Forms of 'illiteracy'

Review of Frameworks for the Representation of alternative Conceptual Orderings as Determined by Linguistic and Cultural Contexts (Part #6)

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Recent studies in European countries and the USA have revealed suprisingly high levels of illiteracy. In the case of the USA, the English Language Proficiency Survey, a study by the Census Bureau published in 1986 indicated an illiteracy rate of 9% for those of English mother tongue and 48% for others. Of those who failed the test 0.8% had some college education, 6% had finished high school, 18.6% had some high school education, 34.3% had 6-8 years schooling, and 53.3% had 5 or less years schooling. An earlier and more stringent test of 'functional competency of adults', the Adult Performance Level Project (University of Texas, 1975), covered skills of communication, computation, problem solving and personal relations. It found that 20% of American adults were unable to perform everyday adult tasks whilst a further 34% could perform the tasks but not proficiently. It is to be expected that the situation in other countries is equally dramatic. Such tests may be interpreted as giving an indication of inability to use information in a certain form. Clearly large proportions of any population do not make more than limited use of information available in text form. This is not to say that they do not make extensive and effective use of information in other forms in terms of their needs. It is unfortunate that 'illiteracy' is easily interpreted as inability to use information when in fact it only reflects inability to use information of a certain type. 

But even amongst those who are found to be 'literate', such tests do not help to distinguish those who are disinclined to use their ability in order to make use of information in a particular form. It is not possible to distinguish the proportions of the literate population that uses text information (a) to reinforce currently held views, or (b) to retrie factual data, in contrast to those who make active use of it (c) to explore challenging, innovative or opposing views. This suggests the need for a more complex indicator than illiteracy rate to measure inability to make use of information in different forms.