What does it mean to be literate in the modern world of carding

[Brother]

Do you know how to write and read? Do your relatives, friends and acquaintances know how to do this? It is not surprising if these questions cause you perplexity, because there is nothing surprising in the ability to read and write. But can you say with confidence that every person you communicate with is literate? Not everyone will answer this question in the affirmative, because reading and writing are by no means synonymous with literacy, at least today.

So what does it mean to be literate? There is no common understanding of the essence and level of educational skills that reveal the essence of the concept of "literacy" today. But we can say with confidence that people now understand literacy as something completely different from, for example, half a century ago, if only because the level of literacy, which was relevant at that time, today simply does not allow a person to live normally and work effectively.

In short, we invite you to speculate with us about what it means to be literate, and try to understand the specifics of this issue in this short article (by the way, if you are not yet familiar with our material "Literacy. Is it Needed in the Modern World" , be sure to read it, because it is likely that it will also lead you to interesting thoughts about literacy and its importance in human life).

Features of literacy in the context of modern technological progress​

The problem of literacy of the population is extremely acute today, and for the system of lifelong education it is of particular interest, because it most directly relates to the issues of content, goals and technological support of the learning process.

For centuries, literacy was limited to teaching to read and write and was based on a standard set of rules. And in the minds of the public, the term "literate" was synonymous with the term "educated." Today, due to the complication of forms and channels of communication, changes in the cultural and linguistic diversity of the world, the concept of literacy has expanded.

For example, in 1958, people who can read and understand the essence of the text, as well as in a short form in writing, set out information about everyday life, began to be considered literate. In the mid-1960s, the term "functional literacy" was coined, and not long after, people who were able to take part in all activities that required literacy for effective functioning were considered functionally literate.

If we turn to modern official and scientific-methodological texts, we will find in them information about other types of literacy, such as reading literacy, mathematical literacy, natural science literacy, bibliographic literacy and other types due to orientation in certain subject areas.

The 21st century is characterized as a world of screen culture, which requires an appropriate level of reading competence and specific visual literacy. The latter, in turn, brings education into the sphere of perception of educational information in the “language of images”. This means that a literate person must have the ability to analyze and synthesize visual reality.

In addition, in recent decades, projects in the fields of scientific and technological literacy have increasingly begun to be implemented, the reason for which has become the ubiquitous spread of the opportunity to use information, to use modern scientific and technological resources for communication.

Here we are talking about the ability to use the media, computers and global networks. In 2005, the Library of Alexandria hosted a Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning and adopted a declaration that information and computer literacy are vital literacy in the 21st century.

It will also be very useful to mention the emergence of the term "media literacy", which, together with audiovisual literacy, implies the ability of a person to work with media products, which means that he must learn to read and evaluate media texts.

With regard to computer literacy, it means the ability of a person, firstly, to be aware of the need for information, and secondly, to have the skill to effectively search, evaluate and use it in compliance with ethical standards.

In 2000, the Association of Colleges and Library Research proposed standards for assessing information literacy in higher education. The development of all kinds of immersion programs in information literacy began. And in 2010, a diagram emerged showing the components of information literacy. These include information ethics, critical thinking, and the use of media and library resources.

Together with information literacy, network literacy began to acquire special relevance, because network communication today is a new type of communication, including communication of the trainer. Network literacy is directly related to the use of the Internet.

And already here we can draw the first conclusions that a modern literate person should have critical perception as never before, because he has to interact with information from a huge number of different sources every day.

Features of literacy in the context of modern culture​

Above, we outlined the requirements for human literacy in the context of technological progress, but there are other requirements, due to the modern cultural context. Cultural literacy is influenced by the degree of people's involvement in a particular cultural background knowledge. It also depends on the ability to understand the formal and informal language (and context) that create and represent contemporary culture.

Cultural literacy requires that a person understands a wide range of basic knowledge that serve as the core of the culture in which he lives, and also be able to freely apply this knowledge in everyday, professional and business life. Cultural literacy includes a whole range of types of literacy derived from it, which are required to be possessed by a modern person:

• Literacy in the field of traditional (national) culture. This refers to the idea of culture, depending on the increase in the level of knowledge of a person about folk traditions, customs, creativity (dance, music, poetry).
• Multicultural literacy. The ability to navigate freely in the world of many cultures, to be aware of its meanings and values, to behave in a civilized manner in societies of different cultures and to interact with their representatives.
• Environmental awareness. This concept includes systems thinking, knowledge of the principles of ecology, the separation of environmental values, the ability to be involved in nature conservation activities. Some researchers add here also the ability to understand the language of nature, which any peoples possessed in the era of paganism, when they were illiterate in the traditional sense of the word today.

At the same time, experts do not draw clear boundaries between the types of literacy presented, pointing out that they all constitute one integral family. There can be a lot of "literacy" of a person, but they will all be connected with each other, and there is no single system that could unite all human thoughts. However, more and more attempts are being made to unite the efforts of professionals from various fields in search of a common understanding of the phenomenon of literacy. But let's summarize.

At the conclusion of this section of the article, we come to the second important conclusion on the topic of the requirements of literacy for a modern person. It consists in the fact that everyone who wants to be literate in the broadest sense of the word should expand their boundaries and be obliged to study their native and other cultures, and also be interested in solving issues related to environmental problems, even if the level of their personal behavior.

