The Value of Shapeshifting James Paul Gee makes a persuasive argument to educate students, as a facet of literacy, the skill of tailoring their identities, as a valuable tool to prepare them to compete for employment in the “New Capitalism” marketplace (Gee, “New Literacy” 412). He describes this new work environment as a fast pace, short term, project orientated model, where successful employees tailor their professional personas, to make themselves attractive to new project opportunities. Further, he references a study to demonstrate how teenagers from Upper Middle class families seem to be assimilating these key skills from parents who are doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals. Mr. Gee continues his argument using his research …show more content…
Gee seeks to prepare the students with the literacy “shapeshifting” tool, which he referred to as “Sociotechnical designing” to navigate through the difficult corporate jungle. All students can benefit from this skill to acquire better employment opportunities (Gee, “New Literacy” 414). His approach would positively affect all students. Nor does he neglect to acknowledge the negative side of this skill when he says, “[They]… fashion themselves in terms of (anxiety-filled) movement through “achievement space” (Gee, “New Literacy” 419). During my years in the Information Technology (IT) industry, we used terms such as “lowest hanging fruit” as a reference to a method to gain the most benefit quickly. When referring to tasks, this was an indication to get the quickest tasks out of the way to allow us to budget the majority of the time to the more difficult tasks (McGraw-Hill). Applying this concept to the amount of time involved in “De-centering” English as White advocates, his solution would only allow the study of one or perhaps two dialects. This would leave the five hundred Native American languages, the various other ethnic, cultural, and regional dialect student’s feeling excluded. Conversely, Stephanie Jones’