From basic literacy to information literacy

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.