Understanding key to literacy

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.