What is Literacy? Let me tell you…
As that six second video rolls through my mind, I have to wonder how many students actually slip through the education system not being literate in traditional texts? According to the Washington Post, in 2016 approximately 20 percent of adults in America were illiterate. With this video being watched millions of times I have to ask myself is this funny or is this relatable to the audience? Is it more important now to be able to comprehend what visual and audio texts are trying to convey or is it still just as important as ever to be literate in traditional texts? In the 21st century being literate is more than traditional texts. Today, being literate means being able to effectively convey and understand a message whether it is in a picture, on social media, in your favorite novel, or in a text message.
I guess I should start off by answering the title question: What does it mean to be literate? It is easier said than done. Over time the answer has changed. Before the dawn of the internet, literacy was based on whether one could read the newspaper, before that it was based on whether you could read the Bible, and before that, hieroglyphs. It is easy to see that it has always been important to understand written texts. But what about when the cave men and women painted animals and put their hand prints on stone surfaces? They didn’t put them there for us to find thousands of years later. It was important for their peers to understand their message. Are really we that different from our ancestors?
To answer that question, I look to a study done in 2008 where a boy, Peter, and a girl, Patty, both discussed a particular form of text they used and the study showed how that affected their literacy (Roswell, Burke, 2009). For Peter he watched a popular cartoon Naruto and Patty used Webkinz, a website where you can take care of online pets. Peter would watch Naruto and could easily comprehend what was going on. He would even go so far as to study and read about each character and could have a very intellectual conversation about his in-depth knowledge about Naruto. Peter doesn’t excel in school because the school system does not teach literacy at Peter’s technological level. Patty on the other hand learned about responsibility from her website because she had to take care of her “pets”. Patty had to learn through visuals and texts about how to work the website and get what she desired from the game. What does this have to do with cavemen? Just like the cave men drew pictures, today we use pictures on the television screen and on our computers to convey a message. It was important to be visually literate thousands of years ago, just like it is important in the 21st century.
It is important to be literate not just in traditional and visual text, it is also important to be able to read and write in multimodal texts. A multimodal text is something that can be understood through a variety of texts in a single space. Social media is probably the most used multimodal texts in the 21st century. With videos, pictures, and short paragraphs, social media can convey any message a user wished to convey. It is necessary to be able to understand what is trying to be conveyed through social media for multiple reasons. It helps you to become socially and culturally literate by seeing how other people interact with each other on the internet.
With all this being said about social media it is important to note that literacy is different for everyone. According to Buehl, literacy can be affected by the reader, the context, and the text (Buehl, 1995). While we have already talked about the text and how it is important to understand what is being conveyed it is important to see that texts have different formats and readability. Another factor in literacy is the reader, each person that watches the Vine listed at the top of this blog comes from a different background, and may all be in different developmental stages. These factors can affect what each reader gets out of the text. Lastly, the context or “reading situation” is important in how well you are able to comprehend what is being said. Was the room loud when you watched a video? Did you not hear a few words? Why did you have to write that paper? All of these factors can contribute to the literacy of the reader.
So why is literacy so important? Why should we be literate in the 21st century? Not only will being digitally, visually, and traditionally literate help you land that amazing job you want, but being literate today also helps you to be a critical thinker because being literate is more than reading and writing it is understanding multimodal texts. Being literate in the 21st century means putting many texts together in order to see the bigger picture.
Strauss, V. (2016, November 01). Hiding in plain sight: The adult literacy crisis. Retrieved September 19, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/11/01/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-adult-literacy-crisis/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.122007e700cf
(2017, October 07). Retrieved September 19, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTLSQOZTnaY
Roswell, J., & Burke, A. (2009). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. Reading by Design: Two Case Studies of Digital Reading Practices, 53(2), 106–118. Doi:10.1002/(issn)1936–2706
Buehl, D. (1995). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning. Portland: Stenhouse.
U. (2017, April 24) To Post or Not to Post?; Social Media Literacy. Retrieved September 22, 2018, form https://healthyheels.org/2016/04/15/to-post-or-not-to-post-social-media-literacy-2/
