Cindy Selfe Summary

In the article, Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention, Cynthia L. Selfe, insists her colleagues, college composition and communication educators, to pay attention to the technology literacy issues that affects them. In 1999, Selfe urges educators to pay attention to President Bill Clinton’s technology large-scale literacy project titled Getting America’s Students Ready, because the project would directly affect them by influencing the use of technology in their classroom.  During this time, composition educators had mixed attitudes about the usage of technology in their classrooms.  Selfe pointed out that large literacy programs are “always a political act as well as an educational effort” and they promote the literacy myth, “a widely held belief that literacy and literacy education autonomously, automatically, and directly liberation, personal success, or economic prosperity" (420; 424). Therefore, whether or not educators decide to use technology in their classrooms, it was their responsibility to pay attention to the issues that surround it, technology illiteracy. The greater question she leaves composition educators is will their decision to use or not use technology help or hinder the literacy process for students who they are entrusted to teach.