First things first: what is literacy and how are we doing?
The notion of 'literacy' lies at the centre of education debates. It serves as one well-oiled means of measuring and comparing different geographical areas and different time periods, even if it is a thorny concept upon which researchers and educationalists struggle to agree. For governments, literacy levels feed into education reforms (and, often, into political point scoring efforts). For NGOs, comparative studies can evidence the progression of equality and social mobility, and fuel the sense that our world really is (in some senses) becoming a better place.
At its most basic level, literacy has been defined as:
..a key skill and a key measure of a population’s education...
In terms of how we are doing in developing this 'key skill' in the world population, things seem to have been going really quite well: from a state of nearly 80% illiteracy in the world population in 1800, we have reached a level of over 80% literacy.
If we take the UK as a case study, then it seems that we have earned a well-deserved pat on the back: steady increases in literacy levels across the population have risen since 1475 to reach nearly 100%, as measured by 2016.
This march of progress looks all the more impressive if we set the UK figures against calculations of global literacy levels.
If we can delight in the strength of global figures, we should – so the statistical narrative goes – be in fits of rapture on being presented with the overlay of comparative UK figures.
But this only one part of the picture.
Literacy and deep, critical literacy
Whilst there is no doubt that basic literacy levels the globe over have been raised through the extension of education we nevertheless have a long way to go in terms of ensuring literacy levels go deep enough and are appropriate for the current information context(s) in which we live. This is clear, not only from the studies lamenting the poor ability of young people to differentiate between information online, but also the mounting evidence that this is not just an issue amongst the next generation but perhaps the entire electorate.
One of the reports underpinning the above presentation of data is a 2017 Unesco publication on literacy. Here, we find a history of world literacy levels over the past 50 years, as well as a more nuanced presentation of the real state of illiteracy and its uneven eradication. Importantly, we also have a note on how Unesco's own definition of literacy has evolved from a simplistic view of literacy as the ability to 'read and write a short simple statement on his or her everyday life' (1958) to the following:
...Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve his or her goals, develop his or her knowledge and potential, and participate fully in community and wider society (2015).
If the length alone highlights the complexity of the notion of literacy, then the concepts it encompasses identify its depth and breadth. In particular, we might hone in on the 6 verbs – 'identify', 'understand', 'interpret', 'create', 'communicate' and 'compute' – which head the definition.
Effectively, what we see here is a version of Benjamin Bloom's well-known and widely discussed hierarchy of skills, which is commonly divided between lower order and higher order thinking skills.
In 'identify' and 'understand', we see a nod to the lower order or foundational level of skills; in 'interpret', 'create', 'communicate' and 'compute', we see an alignment with the higher order thinking skills.
Turning to the second half of this definition, the outline becomes much more general, even if we can detect the move towards defining literacy in terms of functionality. One question we might also ask is how the process of 'enabling individuals to achieve his or her goals, develop his or her knowledge and potential, and participate fully in community and wider society' can actually be achieved.
One way is to consider the notion of critical literacy, as has been propagated by Allan Luke in the wake of Paulo Friere's seminal work. According to the standards set by critical literacy, we need to understand how text functions within social institutions or contexts, an idea which the Unesco definition itself hints at in the mention of ‘varying contexts’. We need to be able to appreciate the power play at work; what interests underpin the spaces where content we readily read is published. In simple terms, we need to develop cognizance of the biases or slants colouring the content we read and understand how these are leveraged to have an impact on us. In sum, critical literacy underlines the importance of a connected, deeply contextualised approach to deciphering text in our inner communities and wider society.
Ultimately, being critically literate is knowing the right questions to ask of text; having strategies to enact in different settings. It is a form of literacy which, to make reference to The National Literacy Trust's definition, enables individuals to 'make sense of the world'. In these terms, the battle to raise literacy levels seems just as fraught as it was in 1972 when Unesco warned that 'the fight to spread literacy among the world's population is being both won and, to some extent, lost'. Let us now raise the stakes and get these tables well and truly turned.