The Effects of a Literate Society on the Physical Body By: Heather Fleming For: Jeff Miller ETEC 540

October 11, 2004

While reading the first four chapters of Walter Ongs Orality and Literacy, a question arises: Do we create literature or does it create the collective us? Ong suggests that primary oral cultures have a reverence for words and give them power and mysticism. (Ong, p.32-33) Oral tradition focussed on participation of the audience through physical movement and oral participation. An Orator would change an aspect of his story in order to maintain audience attention. The story was influenced by the collective. What was presented was moulded according to the needs of the audience. As language developed and chirographic language influenced oral tradition, especially in the rise of the theatre, the message conveyed through words focussed less on the words and audience participation and more on modelling societal concepts in order to change the status quo. This influenced, and then changed, the physical nature of the theatre and then effectively society, from the way they thought, to their physical nature. In my experience, I have noted the physical difference in children of a primary oral culture as opposed to the children of a literate culture. The way they think and solve problems is different. I believe this to be as a result of the difference in the dominant hemisphere of the brain for each culture. In his essay, The Theory of Greek Tragedy (1981), Derrick de Kerckhove states: The combined effects of the alphabet and the theater isolated, redefined, verticalized, centralized and lateralized the human body. (Kerckhove, 1981) He further discusses the change and dominance of hemispheric brain activity. In a primary oral culture, performance included the audience as participants in the story. The whole body was used, as well as words, to describe and detail a story. With the introduction of the alphabet in theatre, a change occurred. Physically, the audience was separated from the performers and ordered in rows. Kerckhove writes that whereas the performance of epic poetry would involve the whole body of the performer as well as the whole body of his audience without implying that there be a strict hierarchy of mental processes over physical ones, the act of writing knowledge down would liberate the memorizer from all mnemonic devices other than mental. This is one of the main aspects of what I call the desensorialization of the Greek culture. (1981) I would suggest since both actors and audiences were involved using all parts of their bodies, both hemispheres of the brain activated: the creative verbal language of the left hemisphere as well as spatial, patterns and rhythmic movement of the right hemisphere. Once the alphabet was introduced and the oral tradition was recorded, presentations changed to become an attempt at societal revolution and definition of self rather than collective. One example of this attempt is witnessed in the play Prometheus Bound. In this Greek tragedy, Kerckhove suggests, Prometheus is the example of the audience, bound and tied to their place just as he is tied to the rock. He became the model for the audience in how to behave. The introduction of the alphabet even affected the role of the actor. He was no longer a participant in a collective, he became the model of society. He taught the illiterate how to behave. Since it was recorded using chirographic methods, the message of the author remained the same and didnt alter according to the audience need. (Ong, p.66) This then affected how the brain reacted. Kerckhove suggests that a left dominance began at this time.

I have observed a left dominance in students from a literate society even today. As a teaching method to engage children in different activities, I have used Brain Gym. With recent studies of the brain, some theories suggests that total body movement does help to reduce the dominance of one hemisphere and consequently increase learning and aid in reducing stress. Brain Gym or {[e]ducational Kinesiology enhanced learning through movement was created by Dr. Paul E. Dennison and Gail E. Dennison through their extensive research in areas that include education, brain function, psychology, and applied kinesiology. (braingym.org) It encourages a balance of the brain hemispheres through 26 different physical movements. The exercises encourage the participant to cross the medial line that is invisibly between the chin and the belly button. As soon as crossover is initiated, the opposite hemisphere of the brain is used. As with all forms of exercise, in order to balance the body, one has to complete these exercises on both sides to better balance the hemispheres. I have used these techniques with children from a wealthy community in Toronto, Ontario which was very literate. In my experimentation with them, I discovered that most of the children are left hemisphere dominant (right hand, right eye, right ear dominant). They were excellent students in 2 Dimensional activities, analysis, verbal and expressive (in writing) language skills. Students worked well with the fine points but often had to be given the big picture of an activity. They could not work that out for themselves. These are all characteristics of left hemisphere dominance. (Promislow, 1998) Conversely, while teaching in a predominantly oral culture, I found opposite results. For two years, I worked as a primary teacher at an all girls school that served only local families; I observed a huge cultural difference in English communication. The students I worked with were educated in an English system since the time they were able to attend school and were specifically educated using the Ontario Curriculum for 4 years. They were exposed to the patterns of communication and their attention was drawn to the specifics of communication both orally and literary. The students were dominantly oral which clashed with the text based curriculum we were using and they had difficulty grasping the step by step programme we used (starting with the fine points to create the larger picture). In reading Ong, many points rang true to me as to the learning differences of these students. They grew up in a culture of orality. Stories about the trials and triumphs of living in the desert were still fresh in their culture since many of their grandparents and some of their parents had never attended school and didnt know how to read. As a society that moved out of the desert and into cities in 1971, oral tradition was still very strong. On page 66 and 67, Ong discusses the importance of memory and the use of gestures, hand activity and rocking as part of the oral tradition. This was evidenced a number of times both in the classroom and in the assembly every morning. Grade 1 students who could not read either Arabic or English would still recite sections of the Quran. (It was mandatory that by the end of school, students would have most of the Quran memorized. They did not know what it meant but they knew the words.) As they recited their section that day, often they would rock forward and backward in the chair as they recited using singsong. Recitation was important but comprehension was not. I also observed the use of movement in the classroom with students needing to move about as they explained a point or told a story. Staying still was not something that was valued.

My findings with the children I worked with were predominantly, students were right hemisphere dominant (left hand, left eye, right ear). The students worked well when the teacher began with the whole picture and worked in to the smaller points. My students retained information better when it was given orally with many physical gestures and starting with the big picture first (e.g. world, continent, province, city, community, home as opposed to the Canadian students who preferred the opposite). To answer the original question, Do we create literature or does it create the collective us? I would suggest, that literature creates the collective us in that the introduction of literature influenced our physical way of interacting with each other as well as our brain perceptions and interpretations of the world around us. A literate culture has a different way of solving problems, predicting outcomes and identifying self within a context than those cultures who are dominantly oral. A judgement is not being made as to which is better just a recognition of difference and how literature has influenced the development of society.

Bibliography Braingym.org Kerckhove, Derrick de. (1981) A Theory of Greek Tradegy. http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_greektragedy.htm, accessed October 11, 2004. Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen. Promislow, Sharon. (1998) Making the Brain Body Connection. West Vancouver: Kinetic Publishing Corporation.