What is Literacy?

There are so many different ways to define literacy. Does it mean you can sign your name or write an essay? Read a chapter book or analyze a novel? Know what a computer is or know how to use all of its programs? Literacy can be described by many adjectives, too; one can be technologically literate, musically literate, or even literate in sports.

Scribner acknowledges the complexity of defining the term “literate” and breaks the term into three components that can be studied. The areas are literacy as adaptation, as power, and as a state of grace; the skills needed in everyday life, the ability of a literate society to invoke change, and the value literacy gives to those who are literate. Of course, all three must also be looked at in terms of the society it is applying to and the individual needs of its members; that’s when it becomes complicated with no bottom line solution. I was most fascinated with the description of literacy as a state of grace. According to Scribner, this area defines literacy as how “cultured” or knowledgeable a person is, how well rounded they are. Literacy to me never meant if a person could read and write, but if they had general knowledge of the world around them, kind of like a liberal arts education.  

Hedge’s article coincided most with Scribner’s ideas, especially where the last area is concerned. He titled people illiterate even if they could read at a fourth or fifth grade level because they didn’t understand or engage in events around them. Literacy is more than the ability to read and write, it’s going a step further and using those skills.

Carr and the ideas in Thompson’s article similarly corresponded. Carr proposed that the internet is altering the way we read just as Lunsford, the professor whose studies Thompson commented on, said that literacy isn’t dying, but changing. The internet has actually made people write even more, when before most never wrote another paragraph after they exited school, and students are better at knowing and targeting their audience. And I’d just like to say a big thank you to Professor Lunsford for proving that “text speak” NEVER is used in academic papers. I am so tired of hearing teachers complain about this case, because it doesn’t happen. Students are actually smarter than that.

I think we are doing alright literacy wise; there are a few things to work on, but overall as literacy (whatever that may mean) evolves, we’ll evolve with it. The most pressing matter is to teach those who can’t to read and write. With the basic skills, anyone can begin to explore the world... It also wouldn’t hurt to find a way to make everyone read a book once in a while.