Literacy by Robert Lake - Essay Example

Lake uses his son’s cultural literacy and the Indian traditional literacy standards to describe Wind’s state of grace, his power, and his functionality within the Indian culture. He describes Wind’s literacy as a state-of-grace by identifying his excellence in learning what has culturally been expected of him. Lake applies traditional standards and succeeds in illustrating how the child’s literacy meets honorable standards by demonstrating his diversified knowledge. The description of the child’s scope of education that has been “colorful, complicated, sensitive, and diverse” identifies this state-of-grace because of the child’s tender age. The child has also learned many things that different members of society engage in. He has learned from all social groups and this includes his father, mother, and people from both his generation and his parents’ generation. Wind’s literacy also identifies a state of grace because he can apply the learned concepts such as understanding indicators to natural phenomena (Lake n.p.).

The writer also describes the power in the child’s literacy by illustrating how literacy captures the child’s attention to an extent that he can only focus on the knowledge when he identifies an associated phenomenon. When he identifies a change in the atmosphere, Wind is carried, away is captured by what he has learned, and his mind dreams of the things that his traditional literacy taught him that should be done at such times. This means that Wind’s literacy is not only powerful in itself but is also more powerful than the western literacy that has failed to capture Wind’s attention into focusing in class. Lake also uses developed conflict in the child to demonstrate the power in his literacy. When Wind learns that his literacy conflicts with the new form of education in school, the cultural conflict and the discrimination of the whites against his upset upsets him and Wind hates school and demands to go back to the village. This illustrates the power of literacy because if it were not powerful, then Wind would have easily conformed to the new literacy and embraced school instead of demanding to go back to the village. The writer also uses Wind’s changed attitude towards traditional activities such as singing traditional songs engagement in sacred ceremonies to demonstrate the functionality of Indian literacy. This is because the writer associates the child’s original literacy with participation in cultural activities and conflict with the literacy interferes with the child’s cultural roles (Lake n.p.).

Literacy is threatened in the new environment through intimidation and racism that undermines literacy and depicts its inferiority. This develops a conflict, within Wind, between the two literacy and he is losing confidence in his literacy as he has stopped appreciating some aspects of the literacy (Lake n.p.).