Understanding key to literacy

By John Phillips

JAKARTA (JP): In honor of Indonesia's recent Literacy Day celebrations, this newspaper printed several articles about the true nature of literacy. First, readers were reminded that literacy means not only the ability to read, but the ability to write. Second, readers learned about the expanded meaning of literacy -- that the term includes cultural literacy, or the ability to read and write about one's culture, and computer literacy, the ability to use technology.

But an even more important element of literacy was ignored: Understanding. Being able to read means being able to understand text, while being able to write implies being able to communicate through producing text.

Literacy, then, is the ability to communicate or understand through interaction with text. But not all interaction with text is sufficient. For example, when I was very young and had poor eyesight, I thought that my first pair of glasses would give me the ability to read because I would be able to see. Distinctions between reading and understanding 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 and understanding.

Reading is not simply seeing, and writing is not simply scribbling. Even more important is what kind of understanding and what kind of communication?

I read somewhere that some 40,000 copies of Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf are sold illegally in Germany each year. When Mao was alive his little red book had the largest publication and widest circulation of any modern book and may have even rivaled the Bible for "popularity".

Finally, as was the case elsewhere in the world with colonialists and the colonized before World War II, during the apartheid era in South Africa, white South Africans had a much higher rate of literacy than did black South Africans (in part because blacks were not allowed much education).

As these examples show, literacy can be easily misused to foster oppression and tyranny, particularly when reading and writing are divorced from true understanding and communication. Recall that the job of the "hero" in George Orwell's anti- totalitarian book 1984 was to rewrite history to reflect the party line, "newspeak".

Literacy is potentially the most liberating of all human skills, for literacy skills are essential to the building of a truly democratic society. The notion that "majority rules" is premised on assumption that majority is literate. Initially, "literacy laws" in the United States were not intended 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 and candidates on which they cast votes. Although these laws were eventually subverted to keep minorities from having access to power, the basic idea remains that an educated, literate populous is the real strength of a democratic country.

In short, a literate population is an educated population, and the definition of literacy must include the ability to understand literally and symbolically. But there is even more to the concept of literacy.

Some statistician once calculated that if 100 monkeys typed on 100 typewriters for a zillion or so years, they would produce one Shakespeare play by random chance. These mental gymnastics prove that random combinations of letters can produce greatness, and this experiment could be duplicated by 100 human beings who also could eventually hit the magic combination of words that produce great meaning. But Shakespeare was a genius and his work is of greater intrinsic value than that of the monkeys or the humans because he conceived of ideas and developed them in writing. That is, the ability to communicate in writing is the highest literacy skill of all.

People who write say that writing is not just about communicating with others, but about communicating with themselves to more fully understand ideas. The act of writing forces propels the writer beyond surface understanding into the deeper levels of the conscious and unconscious mind. It is the writer's discussion with himself about what he knows and understands of the world, and how it works. With his pen he is able to explore his ideas, beliefs and dreams. The writer re- emerges with greater clarity of ideas and a sheet of paper to prove it.

The act of writing and the act of reading impose a duty on all of us to seek communication and understanding in the light, not in the darkness of one's mind. That is, we have a duty in society to use our literacy skills to seek truth and with its knowledge, not to spread lies, believe falsehoods, create misunderstanding and foster hatred. Ultimately, true literacy is not a privilege for the few, or even a choice for the many, but a responsibility for us all.

The writer is a visiting lecturer at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta.