From basic literacy to information literacy

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): During its 51 years of existence, Indonesia has been confronted with four national problems of literacy: basic literacy, functional literacy, science and technology literacy, and very recently, the problem of information literacy.

Actually, there is still another problem of literacy on which the government has spent quite an amount of energy and funds: political literacy.

The "basic literacy" problem was essentially a problem of educating the entire nation to read and write using Roman alphabets. This was a very taxing problem at the beginning, because by the time Indonesia's independence was proclaimed, the illiteracy rate among Indonesians was very high, about 90 percent.

It became gradually more manageable, however, and resolved itself after the elementary school system was developed to such an extent that all Indonesian children, aged 7 to 12, could be accommodated in the existing schools. By this time, the number of Indonesian citizens who had never had any formal schooling or opportunity to follow non-formal courses in basic literacy had dwindled to an insignificant size. The danger of national illiteracy no longer looked menacing.

The functional literacy campaign was never as successful as the basic literacy campaign. The basic idea of functional literacy was that every Indonesian acquires the ability to read papers --dailies, weeklies, or monthlies-- written in the Indonesian language. In this way, every citizen would be highly aware concerning the development of the country, and would thus be highly aware of both the prospects and worries of the nation.

Conducting courses to this effect was a very complex task, requiring instructions in the Indonesian language --remember, Indonesian is only second language to most Indonesians--, geography, history, local and national government, local economics, and civic education. This was virtually a program of conducting formal education through non-formal institutions. In practice, courses in this campaign had been transformed into courses to obtain certificates equivalent to diplomas obtainable only through formal education.

The problem of science and technology literacy emerged in Indonesia around 1985. Initially this problem was discussed only within limited circles, but gradually it attracted the attention of increasingly wider audiences. The climax of this discussion was a polemics between two cabinet ministers. The debate was about how instructions in humanities should be balanced against instruction in mathematics and natural science within Indonesian schools.

I personally think that it was a very good debate. But apparently, the idea of a public debate between two cabinet ministers about a public issue was --and still is, I think-- not too appealing to our political culture. Thus the debate that barely started was discontinued. But the public was already sufficiently stimulated to think seriously about this matter.

What moved the country toward this new frame of mind?

It was the realization that new developments in science and technology have caused a dramatic change in lifestyles throughout the world, and that this in turn has brought about new economic, social and political landscapes. Having noticed this trend, those Indonesians who happen to be on the vanguard of global dynamics have come to the conclusion that cultural and educational patterns inherited from the past will no longer suffice to prepare the nation for the coming future. New turns must be made in the conduct of national education.

At the other extreme of the spectrum were people who were --and still are-- rightly alarmed about the negative impacts of all the progress brought about by science and technology. These people have insisted that neglecting the study of humanities in our schools will eventually make this nation incapable of understanding the true meaning of progress achieved in the field of science and technology, and as such it will not be able to use scientific and technological progress to improve the quality of the nation's life.

Before we find something significant in this regard, something which can lead us towards an acceptable policy, a new literacy problem has emerged, that is the problem of information literacy. This has happened with the arrival of the Internet culture. Now that it has become possible for us in Indonesia to access the world-wide information wealth, many important questions arise in our minds: what is all this information ultimately for? Can we do something good with it, or do we need it merely to show off our "modernity"? How can we prevent abuse and misuse of information? How do we distinguish true information from manipulated information?

According to Jeremy Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes, if information society is to be a free and humane society, then information literacy should be defined to include, in an extended sense, not only knowledge on how to use computers and access information but, a critical reflection as well on "the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, political, and even philosophical context and impact."

Defined in this way, information literacy must at the end be capable of serving human society in its strive towards --to quote Antoine Nicholas Condorcet ( 1743-1794)-- "liberty, virtue, and respect for the natural rights of man." Information as a component of knowledge, human mind, and human communication must ultimately enable members of the society "to govern themselves", to become "intelligent shapers of their society rather that its pawns", and to humanize their culture, so that human existence will become more meaningful than "a mere routine of production and consumption".

To achieve this ambitious goal, education towards information literacy must comprise seven dimensions: tool literacy, resource literacy, social-structural literacy, research literacy, publishing literacy, emerging technology literacy, and critical literacy. It is through this last dimension, critical literacy, that students will be trained in critically evaluating the benefits and costs of information technologies.

What about the problem of political literacy? It is basically the problem of making the entire population gain a healthy understanding regarding their rights and duties as citizens of a country. If information literacy is to be taught in the way outlined above, it will certainly address the problem of political literacy as well. But if instruction in information literacy is to include only technical courses related to computer technology, then political literacy will remain a dream about a distant future.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.