Illiterate?

Illiterate:

adjective

unable to read or write

• ignorant in a particular subject or activity

• uncultured or poorly educated

• (esp. of a piece of writing) showing a lack of education, esp. an inability to read or write well

*Definition taken from Apple Dictionary

I am having a difficult time with the ways in which many people use and interpret the word illiterate, and the ways in which literacy is defined. Too often they are only used to encompass academic literacy, and not other forms, such as cultural literacy. For example, in Sylvia Scribner's article Literacy in Three Metaphors, she writes

...in the coming decades literacy may be increased for some and reduced for others, accentuating the present, uneven, and primarily class-based distribution of literacy functions.

While I agree that specific types of literacy can be divided along class lines, and in turn the resulting functions of those specific types can be divided as well, it is inaccurate to say that lower-class peoples who lack formal education are less literate than those who have studied at accredited institutions, or spend their days in bourgeois environments. This ideas goes back to the example that I used in my first blog about the Ivy League Student who gets dropped into the middle of a west Oakland ghetto. Now I am not implying that one can not be literate in both realms, I am only suggesting that more often than not, individuals are not able to cross such thick class lines competently. The point here is that there are many ways to be literate. You can be academically literate, socially literate, culturally literate, and professionally literate. I'm sure there are other forms of literacy as well. Too often the discussion of literacy focuses only on academic and professional literacy and ignores social and cultural literacy. While I understand that the first two types have specific societal functions that allow for socioeconomic maintenance and advancement, it is unfair to say that the latter two are not valuable as well. I think it would be collectively beneficial for all of us to create a habit of defining what type of literacy we are discussing on more narrow terms than are often used. Is it fair to say that someone without a formal education that lives in a rural area and has farmed animals for 30 years is illiterate? If that man has managed to maintain a living for himself by being able to successfully raise, control, and slaughter animals he is obviously not uneducated. He is able to read the world enough to know what he needs to do to survive, and he is able to read the animals enough to ensure there survival, which in turn insures his own. A statement about this type of man's literacy would be more accurately put this way: "A man who has lived on a farm his whole life and who cannot read or write, is not literate in the textual arts, but is rich in the art of raising farm animals and survival." We should think about it...