Functional Literacy, Functional Illiteracy: The Focus of an Ongoing Social Debate

Autor/in	Valdivielso, Sofia
Titel	Functional Literacy, Functional Illiteracy: The Focus of an Ongoing Social Debate
Quelle	In: Convergence, 39 (2006) 2-3, S.123-129 (7 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0010-8146
Schlagwörter	Illiteracy; Academic Discourse; Functional Literacy + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Analphabetismus; Discourse; Diskurs; Funktionale Kompetenz
Abstract	When, in the 1970s, industrialised countries, confident of their citizens' universal literacy, discovered that significant proportion of their adult population had difficulties in dealing with the rapid changes they were going through, a new term to explain this phenomenon was coined: functional literacy, or its negative, functional illiteracy. These concepts soon became the focus of an ongoing social debate. Over the last thirty years huge volumes of printed material on functional literacy have been produced. There are two kinds of discourse when analysing this material: government discourse and academic discourse. However, it has been conceded that literacy can neither be understood nor measured independently from these contexts, and it cannot be reduced to its instrumental aspects. In this debate, and in the delimitation of the concept of functional literacy, only the necessary skills to "function" in current societies have been taken into account. Anyone who manifests any difficulty in managing these skills has been defined as functional illiterate. The functionalist discourse has contributed to the construction of a reality that characterises itself as unidimensional and considering only the necessary skills to adapt itself to the changes that take place in contemporary societies. Comprehensive literacy goes beyond that, not denying the fact those skills are necessary but taking into account the existence of other non-functional skills that are equally important. This article talks about comprehensive literacy and its four levels of comprehensiveness: (1) individual conscience; (2) communitarian conscience of human being; (3) social conscience; and (4) planetary conscience. Working along these lines implies a paradigmatic change. Comprehensive literacy is inserted in this paradigmatic change, and therefore it ought to contribute to understand this phenomenon, because currently there is a deep dissociation between people's disarticulated, fragmented, categorised knowledge, and the realities and problems that are increasingly interrelated, multidimensional, transnational, planetary and global. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Renaissance House, 20 Princess Road West, Leicester, LE1 6TP, UK. Tel: +44-1162-044200; Fax: +44-1162-044262; e-mail: enquiries@niace.org.uk; Web site: http://www.niace.org.uk/Publications/Periodicals/Default.htm
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10