Selfe

Up until I read Selfe's essay, I didn't really think about the visual as requiring a separate kind of literacy, but if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. We are constantly bombareded with images that are designd to sway us a certain way about a product or a political view, and sometimes they work without us even realizing why. Selfe says we tend to introduce "visual texts as the less-important and less-intellectual sidekicks of alphabetic texts." It's true. Usually, in a classroom, the picture is secondary to the written text. It supplements it, but never makes its own statement.
I thought it was interesting that she refers to this as a "verbal bias," although I suppose that's basically what it is. Because visuals are becoming so prominent, I think it's helpful for students to aquire some knowlege on how to read, compose, and analyze those kinds of texts the same way they've been analyzing purely written texts for generations. However, we do have to acknowlege that it would be a difficult transition process. Most of the visual texts out there do have some written component. And when they don't, we become really confused.
While I think it's important to become comfortable with visual texts, and I think the activities on composing visuals are very good, we should also think about how difficult it is to interpret written materials, sometimes. Poetry, for example, can often be interpreted in many different ways, and we will never know for sure if we've gotten it "right." I think the same can be said for many visual texts. Some visual texts are more difficult to read than others, often depending on how linear they are. In the case of both visual and written texts, we can never be sure that we've understood everything the author wanted us to, and we often find meanings which the author didn't intend outright.