times 100 you get the percentage. This is, now I just got this, that's why we are delayed in entering our data (puts up a new transparency), here is the Standard Time. Wow! (laughter) They, they're trying to modify the Standard Time because I complained all the data that we got on the actual, uh, time that we finish one board doesn't count in with the Standard Time. So they're trying to modify and that's why we have to wait for this new set of Standard Time to be able to enter in the data in the computer. So, right now I hope those figures are correct, and we can im- prove our PPM [quality] and the pro- ductivity. Any questions?

Mr. San next deflects a suggestion by the engineer who's running the meeting that he base Standard Time temporarily on old data, saying that's neither "practical" nor "realis- tic." He takes up a more sympathet- ic question from a supervisor about the direction of the error. That is, were the old Standard Times too slow or too fast? He overlaps her speech in his desire to emphasize that the old Standard Times had re- quired workers to perform their tasks much too quickly:

S: Were their times over or under. Like were they expecting 10 boards (MS interrupts, "Too fast")... to be built? Yeah. (Other noise and talk)... maybe 6?

MS: (Other noise; someone says "Too fast.") Not even..., uh, we're not even close. Fifty percent.

S: Yeah. Okay. MS: And yet we're doing it as fast as

we could, and we could not com- pare them. So now they realize it (S interrupts, "Yeah"), the engi- neer, I talked to the engineer, I come back to the engineer, and he agreed. That's why they're try- ing to modify all this, uh, Stand- ard Time now. So now we can enter it in the computer based on this usage of Standard Time.

Then Mr. San gathers his papers and takes his seat to the sound of ap- plause, and the meeting continues.

The issue of the speed of work is, of course, a theme that runs throughout the history of labor rela- tions; how fast work gets done, or the Standard Time as it's called in this example, has been contested over and over again. In this most re- cent example in that long history, Mr. San appropriates a company meeting at which workers were ex- pected just to practice, merely to get their feet wet with public presenta- tions of data by reading off their re- sponses to "prefab" questions in rote fashion. Yet Mr. San chose not to be part of the dog-and-pony show, just as he had refused even before this meeting took place, to complete elaborate graphs and charts and to provide a discursive rationale for his team's quality and productivity goals. "How can we write goals," he had argued, "if our Standard Times are incorrect!" Pressing his point with an engineer, he eventually succeeded in having the company's time-study experts recalculate the Standard Times. Only after all of this did Mr. San consent to fill out the requisite forms and complete the elaborate new docu-

mentation associated with produc- tivity and quality measurements.

The character of literacy at work This meeting, especially Mr. San's appropriation of it, is interesting on a number of levels. It illustrates how new forms of work organization - such as teams and self-directed rather than overmanaged workers - can sometimes provide a hybrid space in which employees are able to advocate for improvements in the conditions of work, while companies can simultaneously press for im- provements in quality and productiv- ity. Mr. San's performance in the meeting also points the way to some provocative thoughts about literacy.

It's become customary to charac- terize literacy in the world of work as reading and writing to mediate action and to contrast that purpose for literacy with school-based ones. For example, some researchers have helpfully categorized literacy at work as "reading to do" as opposed to school-based literacy, which is primarily "reading to know" (Diehl & Mikulecky, 1980). Others have contrasted "useful literacy" or "prac- tical literacy" learned through ap- prenticeships in families or communities with "informational lit- eracy" learned in school (Resnick, 1990). These notions of literacy take our thinking forward by questioning the commonplace that all literacy is alike, that reading is reading is read- ing, for example. However, as Mr. San's vignette will illustrate, it is possible to complicate notions of lit- eracy at work even more.

At the circuit board assembly plant where Mr. San worked, read- ing and writing "to do," or reading and writing to mediate action, served many different functions. By analyzing events at work, such as the meeting described above, it is possible to characterize literacy in the workplace in a very fine-grained fashion. In fact, at Mr. San's factory,

New Workplaces & Literacies jj 649

literacy served approximately 80 functions (listed in the Table), which can be separated into six broad cat- egories: Performing Basic Literate Functions, Using Literacy to Explain, Taking Part in Discourse Around and About Text, Participating in the Flow of Information, Problem Solving, Exercising Critical Judgment, and Using Literacy to Exercise or Resist Authority.

I think we can see that Mr. San engaged in literate activities that run the gamut of these categories. The meeting described above was set up so that workers could gain practice in basic literate functions, such as completing forms and providing documentation, and in conveying information about such texts to fel- low employees, supervisors, and en- gineers. Yet Mr. San commandeered this practice session to demonstrate how he had solved a very important literacy-related work problem - the correction of the Standard Time record - and in so doing he illustrat- ed how he had used literacy to re- sist authority. He had refused to supply the necessary documentation for calculating productivity and quality scores until the correct Standard Times had been provided.

Thinking about literacy in this way, as distinguished by its service in a range of communicative en- counters, draws attention to the ways in which reading and writing at work (like reading and writing everywhere) go hand in hand with particular social roles in particular material settings.

Literacy and identity We are currently experiencing a par- ticularly contentious period in litera- cy studies, as debates and strong feelings abound over how literacy should be defined and taught (Gee, in press). One view of literacy, a so- ciocultural perspective, characterizes it as "social," as connected to activi- ties wherein people read and write

and talk about texts, hold certain at- titudes and values about them, and interact with others around them in

particular ways. This view joins liter- acy to social, institutional, and cul- tural relationships, instead of bracketing reading, writing, and lan- guage activities as decontextualized or neutral skills or purely psycho- logical processes. Thus, ways of reading and writing can be seen as companions to ways of talking, act- ing, interacting, valuing, and being in the world, including ways of con- structing an identity as a worker (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1997).

