What does it mean to be literate?
What does it mean to be literate? In my opinion, to be literate in something, means being capable of understanding given specific context. Traditionally, society’s tools for understanding has been mostly writing and reading. However, in recent years, our toolbox has grown significantly- we now have “Alexa”, “Siri”, youtube.com, and all the answers in our pocket with our phone.
Literacy was defined by the U.S. Department of Education in 2003 as a two-fold definition, skills-based and task-based, as seen below:
Something important to note in this definition, is the emphasis on successful use of printed and written information. While this may conceivably include art, it leaves out many of the resources we have on hand to learn now in 2017: Youtube, Podcasts, and Amazon Echo, just to name a few. As far as I can tell, based on my limited research, the U.S. Department of Education has not refined their definition since 2003.
Using this definition, the National Center for Education Statistics lists Pickens County has a seemingly high illiteracy rate, of 13%. Thats almost 11K people in our community that cannot read or write- basic prose literacy skills. It is nice in these statistics that they specify that it is “prose” literacy skills that are lacking- leaving us to wonder what other literacies these people may have instead. Both these definitions and data are outdated. In recent years, as our tool chest has expanded, different capabilities just as important, if not more important.
The following is a passage from the Greenville Literacy Association, that sums up this change nicely.
They are correct that their mission has grown more complex as literacy definitions have expanded. It is estimated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the average person will work at least 11 different jobs in their lifetime. Each of these jobs have their own form of literacy, and require employees to lean more on some literacy skills than others. We have many tools that are taught to use in school, traditionally reading and writing, but business needs are changing rapidly. More frequently, we need technological literacy, or the ability to think critically. I believe our jobs as educators is to prepare students to be able to best use their tools to learn. If they do not currently have the tools in their toolbox they may need, it is our job to try and provide them, even if one of their other tools is stronger and used more often.
There is a TED Talk video by a man named Curtis Carroll, where he talks about how “The skills that I had learned to hide my illiteracy no longer worked in this environment…” He was arrested and was serving a sentence in jail, where to make money, he learned how to trade stocks. What he learned, was financial literacy. He learned this new skill by using the other tools in his literacy toolbox, to now succeed as a stock trader and teach others his new skill.
In the popular television sitcom, Friends, there is an episode where Phoebe and Rachel go running. Rachel gets embarrassed by Phoebe’s running style- a crazy loose kind of full on sprint. Rachel thinks there is the one way to run- jogging like everyone else does, with focus and small steps and hands by your side. However, when she tries the running-style like Phoebe, she really enjoys it, and understands where she is coming from.
If we never expand our capabilities, try things that may initially make us feel uncomfortable like running crazy like Phoebe, we may be left behind in the world. Someone may push us out of our comfort zone, or our environment may change. And older employee may need to learn how to use the computer to keep their job, a young adult who typically tweets or texts their friends may need to craft a memo to board members of their company, or a person who drives to work in South Carolina every day may move to New York City and learn how to navigate the subway.
However, if a person can learn upon their other literacies in order to learn the literacy they are lacking, they can succeed and adapt to their new environment. That older employee may read a book on how to use a computer. The young adult may join a Twitter Chat in order to learn how to best craft a memo. The person who moved to New York may use their map reading skills to read the subway diagram. We should raise students to acknowledge the gifts of literacies they already have, and use those to acquire even more skills and literacies going forward.
“To set ourselves free, we can’t simply cut our bonds. For to remove them (if we could) would only set us adrift, detached from the very things that make us who we are. Emancipation, Bruno Latour writes, “does not mean ‘freed from bonds’ but well-attached”. The strings stay on. By identifying more threads of association, we are better able to see these attachments not as constraints but as forces to harness.” — (Sousanis, 2015, pgs. 134–135)
Sources
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, part of the U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://nces.ed.gov
National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). (n.d.). Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://nces.ed.gov/naal/fr_definition.asp
User, S. (n.d.). A Brief History. Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://www.greenvilleliteracy.org/about-us/a-brief-history
NLS FAQs. (n.d.). Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsfaqs.htm
Carroll, Curtis “Wall Street”, director. How I Learned to Read — and Trade Stocks — in Prison.Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll: How I Learned to Read — and Trade Stocks — in Prison | TED Talk, Jan. 2016, www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_learned_to_read_and_trade_stocks_in_prison.
Sousanis, N. (2015). Unflattening. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
