Ong Reading

In Ong’s paper he is saying that literacy has been evolving for an extremely long time but it used to not exist at all, and it definitely hasn’t been made very important until recently. He then goes on by saying that there are two different forms of literacy, oral and written. In order for us to know a difference, Ong labels these two types of literacy as primary literacy, for the written types of literacy, and secondary literacy, for oral literacy. Ong describes how we think that literacy is always to be expected and that it is “a natural state of affairs”. Ong defines the word illiterate and how when people think of the illiterate, it is thought of as “a lack of a simple mechanical skill.” Ong is basically telling us that he is unsure of how someone can be illiterate and how they don’t know how to do these simple things. Literacy is needed in order to be an active part of this world and to be able to participate in many things.