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INTRODUCTION TO 21st CENTURY LITERACIES

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module 1

INTRODUCTION TO 21st CENTURY LITERACIES

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labuguenheicelyn
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INTRODUCTION TO 21st CENTURY LITERACIES (Continuation)

Introduction

Despite the popularity of the American films in the Philippines, many Filipinos cannot
follow the actors’ dialogue, and thus resort to guessing the overall story based on the
actions onscreen.

Despite the ambiguity of the traditional views of literacy, Roberts (1995) notes that
“in the past fifty years, hundreds of definitions of ‘literacy’ have been advanced by scholars,
adult literacy workers, and programme planners,’ with even the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2006) acknowledging that literacy as a
concept has proven to be complex and dynamic, it being continually defined and interpreted
in multiple ways.

Discussion

Expanded Views of Literacy

In 2004, UNESCO formally defined literacy as “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 their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to
participate fully in their community and wider society.”

Note that “reading” does not appear in UNESCO’s definition of literacy. Instead,
literacy has taken on a definition more akin to “knowing about something and what to do
with it.”

In this vein, Mkandawire (2018) more succinctly posits that literacy is “a form of
knowledge, competence, and skills in a particular field or area, “being supported by UNESCO
(2006), Barton (2007), and Mkandawire, Simooya-Munenda, & Cheelo (2017), which
acknowledged that – as we have just pointed out – modern views appear to equate literacy
with knowledge.

This shift in the definition of literacy from “reading and writing” to “knowledge” is
especially important as we explore the “new” literacies of the 21 st century that seem far-
removed from the contexts upon which conventional literacy is based.

When viewed from the perspective of conventional/traditional literacy, the concept of


“new” literacies is a bit a misnomer, as even these new literacies of the 21 st century make
generous use of being able to read and write, rather than supplant them as skills necessary
for survival. However, when viewed from the perspective of literacy as knowledge, the new
literacies begin to make sense as they are the “skills and bodies of knowledge’ that are
necessary for survival and productivity in the information age.

In the same vein of reasoning, the new literacies are not “new” per se – as in the
sense that they never existed before. Rather, we consider them to be new because the
contexts in which old skills and knowledge are being employed as new, both in nature and in
scope. The ability to translate textual information into images is not a new skill, but it is the
ability to do so in a way that is concise, complete, and clear that is certainly new, given that
it will be how ninety percent of the population will be informed on the issue. Similarly, being
able to verify the truth-value and veracity of a document is not a new skill – but being able
to do so when there are a hundred similar documents available to you online is.
Case in point: Throughout history, humans have communicated on levels apart from
the spoken and written word, for example, visually, using the long distance communication
system of smoke signals used by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, and the
indigenous peoples of North America.

In the Victorian Era, there was such a thing as the “Language of Flowers,” where the
kind, color, and arrangement of a bouquet of flowers were used to communicate messages
that could not otherwise be spoken aloud in Victorian society (Greenaway, 1884). For
example, a bouquet of oak leaves (representing strength), purple roses (sorrow), white lilies
(resurrection), and pale yellow tulips and rosemary (memory of remembrance) would
altogether communicate a message of sympathy, usually over the death of a loved one.

Successfully interpreting these “visual languages” required a kind of “visual literacy”


to understand the message being presented and to manage the information encoded
therein – skills which, as following chapters will further reveal, are coming into use again in
the 21st century literacies. The difference is that now we are not analyzing smoke signals or
bouquets, but rather sounds, text, and images from a hundred different sources at a nearby
non-stop rate to the point where accuracy, validity and reliability of the messages we
interpret form the basis for some very important personal and collective decision-making.

Another difference involves the question of necessity: One did not need to be literate
in the language of flowers to live a fruitful and fulfilled life in Victorian-era England, but to be
not media or digitally literate in the 21st century makes one vulnerable to manipulation by
those who are, and such manipulation can easily cost an individual time, money, property,
and even life.

These so-called “new” literacies arose from the increasing availability of


communication technology that were once unavailable to the average individual.
Technologies like blogging and vlogging, social networking, and even text messaging
change and expand both the extent and the form of our communication – blending text,
sound, and images in ways unforeseen and unprecedented (Richardson, 2014). Never before
have the opinions of a twelve year-old child in an unheard –of town in an unheard-of country
been available for everyone on earth to read and hear, and while adults might scoff at a
child’s opinions, that child might have more than a thousand online subscribers who
certainly think his or her opinions are important, maybe even more so than the opinions of
adults.

Summary

Simply put, three things have been critical in the rise of the new literacies:

1. Increased Reach – we are communicating with more people, from more diverse
cultures, across vaster distances than ever before.
2. Increased Means of Communication – we are communicating in more ways and at
faster speeds than ever before.
3. Increased Breadth of Content – we are communicating about more things than
ever before.

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