Literate- adjective, educated, cultured (merriam-webster.com).
Literate, literacy, whatever... it's a funny word. No verb form, as mentioned by Lindquist's essay. What does it really mean?
Complicated words are fun because they open opportunities to be clever. My favorite meaning of literacy is more often used in the negative. "He's political illiterate." "She's socially illiterate." What this really means is that he doesn't understand politics and she is a socially awkward penguin. Literacy can mean that someone has substantial knowledge in a certain area (or in the case of "illiterate," having a lack thereof).
But how does one gain this kind of "literacy?" Let's start with the obvious answer: reading books. Great place to start, a set of immortal thoughts preserved on a dead tree. There's a scene from some movie I can't remember about an alien who breezes through a thick book in a matter of seconds and remembers everything. Imagine if all we had to do to become literate, in anything, was to speed through books like this alien. The world would be full of a lot less dumb illiterate people.
Sadly, we can't just breeze through books, and we don't have all powerful memories. In fact, even with the multitude of media sources (e.g. T.V.'s, videos, interviews..) we STILL have trouble becoming the ALL literates. We can't possibly become literate in every subject. Somehow literacy escapes us, somehow, somewhere.
The best we can do is focus our time and refine our learning "tool-box," in hopes that we are literate. Skrew the standardized tests. Not that they're not important... they're just not the point.
The point is... a lot of people-
-too many people,
Think literacy is about being able to read something and then know what it meant. They are dangerously over simplifying. They are missing the big picture.
We need to start addressing, globally, the important piece of what it means to be literate.... and how we can get there faster.
Time's running out... resources aren't infinite... and we need to learn quickly...
...for the sake of cultured civilizations that have learned to craft waffles...
...for the sake of cultured civilizations that have learned to craft waffles...
I like the way you wrote this. Kinda off the wall, but leads to the point. Good show of subject you are trying to get across.
ReplyDelete^I agree. I do believe that standardized tests are important only because there is no other way to assess literacy that we know of, and it is better to have an idea of one's capabilities from a test than nothing at all. One's work on a test should not be the only thing that is taken into account.
ReplyDeleteLiteracy is so hard to confine to one area though if it only meant the ability to read and write than there would be a clear cut line but literacy can be applied to other areas where it becomes gray. Having a standardize test only shows the ability to read but what about having the ability to special in one subject become literate in that one area.
ReplyDelete