Hearth of democracy: Literacy

By John Michael Phillips

MALANG, East Java (JP): Every year articles are printed in local newspapers concerning the need for literacy in Indonesia. These articles remind readers that literacy means the ability to both read and write as the latter is often forgotten. In fact, without including writing in defining literacy we fail to fully understand its true dimensions, since the ability to use ideas is as important as the ability to gather them. Second, we learn that literacy has an expanded meaning to include such things as cultural literacy and technological literacy.

The great worry today is the technological gap that exists between those who can and do learn, and those who cannot and have no opportunity to learn. For a number of reasons technological literacy is overrated in the sense that technology is getting easier to use physically and to some extent mentally, but how, when, and why to use it is as complicated as ever.

Thus, it is quite clear that technology literacy discussions should focus on the need to enhance the ability to discern appropriate uses of technology, and not assume that technological solutions are always the most appropriate.

My favorite example of this occurred during the space race between the U.S. and the former USSR. Both nations had to solve the problem of writing in zero gravity of space. The richer and more technologically oriented U.S. spent a US$1 million to solve the problem inventing a new pen. The poor Soviet Union solved the problem by using cheap pencils.

An even more important element of literacy is also being ignored, its purpose-communication. Literacy is usually defined as the ability to read and write in order to communicate or understand communication through interaction with text. But not all interaction with text is sufficient.

When I was young with bad eyesight, I thought that when I got glasses, I would be able to read since I could now see. So, distinctions between reading and writing and communicating are important if one believes that the primary purpose of learning how to read and write is to foster better communication. Reading is not simply seeing, nor writing simply scribbling. But even more important is, what kind of understanding and what kind of communication?

Some 40,000 copies a year of Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf are reportedly sold illegally in Germany. I also seem to remember that when Mao was alive his little red book had the largest publication and widest circulation of any modern book and may have rivaled the Koran and the Bible for "popularity". Finally, it is certainly true that like colonialists compared to the colonized before the modern post World War II era, "white" South Africans during apartheid had a much higher rate of literacy than did "blacks" (because blacks had poor education). So literacy can be easily misused to foster oppression and tyranny particularly when reading-writing are divorced from true understanding. The job of the "hero" in George Orwell's book 1984 was to rewrite history texts based on the latest party line, "newspeak".

It's not that I advocate allowing people to remain illiterate. Literacy is potentially the most liberating of all human skills. Literacy skills are crucial and essential to the building of a truly democratic society. The whole idea that "majority rules" is premised on the majority being literate. The initial use of "literacy laws" in the U.S. was not to deny the right to vote to particular groups of people based on racial or ethnic background, but to insure that the voters could read and write and thus, understand the issues on which they cast votes.

That the law was subverted to keep minorities from having access to power does not alter the fact that an educated, literate population is the real strength of a democratic country. In fact, one definition of literacy is "people who are educated." So the definition of literacy should include the idea that a literate person is one who understands. But there is even more to literacy.

People who write will tell you that writing is not just communicating with others, it is about communicating with yourself so that you yourself understand better. Writing forces you to exceed surface understanding to the deeper levels of the conscious and unconscious mind, so as to discuss with yourself about what you know and understand of the world and the way it works. In this way, you are able to explore your ideas, beliefs, and dreams. That someone may be able to read, understand, and empathize with you in a true act of communication is like discovering the toy in the box of crackerjacks-pure, unadulterated joy.

But the act of writing and the act of reading impose a duty on us to seek communication and understanding in the light and not the darkness. That is, we have a duty in society to use our literacy skills to seek truth, not to spread lies and believe falsehoods. Ultimately then, true literacy is not a privilege for the few or even a choice for the many, but a responsibility for us all.

DR. John Michael Phillips is an educator and consultant to IBMT Surabaya.