Literacy definitions

What is literacy?

Literacy is not just being able to read and write, but also to have the understanding of what has been read or written. This includes the ability to critically analyze texts of any kind. Literacy, however, should encompass the ability to understand the world around, which includes knowledge that is passed to us by our communities through language, whether this knowledge is written or not.

This definition is supported by James Paul Gee who posits that “any discourse (primary or secondary) is for most people most of the time only mastered through acquisition, not learning, that is, it requires exposure to models in natural, meaningful and functional settings, and teaching is not liable to be very successful --  it may even initially get in the way.”(p.8).  Freire & Macedo state that “reading the world always precedes reading the word.” (p. 20).

What is illiteracy?

Illiteracy, therefore, can be construed as the lack of understanding or proper interpretation of the world around us, and also the texts. To support Freire and Macedo, illiteracy would mean not only the inability to read the world but also the word.

What are the characteristics of a literate person?

A literate person is aware of the world around him/her, and is capable of interpreting the knowledge presented to him/her or read to or by him/her.

 Part II

Brian Street contends that “literacy is not just a set of uniform “technical skills” to be imparted to those lacking them…but rather that there are multiple literacies in communities and that literacy practices are socially embedded” (p. 2).  Therefore his understanding of literacy is that it is not one prescribed rigid thing. It is community specific, and therefore has different thoughts and tenets.

His label, therefore, can be seen as the social use of literacy.

Ohmann (1985) agrees  with Brian Street when he says that “literacy is an activity of social groups, and a necessary feature of some kinds of social organization. Like every other human activity, it embeds social relations within it.