"Complex texts"

Much of the Utah Common Core language revolves around students being able to read and understand “complex texts”. Yet they assumption is that a complex text is defined as a canonical novel, or article such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, or The declaration of Independence. Both linear and alphabetic. Im interested however, in making the argument that more contemporary texts are actually more complex, and yet we dismiss them as they are not academically rigorous. Take for example the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore.

By looking at one page a reader needs to address the following in order to make meaning:

• Alphabetic texts

• Visual texts

• Color theory

• Framing

• Body language / positioning

• Comic book history / literacy.

I argue that when looking at the various texts that are interplaying with each other, this text is just as, if not more complex as Paradise Lost.

The question then becomes how do we ask students to be critical of these new forms of media. It seems that if we are asking students to write alphabetically, we are limiting their ability to create meaning. Furthermore the linear process that we follow when writing alphabetically may not be as appropriate because many of the texts in the frame above build meaning by playing off one another which suggests that the writing and to be simultaneously writing / and intersecting various modes and meanings. How do we engage our students in such a process?

“teachers need to reconsider not only the kinds of texts we teach, but also how we teach the new processes associated with new media texts” (6). We need to be aware of the multiple forms of literacy—functional, critical, rhetorical—and specifically how they function in practice. And furthermore be aware that one process may work for one student / medium, but may not work for a different student / medium. This obviously becomes messy as it disrupts the one process fits all model, but isn't that what writing is: messy.