Yulin Hong
Professor Pearsall
UWP 1Y
5 July 2016
Connection Between Different Literacy
From the moment a baby was born, literacy starts to enter his life. Literacy is the key to modern society. One must master it in order to make a living in the future. Since literacy is an important tool from the moment it was invented, it evolves into various different forms. Real life literacy is too complicated to be defined in the way Knoblauch did. From my inventory log and life experience, most literacy acts cannot be classified into only one category. A literacy act may involve multiple literacy forms.
Functional literacy is a kind of literacy that frequently appears on my log and in real life. When I read menus, road sign, Google map or text my friends, I carried out functional literacy. Functional literacy is the base for most of our daily activities. In China, government provides free public education from elementary school to high school, seeking to reduce illiteracy rate. Billions of spend on education indicates the value of literacy. During those twelve years of literacy education, about nine years focus just on functional literacy. As part of this education program, I started to learn functional literacy at a very young age. At first I learned each character; soon I learned words; finally I could combine words into sentence and practice functional literacy in real life. Acts that I take for granted now, such as signing my name, shopping at Trader Joe’s or posting photos on Instagram, are all closely connect with functional literacy. I agree with Knoblauch that functional literacy is not enough for educate purpose, but I would rather view functional literacy as a ground base for other more sophisticated literacy form. After all, functional literacy is all about the most basic part of reading and writing.
After I master functional literacy, I could read more books and soon enter the world of liberal literacy. I tended to read a lot at high school, from classic Chinese poems to contemporary Japanese detective novels. My world is widened as I began to absorb different ideals from books. It never stops expanding because I engage with liberal literacy everyday. Judging by my log, I spend a lot of time online. Other people’s logs also lead to the same result. The world of Internet is actually the world of liberal literacy. No matter how strange one’s opinion is, as long as it is legal, he can always find a place online to post his ideal. Internet completely changes the way people assess to different thoughts. I no longer need to read books to find out the impact of British leaving the EU. Just simply Google it, opinions on different perspectives will present on the screen. In fact, I did not even bother to Google it since people reposted articles from scholar and their own opinion about it on social media during this historical even happened. Whenever I log into my social media account I start a liberal reading journey.
Since I keep receiving information by books and through Internet, I will inevitably agree or disagree with some of them. Therefore, liberal literacy leads to critical literacy. The news I read few days ago reminds me of a sensational genetic modified food documentary in China. Few years ago, a Chinese reporter gave up his job to make a documentary about genetic modified food and demanded government to ban GMO food in China because he believed it was harmful. Many people believed in him because this man was willing to sacrifice his future to revel what he believe “the truth” about GMO food. I just doubted him. What I learn from biology class about genetic modified technology was nothing like he described. For me, this technology brings food to millions of family who struggles to live, because genetic modified crops is more productive and easier to plant than normal crops. Then news came a few days ago that about 107 noble laureates want Greenpeace to stop bashing GMO food. When I read it online, I realized my doubt about that documentary was reasonable. I am glad that my knowledge acquired from reading biology books provided me a different view from what other people believe was “right” and gave me the power to question the authenticity of this “right” ideal.
Functional literacy, liberal literacy and critical literacy do not exist independent from each other. In fact, from what I experience, they are closely related. Functional literacy allows me to read basic, simple things. With basic knowledge of literacy I could choose to read more books I like, therefore absorbed ideals liberally. Different knowledge acquire by liberal literacy become my power to think critically and question others.
Although I spend considerable amount of time online everyday, as a college student, I spend most of my time reading and writing academic literacy. From what I observed from other students’ logs, the situation is the same. Academic literacy, the most important forms of literacy for college students, seems to falls out of Knoblauch’s definition for literacy. Knoblauch considered functional literacy to be just enough for daily activity and minimum wage jobs. Even though academic literacy is functional in academic life, but it is more sophisticated and requires a lot more knowledge than functional literacy. I start to learn C language recently and spend a lot of time on reading textbooks and writing codes. My experience shows that I can easily understand every word in the book, but it requires a lot more effort to put those words into practical codes when I program. Therefore, academic literacy is a special form of literacy among the highly educated students.
Comparing real life situation to Knoblauch’s definition on literacy, I find literacy is hard to define. The reason behind it might be that people use literacy for different purpose. Literacy is important for everyone no matter what kind of literacy one use. Looking back at my log, my literacy acts only stop when I eat or sleep everyday. I have to engage with literacy for about sixteen hours per day. How boring and depress my life will be, if I live illiterately. Life without literacy is really hard to imagine.
Yulin Hong's Portfolio 