Characteristics of modern literacy​

When studying the features of modern literacy, one may get the impression that a person of our time needs some kind of special literacy, which is multifaceted and comprehensive, with universal properties and evaluation criteria. This led to the fact that today the term "new literacy" can be heard more and more often (and for the first time it was mentioned by researcher David Buckingham in the early 1990s in his articles).

It is possible to consider the characteristics of modern literacy using the example of a number of the latest types of literacy, more often than other people of interest. These include:

• Multiple literacy. This term indicates a synthesis of different types of literacy, mainly related to practical activity. An example of such literacy is the combination of human visual intelligence capabilities, when the ability to visualize perception and the ability to read and count are involved.
• Multimodal literacy. The basis of this concept is the idea of the diversity of the nature of languages and the texts that form them. Traditionally, literacy has always been perceived as language proficiency and belonged to the field of linguistics. However, there are such languages as the language of sounds, dance, colors, images, etc. Thus, the peculiarities of the modern world require people to be able to switch between different sign systems, to recognize, analyze and interpret, and, if necessary, also recode any information structures.
• Polyliteracy. This term comes into contact with the concepts of comparative philology and comparative linguistics and develops the idea of polyglotism in relation to cultures. It assumes the ability of a person to perceive, study and understand different cultures, the ability, if necessary, to switch between them, based on the context of the activity being performed.
• Multi-literacy. The presented type of literacy has four components. The first is situational awareness, which is based on individual experience of working with information. The second is flexible instruction that allows you to find forms of self-expression in the communication process. The third is a critical view, through which a person can relate information to individual needs and social context. And the fourth is the transformation of sign and semantic systems from one context to another.
• Transliteracy. Everything is somewhat simpler here: transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact through different tools, platforms and media (from oral signals and signs, printed and handwritten texts, radio, television and films to digital social networks). We also note that transliteracy requires a person to be able to combine sources of information, have critical thinking, skills to assess, select and integrate knowledge for specific tasks.

Based on the above, a modern person should be able to write and read, using fundamentally new tools, such as laptops, tablets, keyboards, smartphones, etc. Online literacy also deserves special attention, because people are often faced with a situational flow of information. In addition, research from the University of California Santa Barbara, begun back in 2005, showed that regular reading and reading online are two fundamentally different types of mental activity.

The new literacy also includes such important skills today as finding information using a PC, blogging, maintaining a website, using e-mail, Skype and other instant messengers, mailing, visiting an online store, etc. This also includes specific professional skills: creating digital products, administering web resources, etc.

To everything else, we can add that at present, in educational practice, high-tech teaching aids are increasingly used, designed for different methods of both presentation and perception of educational information. And this once again points to the need for a modern person to master new literacy.

But, even taking into account all of the above, one should still not talk about the sum of the considered types of literacy. Today, it is more important for a person to realize the vital need for mastering new ways of interacting with both the real and the virtual world, creative adaptation to the nature of information, as well as to new characteristics of the information space.

A modern person should not only be able to work with traditional paper carriers of information (as it was before), but also be able to read data embedded in sign systems that are different in nature.

Conclusions​

In the conclusion of the article, we can conclude that people of the 21st century are mostly distinguished by the so-called partial literacy. Thus, many educated people, for example, do not have sufficient command of the same computer or communication. This is called functional limitation because their literacy level is focused only on solving certain professional and life problems.

An analogy can be made here where a person knows only one part of the same multiplication table or alphabet. The situation is not the best, but nevertheless it sets the direction for the development of the content part of a person's lifelong learning that occurs throughout his life.

If people do not meet the requirements of modern literacy, they will be modern illiterate. If in the past centuries the ability to write was divided into literate and illiterate people, and then - the ability to print texts, today this border can be drawn by the development of the Internet with the new types of writing, reading and even communication that it generates.

Literacy in the understandings and areas listed in our article provides people with the fullness of life, allows them to participate in the life of society and remain competitive in various fields of activity. A person of the present must always remain alert, i.e. to be ready, if necessary, to improve both their general and functional literacy (for more details about what it is, we wrote in the article "Modern types of literacy").

Everything that we said about the new literacy indicates the need to expand the content of education, as well as the development of a person's ability to build any communication in different sign systems and freely express themselves in their context. To achieve this goal, innovations corresponding to the peculiarities of our time must be introduced into the educational process.

But while the methods of solving these problems are only at the level of development, the responsibility for becoming a modern literate person lies on the shoulders of each of us. First, we must accept the need for continuing education (in our case, self-education). And secondly, we ourselves must ensure our movement along this path.

Being literate in the modern world, as before, means being able to read, write, express yourself and communicate with people around you about what is happening in everyday life. But it also means keeping up with the times, following the achievements and discoveries in the fields of science, technology, education, being able to use modern technologies, being free from stereotypes and prejudices that have a destructive effect on consciousness.

We will not argue that the topic of modern literacy can be considered much deeper than in our article. However, when creating this material, we pursued the goal not to conduct a full-fledged research, but to point out the directions in which a modern person who wants to be truly educated and literate needs to develop. We hope we managed to achieve this goal.

Never stop your education. “Live and learn” - this folk wisdom has not lost its relevance even in our time. Set new goals for yourself, achieve them, strive every day to become at least a little smarter and better, learn new things and learn what you didn’t know how to do yesterday - this will speak of you as a literate person.

We wish you good luck and new achievements!