Literacy for the Information Age

The radio has informed me that Minneapolis Schools will be putting, more perhaps, emphasis on the teaching of literacy. In our inundation of marketed information, bromides such as “literacy for the information age” present a puzzle for the close reader or listener. What does it all mean? It sounds good.

First is the matter of the flooded environment. There are so many impressive words, catchy phrases and glib statements – market-speak – around that both the audience of such noise and its producers simply take it as the norm. This is how it should sound, because it is how it sounds. A fairly circular understanding of reality. I like to think of it as ‘surround sound.’ Our verbal reality is that by which we are surrounded in all directions, as if floating inside a beach ball of sound, the walls made of clever but vapid words, phrases and statements. The language of these walls defines our new grammar – the syntax and lexicon of a new spoken and printed reality. And the new language only superficially resembles the old. For example, a word such as “iconic” is now used much like the word “very.” It is simply a hollow intensifier with misty connotations of the classical, classiness and – thanks to Apple Computer’s accurate use of the root word, “icon” – digital¹. Do we remember the original meaning of the word “icon?” What does that say about an iconic new idea?

So here we are inside this planet sized ball of clever, if vapid, verbiage. We look out at it, and if we are thinking people, we ask of any one statement, “What does that actually mean?” The reasoning is typically open-ended or circular. Statements from the same source are often just highly polished contradictions. And many statements seem inconsistent with our experienced reality.

We return to the promotion of a new emphasis on teaching literacy, “literacy for the information age.” How can literacy be considered more important now than it has been for the last hundred years, as the speaker for Minneapolis Schools suggests? The phrase sounds good. Is education policy to be based on a skewed, empty catchphrase?

Perhaps electronic text documents actually use a different dialect of English that uses a different syntax and a different lexicon. I have to admit, it often seems as if they do. I had thought it was a case of the producers’ use of social media-speak and thumb-writing; they were just semi-literate. Perhaps, this is the very form of English in which we need to be fluent in order to function well in this “information age.” It is not however; it is simply a corruption of the language.

Literacy is as important as ever in this “disinformation age.” The literate demanding of clarity and precision helps us see through the glittering spin of cleaver words and phrases. Literacy should be, as it always has been, the ability to see what the words, alone and in complex combinations represent, not just how they sound.² The utterance, “Literacy for the information age,” is a misrepresentation of an essential understanding of any education.

The saddest thing about the idea that reading literacy is especially important in the current environs is that we do so little of it. So many more of the words that are directed at us are spoken, mostly recorded. Spoken language seldom exceeds a middle school level of literacy, even among highly educated people. Reading varied and challenging text is, on the other hand, how we develop not just a broader lexicon. It also increases cognitive strength; it helps build dendrites. When we read broadly, we become smarter.

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1      Have you thought about the source of the word digital? Perhaps we should use the term “the binary age” in reference to computing code. Is it because we use our ten digits on a keyboard. We use two thumbs to “text” something.

2      I hasten to make the allowance the sound of language in poetry and even prose. Here is the place for the subtle to be enlightened and enshrined in therich sound of the spoken words, where the words tap emotions as well as deepening lucidity.