The essay "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures" was written by ten educators that met for a week in New Hampshire in 1994. During this time the educators had worked together to understand how literacy pedagogy had affected the diversity in a teaching and learning environments. Specifically, they were looking at what the purpose of learning was and how that connected to the literacy pedagogy. The essay states that the educators had diverse backgrounds, which would allow them a better understanding for their search in education when looking at culture and communication. The article stands hopeful that there would be a change or at least a conversation about change in the educational system. This discussion had began with two arguments that lead to the word "multiliteracies." These arguments, as relevant as ever, revolve around the idea of how the changing world, in reference to technology, can still be seen as understandable. While the second argument tries to incorporate communication that would allow inclusivity with so many cultures. Though their work was presented in 1995 after the educators went home to work on the article independently, it has been left open for discussion.
Cultural and linguist diversity was something that I experience now with my children, especially since they now have the option of learning another language other than English in school. In the middle of page 69 the essay goes forth and bluntly explores the idea of children integrating multiple linguistics in the classroom. Specifically looking at young children who will learn to speak more languages than just English in the US, and furthering the idea, other than inclusivity, which is just as important. Considering the essentialness to other's cultural stand point, children are likely to accept culture and language and still end up with the benefits of being multilingual while passing this acceptance onto future generations.
On page 70 the essay also delves within the idea of intersectionality of the public and how privacy is shelved when looking at new age technology. While in the early 90's this may have been seen as an impossible feat, the social media platforms of tomorrow have definitely made it easy to exploit different identities for financial gain. Specifically, platforms that have increasing exposure and large following that allow for privacy, or lack there to be easily accessible.
While on the subject of academia, I found the essay aged well. However, the fact that technology is a topic of interest in the essay, makes me wonder if there would have been a place for all the parts of media in today's day and age? Various teaching tools (Google classroom, Zoom, or Slack) and social media accounts, are always at risk for leaking information, so the idea that this would be swiftly included in the teaching pedagogy leaves me torn.
