What is True Literacy?

And what about the following symptoms?

• Can’t understand.
• Can’t remember.
• Feeling “blank” or "not there".
• Feeling suddenly washed-out (tired and lacking energy).
• Thinking you got it when you didn’t.
• Guessing.
• Resistance to learning new things.
• Upsets, truancy, not able to do, errors.

All the above symptoms, the confusion, the ‘blank feeling’, the tired feeling or the inability to grasp or learn or understand all come after a word or symbol that the person did not have defined and understood.

The student is not able to read or listen with understanding because of big or small words which are either not understood at all or misunderstood (incorrectly understood). There are ten ways a word or symbol can be misunderstood. This is worth learning. Unfortunately our current Western education systems drill students from a very young age to simply 'guess' at the meanings of words instead of looking them up in a good dictionary. They drill students in memorising without understanding. They set them up for failure.

Could you imagine being able to read a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole textbook with full understanding, and then being able to easily put into practice what you had just read?

This ability would be true literacy.

Currently, anyone who can read and write is considered literate. However, being able to utter some sounds from a page (read) or write words on a page without understanding, does not constitute true literacy. It is robotism. Robots can't think for themselves and are easily controlled.

Therefore, true literacy would be the ability to read a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole textbook with full understanding, and then being able to easily put into practice what had just been read.

By extension, a truly literate person could also:

• Easily evaluate information and think for themselves. Their thinking would not be blocked or stunted.
• Be skilled in recognising symptoms when they are not reading or writing with understanding and take effective action to remedy it, that is look for the words or symbols they do not understand, and take care to find their correct meaning to ensure maximum understanding.
• Recognise when a textbook or piece of writing, or a speech, had been written or spoken in such a way as to reduce or hinder understanding.

Such a person would have no need for memorisation tricks, for example to pass exams, as they would be able to read, listen and learn with understanding, evaluate the information and put it into practice as required. Life would be open to them as they would know what to do to understand it. They would be on top of their game!

The Dumbing Down of the Word Literate

How the alteration of the meaning of ONE word has caused global havoc in education

For most of its long history in English, the word literate has only ever meant ‘familiar with literature, well-educated, well-read, learned, lettered (versed, experienced or skilled in literature and science)’.  

Literate comes from the Latin word littera, which means ‘letter’.

Various forms of this definition can be found in antique dictionaries such as Samuel Johnson’s 1785 Dictionary of the English Language, or Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. The 1895 Lloyd’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary also contains this definition. It was implied and understood that a literate person could read and write, and could understand what they were reading and writing. It was a given.

Fast-forward 130 years, and this definition has practically vanished from modern dictionaries. In fact, as we scan through dictionaries from the early 1900s to present time 2022, this definition begins to disappear early on, and is no longer readily found in modern dictionaries except in very large dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (twenty-volume edition) or the likes of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

The result? The principal definitions for ‘literacy’ and ‘literate’ now found in most modern dictionaries only refer to the basic ability to read and write. And yet, this was never the meaning of those words.

What you need to take away here is that the modern usage of literate as in 'able to read and write' did not exist until very recently. The alteration, dilution and dumbing down of its meaning has caused a tangible reduction in ability throughout the past 130 years.

And herein lies the crux of the matter: the requirement to read and write with understanding has but disappeared from our education systems. Parroting, mechanically repeating or paraphrasing texts and facts, without understanding and critical thinking, so as to pass exams or get a certificate or appear intelligent on the likes of social media, seems to be the order of the day!

The negative repercussions of this huge change can no longer be ignored.

The Root Cause behind this Change

What happened?

It’s very simple. The inception of the Prussian Model of education in the early 1800s and its swift spread across the West, together with the advent of the new subject of psychology in 1879, are time coincident with the calculated alteration and dilution of what it means to be literate. These two factors began a chain reaction of events which would cause the complete decline of Western education which we are experiencing today. You can read all about it in my article, The Decline of Western Education in the 21^st Century. (I encourage you to also do your own research to confirm the facts.)