In thinking about the meeting in which Mr. San and the other work- ers gave their speeches, I am in- trigued by the social roles that workers took on for this perfor- mance (as well as across other situa- tions) and the ways in which those roles recruited various uses of litera- cy. The young woman who jokingly threatened to kill Andy if he asked her a question had clearly circum- scribed her involvement in this work event and the literacy and language activities they entailed. Her recita- tion of one answer after another leaves no room for explanation, elaboration, problem solving, or crit- ical judgment and has the effect, at least during this meeting, of distanc- ing her from the activity and making apparent her lack of identification with the role of team member or self-directed worker.

This stance is certainly under- standable. Many workers in this fac- tory resented having to take on additional responsibilities, often con- nected to literacy, in order to orga- nize themselves as management wished into self-directed work teams. Others were skeptical about the company's motives, questioning whether management did intend to put some supervisory functions into the hands of frontline workers. Other workers saw their jobs as stop-gaps, as temporary sojourns un- til better offers, different lives, and

changed relationships came along. Still others were suspicious of team activities, associating them with forced participation in communal ac- tivities in their countries of origin.

Then there was Mr. San, an immi-

grant from the Philippines who had retired from one career in order to come to the United States and craft another. Mr. San was rumored to be rich and to work in this Silicon Valley factory only as a hobby. This I don't know, although I doubt cir- cuit board assembly ranks high on

anyone's list of hobbies. Mr. San's

reputation among his coworkers as someone who didn't need to work may have been influenced by his apparent willingness to risk his job in this nonunion workplace by regu- larly voicing complaints and, in gen- eral, looking out for his own and his coworkers' rights and well-being. Indeed it may have seemed that he didn't need to work because he seemed willing to take chances at losing his job!

As the transcription of Mr. San's

speech suggests, this frontline facto- ry worker was quite skilled rhetori- cally. Watching and listening to the videotape of the meeting makes very clear his terrific sense of rhetor- ical rhythm, his effective use of rhetorical questions and lexical rep- etition, and his equally effective plays with wait times. But most im-

pressive of all is the import of his performance - in effect, his ability to

appropriate a meeting designed for the purpose of school-like practice and to use it as his own forum. Mr. San turned the tables on his compa- ny, calling attention to a problem, which had been ignored and had

great consequences for frontline workers, and highlighting his solu- tion to that problem.

I would argue that Mr. San's per- formance in the meeting, and his concomitant expert use of literacy to exercise critical judgment and to re- sist and influence authority, had

everything to do with the social

650 II Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43:7 April 2000

Metacategories for literacy functions

Taking Part in Using Literacy Performing Discourse Participating in Exercising to Exercise or Basic Literate Using Literacy Around and the Flow of Problem Critical Resist Functions to Explain About Text Information Solving Judgment Authority

Completing Analogizing Citing Coaching Brainstorming Assessing Taking action forms

Copying Contextualizing Constructing Constructing Calculating Bestowing Admonishing rules rules blessings

Correcting Demonstrating Highlighting Giving Categorizing Certifying Assigning instruction

Identifying Dramatizing Miming Invoking Conjecturing Critiquing Constructing rules

Keyboarding Elaborating Perusing Practicing Creating Disputing Deferring hypotheticals

Labeling Exhibiting Presenting Providing Gauging Evaluating Fudging linguistic reactions assistance

Locating Explaining Quoting Receiving Justifying Highlighting Gaining instruction consensus

Looking up Illustrating Recounting Requesting or Planning Inferring Gauging providing reactions clarification

Matching Role playing Referencing Seeking Problem Interpreting Giving direction solving direction

Notetaking Doing show- Reflecting Seeking Representing Using irony Granting and-tell instruction permission

Practicing Signifying Revising Validating Interpreting

Proofreading Summarizing Verifying Invoking

Providing Using irony documentation

Reciting Proposing

Recording Protecting

Requesting Reprimanding documentation

Tallying Requesting action

Translating Requesting permission or approval

New Workplaces & Literacies 651

identity that he had constructed for himself on the factory floor. He viewed himself as a kind of father figure, a protector, an advocate. He felt it his duty to look after his coworkers, his team - "my people," he called them. Unlike the young woman and the other workers in the meeting, Mr. San had found a space for participating in the work of teams, as the company desired, and for shaping teamwork toward the collective good. Now that is what I call "critical literacy at work."

What kind of literacy do our stu- dents need if they are to be pre- pared for the world of work? What

kind of people do we want our stu- dents to be? I don't think these two questions can be answered separate- ly or that we can embrace the one without the other.

REFERENCES Diehl, W., & Mikulecky, L. (1980). The

nature of reading at work. Journal of Reading, 24, 221-227.

Gee, J.P. (in press). Reading and the new literacy studies: Reframing the National Academy of Sciences' Report on Reading. The Journal of Literacy Research.

Gee, J.P., Hull, G., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Resnick, L. (1990). Literacy in school and out. Daedalus, 119(2), 169-185.

Reader comments on this column are welcome. E-mail: glynda@socrates. berkeley.edu. Mail: Glynda Hull, University of California, Berkeley, School of Education, Tolman Hall 5629, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

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652 If Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43:7 April 2000