Redefining what it means to be literate

Opinion

What follows comes from one whose finest compliment from an English teacher was: “You’re good at math, aren’t you?”

Accurate or not, the preference for objective precision over creative expression leads to my long-simmering preoccupation with whether “literacy’’ is being incorrectly equated to reading and writing, and at what risk.

A recent example concerns the University of Winnipeg’s “Literacy Leadership Post-Baccalaureate, a 30 credit-hour diploma covering literacy theories and comprehensive reading and writing instruction and intervention techniques.”

In U of W puts post-grad literacy-education program on hold amid debate over teaching methods (Free Press, Aug. 14), a program leader explained that the “pause will give us time to reflect on evolving research and policy developments in literacy education and consider how best to shape future literacy-focused professional learning opportunities.”

Digging in, a Manitoba English Language Arts curriculum webpage defines literacy as “…the ability to think and use language for learning, creating, communicating, and interacting with ideas, others, and the world around us.”

The page also nods to numeracy as a type of literacy, and acknowledges “multiliteracies” across multiple modes and contexts, including digital literacy, crucially given the turbulent emergence of artificial intelligence.

Parsing the definition, “ability to” leaves out any requirement for inclination, desire or actual doing, which is concerning. “To think” stands provocatively alone, without qualification or characterization. The list of uses to which language can be put are laudable processes that can also take place in other ways such as across the arts, trades, design, and athletics.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA), by which the achievement of Manitoba students (around Grade 10) is compared across provinces and countries in the domains of mathematics, science and reading, characterizes each of these domains in terms of literacy.

Canada’s Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, which functions like PISA across provinces at Grade 8, reflects a broad view of literacy. From its PCAP 2019 report: “In Canada, all curricula seek to develop student literacy in the broadest sense of the word, including the ability to understand, critically analyze, and create a variety of forms of communication (i.e., oral, written, visual, digital, and multimedia).”

The peace-, sustainability- and equity-promoting United Nations agency UNESCO uses the term literacy narrowly (reading and writing) while also invoking sustainability and global citizenship as outcomes.

Regarding “to think,” Manitoba Education’s global competencies describe critical thinking in terms of putting to the test one’s “assumptions, thoughts, beliefs and actions” by considering evidence, outcomes and implications in the context of ethics and citizenship.

Critical thinking appears on students’ report cards as a graded element for language arts and social studies. For the latter, goals around diversity, human rights and community are invoked.

Taken together, literacy is a great deal more than reading and writing. It entails temperaments and sentiments around general well-being, ethics and responsibility, and curiosity and discernment expressed with intentionality, all supported by a broad range of knowledge and skills. Given this, what can illiteracy look like?

Intolerance for ways of being (including risking harm, such as so-called parental rights), racism, elitism and entitlement, prejudice, disinterest in evidence (e.g., climate change denial) and unchecked online media, are among problems which exist with troubling frequency among the lettered.

These are marks of illiteracy as broadly defined. Command of an alphabet is evidently no protection or remedy.

The term “literacy instruction,” then, is an exaggeration when used in the context of teaching reading and writing. In schools, all subjects, topics, activities, clubs and interactions are foundations for literacy.

The tone of schooling set by trustees, school leaders and educators and all other staff, and the actions and words of parents and citizens, can model literacy. Youngsters seeing and emulating this is how literacy might develop.

Granting that reading and writing maintain their historic place in the definition of literacy, they are necessary and insufficient conditions (logic language) for being literate.

There should be no delusions or unrealistic expectations in supposing that teaching reading is teaching literacy. Being literate depends on a great deal more of all of us.

Ken Clark, retired in Winnipeg, spent most of his 28 years in education focused on large-scale student assessment, which included carefully defining learning goals.