What if no one could write?
You have probably heard about NCTE's "National Day of Writing" on October 20. (http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting) In addition to having your students submit work to the National Gallery of Writing, you may want to have them take a look at the act of writing itself. Here are some questions to have students write about in daily journal entries or discuss as a class.
- If people couldn't write, there would be nothing to read. Describe how your life would be different in a typical day if there were nothing, anywhere, to read. (Things to think about: cereal boxes, milk cartons, street signs, schools, cell phones, computers, supermarkets, gas stations…) What problems can you see? What positive things can you imagine?
- If we didn't have writing, our world would likely have developed very differently. Choose one thing modern people have or do, and imagine how it might be different today if writing had never existed. Would the item or the practice still exist? If so, how would it be different? If it didn't exist, what would take its place?
For example, look at a simple tube of toothpaste. If writing had never existed, how would you know what is in the tube? How would human beings have adapted to understand what products they are buying? How would people even know that toothpaste existed? How would toothpaste be advertised? Or would advertising even exist?
- No writing would mean no written numbers, either. What problems would that create?
- What would be stronger or more highly developed if writing had never been invented? What would likely be weaker? Would our world be simpler, or just different?
- Suppose that writing had developed, but there were no rules or standards at all. People could spell anything any way they pleased. English writers could put little flowers or black diamonds at the end of sentences instead of periods, or write from bottom to top or right to left. It would make things easier for all writers. How would it affect readers?
- What if we did have written language, but the English alphabet didn't have any vowels? What effects would that have?
- Does writing something down in any sense make it more real? Which has more influence—what someone says or what someone writes?
- How does writing influence people? (Think about blogs, movie reviews, newspapers, text messages, email, advertisements, etc.)
- What do you think would be the three biggest problems created by a lack of written language?
- Experiment with a world without written words. Using symbols and/or drawings, show how to complete a simple cooking task such as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or making brownies using a mix.
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