It is notable that when we look back at famous great minds in history prior to 1900s, such as engineers, mathematicians, scientists and philosophers, we observe that they had one thing in common: they were literate, i.e. read a great deal, were familiar with literature and science, could write well and were generally well learned or educated. They had not gone through some system of “schooling examinations” and “behavioural schooling” which would otherwise crush their thinking, suppress their creativity and turn them into wooden puppets, unable to think for themselves. In fact many were schooled at home with their parents, or with tutors, as was the practice for centuries. And you can go back down the centuries to find the same pattern: great minds who were very literate, and educated to be able to think for themselves and apply the data in life. These great minds advanced civilisation for the greater good.

Of course the Prussian Model put an end to this as literature and thinking skills were reserved for only the 1% of the population (the elites). To add insult to injury, under the specious heading of ‘literacy for all’, reading was strongly discouraged in 95% of the population as reading books was considered ‘dangerous’ by the elites since it could make people have ideas which did not conform to the State’s own ideas; reading books could create intelligent people who could think for themselves, have ideas and perhaps question the status quo. And to this day we are still perpetrating this system.

What’s happening in the world now?

Educational establishments and governmental departments of education can tick the boxes. They can say that this or that child is literate. But are they, really? Are the teachers even literate? Are the paper-pushers in the state educational departments literate? Most have also been educated within the same constraints as the Prussian Model which has pervaded the entire Western education system and brought it to the brink of collapse.

In fact, new words have even been developed to explain away why a ‘literate’ person is not actually quite that literate after all, thus vindicating the fact that its own modern definition of ‘being able to read and write’ does not imply doing so with understanding.

While it is believed that there are around 1 billion illiterates in the world (people who cannot read and write at all), it is thought that there are another 1 billion functional illiterates. Functional illiteracy is one of those new words which refers to reading and writing skills that are inadequate ‘to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level’. So here we are looking at one quarter of the world population with either non-existent ability to read and write, or very basic skills only which are not sufficient for successful living.

Then there is the category of hidden illiterates – which are those people who, while seemingly normal in their intelligence and seemingly able to read and write, yet have numerous terms and words that are misunderstood, causing them to make mistakes, alter instructions, make financial errors that can cost millions of pounds. There are millions of such people which you can find in top government or corporate positions (I have personal experience with this and many of us have also observed this to be true) all the way down the corporate and civilian ladder.

Let us ask this question: how can it be that here and now, in the twenty-first century, in an age of high-speed technology, we find ourselves with at least a quarter of the world population struggling with two of the most fundamental skills in life - reading and writing. Anyone who can read and write with understanding and clarity of thinking, will have a much higher chance of success in life; all knowledge will be open to him or her. Yet, this ability seems to be the target of an unrelenting onslaught.

According to the Institute of Engineering & Technology, two-thirds (71%) of the UK engineering workforce who are experiencing internal skills gaps say it is down to missing engineering or technical skills and in 2022, the UK Commission for Employment & Skills reported that 43% of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) vacancies are hard to fill, this being down to a shortage of applicants with the required skills and experience.

The core root of this growing skills gap is illiteracy caused by a Western education system, from school through to university and workplace training, which fails to produce literate citizens after years of 'schooling'.

In a nutshell, we find ourselves facing a number of issues: 

• Huge global skills shortage despite large population. 
• Students and adults who can no longer think for themselves.
• Pressurising students to study, to learn to "pass exams", without consulting their willingness to know. Force, force, force..... force begets force.....
• Education has become behaviour management, learning disorders, prescription drugs and electric shock treatment for adults and children etc.
• Students highly stressed, high suicide rates, depression, mental health problems.
• Soaring crime and drug use in areas where good education is lacking.
• THE LOSS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 

These issues can be tackled right away by moving away from the Prussian and educational psychology models of education and restoring true literacy from the moment a young human begins to learn to read and write.

True literacy and accompanying learning know-how is the cornerstone to success not only in STEM education, but in all educational and learning endeavours. Restoring these abilities in every student and world citizen, young or old, will create a renaissance in the field of education not seen in a very long time.