Slap Yourself for Thinking Literacy is Simple

            I believe that a “social view of literacy” is that it strives to teach everyone basic responsibilities which helps them function in a society.  Things like finding a job and being able to understand road signs are among the things society would say make literacy important.  However like many things in life, the definition of literacy is not so simple.  We have learned that a consensus on the definition of literacy is something that has eluded man throughout history.

Literacy is a very difficult idea to define because it always changing; not just from one generation to another but is also different to each one of us.  An example that has been brought up many times in class is that one cannot call one person literate for reading novels and then label another as illiterate for not doing the same.   The one reading novels may look at something like a baseball score sheet and be dumfounded.  Can he now be called illiterate?

There is a big difference when contemplating literacy from afar and viewing it up close.  It is easy to understand it and explain it from society’s perspective.  You can say literacy is important to society because it helps it function smoothly; you don’t want people running around not understanding what signs mean and disobeying laws.  But when you try to describe literacy on an individual level you cannot come to an agreement.

One author Deborah Brandt wrote that because of technology literacy skills have “become vulnerable to unprecedented turbulence, (Brandt).”   We do not know today what other type of literacy will be needed in the future so defining literacy is nearly impossible, and technology just adds to the confusion.

Literacy will always be an important aspect of all societies in the world because it is something you need to get a job and earn a living, but how do we teach it and define it when it is always shifting and changing?  Literacy is social because it touches each and every one of us; from scholars in Oxford University to tribes in Africa literacy exists in different ways everywhere.