Read some personal reflections on how we think about and teach literacy, and what it means to critically engage with a text here.
Nowadays, as people are surrounded by diverse information through different communication mediums, the ability to read, interpret, and criticize this information becomes more and more relevant. Media technologies are a part of most people’s daily lives in many aspects, for example, critical social interactions.
These mediums offer different platforms for young people to not only interact with each other, but inform themselves on various political issues around the world. But is our idea of literacy, and more specifically, media literacy conscious of the real influence and impact it holds on young people’s lives?
As populism, far-right movements, white-supremacy, and conservatism discourse take the center stage in the Global North (especially in anglophone and European countries), right in front of young people’s faces, media literacy becomes crucial to not only understand, but challenge these ideas.
The involvement of young people with media is often focused on the safety issues and precautions they should take, and when it comes to teaching literacy, it is often focused on reading comprehension and writing abilities of texts as sources of knowledge. The UNESCO (1978) considers a functionally literate person as someone who is capable to participate in all activities that require literacy within their communities. What is more, they ‘should also be able to use reading, writing, and calculating for future development of both personal abilities and the betterment of their communities’ (McMillan & O’Neil, 2012, p. 30). What this implies, is that literacy nowadays requires more than just the ability to read and write. A literate person is also able to observe and critically engage with their communities, striving for a positive change within these spaces. This goes to show the broad reach of literacy nowadays. ‘Literacy is vital to building the capacities to critically understand and carefully retransmit […] knowledge” (Melki, 2024, p. 221), meaning that literacy (including all its variations, such as media, spacial, and internet literacy) requires a deeper engagement from the public, and is far more complicated than acquiring reading abilities such as comprehension, interpretation, and summarisation. To be literate is to be able to comprehend reality in context. A message must be read with consciousness of one’s position within the world, as it is relative to the political, economical, and social context of the reader.
The lasting influence of Paulo Freire
There is no real impartiality when fully dissecting a text. The process is subjective in all aspects, and this understanding is crucial to critically engage with texts. This is the main proposal of Paulo Freire, one of the most influential pedagogues from the Global South. Freire established a literacy education for marginalized communities within the favelas in Brazil, also working with adult illiteracy in main force workers.
As an educator, Freire established that for a text to gain relevance, it must be understood from the reader’s context and how this affects their community, regardless of their age group. ‘Learning to read and write means creating and assembling a written expression for what can be said orally’ (Freire & Macedo, 1987). In other words, effective literacy is perceived through one’s personal experiences that shape our world even before we start engaging with the written word.
The act of reading goes beyond the mere decodification process. It is deeply intertwined with the physical world, through which we name actions, sensations, and emotions and make language gain concrete meaning.
Reading is a social act and experience, shaped by our immediate surroundings and the people around us.
Under this guise, literacy is inherently critical, and the act of teaching it must be not only open, but structured itself around questioning rather than answering. To be literate, then, is to be able to look at discourse, and understand the political and social background behind these stances. Whether these are conveyed in poetry, music, or multi-media, they hold a world view behind them; a reader must approach them not seeking answers but questioning their origin and its ramifications.
What does this have to do with me?
As war, far-right movements, and racism issues start taking center stage in the media of the Global North, and by default also spread through mass media within the Global South (for personal context, Latinamerica), a relevant question arises from the spectator: What does this have to do with me?
This critical literacy theory urges the reader to think about us. When organisations like the UNESCO specify on developing abilities for ‘the betterment of their communities’ under their definition of an universally essential literacy, the reader as an individual has to think beyond themselves. The literacy process doesn’t finish at decodification: it is imperative for the reader to take action, whatever scale that might be. If there were to be an essential question to put this in motion, I would start by asking ‘Can I see some of these ideas in my everyday life? In what ways do they affect the people around me?’
Young people are and can continue influencing the physical and digital circles they move in. They consume and critique media in many ways, and share content across multiple generations. With these mediums, new discourse and portrayals of sociopolitical issues have become available to broad and diverse audiences, and the youth has gained a wider position as producers of texts and media, with new approaches and portrayals of issues surrounding oppression and marginalisation. As young people dive into these possibilities, and use multiple platforms to counter the narratives from the Global North, literacy holds its ground. After all, a contextualised, critical literacy requires the drive of political and social transformation.
Bibliography:
- Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.4324/9780203986103
- McMillan, L., & O’Neil, M. (2012). Literacy and Social Equity. Counterpoints, 406, 30–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42981616
- Revised recommendation concerning the international standardization of educational statistics. (1978, November 27). Paper presented at the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris. Abstract retrieved from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/education/nfsunesco/ pdf/STATIS_E.PDF
- Tygel, A.F. and Kirsch, R., 2016. Contributions of Paulo Freire for a critical data literacy: A popular education approach. The Journal of Community Informatics, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.15353/joci.v12i3.3279
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