What is Literacy?

In honor of Poverty Awareness Month: Access to Education and Literacy Week, I would like to share a short message from the OCE Literacy Intern, Casey Riesing. 

 What is Literacy? More importantly, how does it affect you and those around you? Ever since the day in first grade that I came home and told my Mom that I needed to learn how to read faster than Kirsten (who was already a superstar reader), I have been an avid reader. What started as a burning jealousy to read faster than my peer has developed over the years into an outlet for my intellectual curiosity and an imaginative process of understanding the world around me. Think back to the first time that you accomplished your first utterances and heard your own voice as the words flowed from the page and shaped into images and ideas in your head. What more is there to literacy than just reading and writing? You might be surprised to learn that literacy goes beyond the ability to understand arbitrary combinations of letters. A trip to the dictionary might help us in understanding just what literacy is.

            A standard definition of literacy is as follows:

            Literacy: the quality or state of being literate

...but what does it MEAN to be literate? Here is where things become a bit more complicated.

            Literate:

            1 a: educated, cultured

                b. able to read and write

2 a: verse in literature or creative writing: literary

   b: lucid, polished

   c: having knowledge or competence

While common understandings of the meanings of the words “literacy” and “literate” are centered on the ability to read and write, these definitions ignore the social and cultural implications of literacy that shape the context in which being literate defines ones status. A notion of literacy related more or less exclusively to competence in reading and writing can be extended to include the usage and comprehension skills in speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. While it is sometimes easy to have faith that our school systems and family units guarantee our youth this seemingly simple ability to read and write, thousands of students and adults in the United States and around the globe remain illiterate. Literacy is a concern for all members of a community regardless of their level of literacy because intelligible conversations and a shared sense of cultural understanding create stronger communities. Whether nor not you are an employer, a teacher, a doctor, a writer, a mother, a friend, a student – literacy is important to you because making yourself understood and understanding the ideas of others in both written and spoken form is fundamental to the growth of a healthy community. Let’s look at some facts:

United States

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, workers 18 and over with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $51,206 a year, while those with a high school diploma earn $27,915; those without a high school diploma average $18,734.
• American business currently spends more than $60 billion each year on employee training, much of that for remedial reading, writing, and mathematics.
• Annual health care costs in the U.S. are four times higher for individuals with low literacy skills than they are for individuals with high level literacy skills.
• One-half of all adults in U.S. federal and state correctional institutions cannot read or write at all; 85% of juvenile offenders have reading problems.
• About 40% of high school graduates lack the literacy skills employers seek.
• High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested in their lifetimes.

Wisconsin

• 13.3% of adults 18-24 have not completed a high school diploma or equivalent.
• 9.9% of people 25+ have an education below the 9th grade.
• 232,500 adults 25-64 did not graduate from high school. Of these 232,500 adults:
• 120,000 are in the labor force.
• 27,200 are unemployed.
• 85,300 are not in the labor force.
• 46.4% of the foreign-born population over 5 years old “does not speak English very well.” (U.S. 2010 Census)

So, what do these statistics say about literacy in Wisconsin? While 232,500 persons may or may not
strike you as drastic, the repercussions on a daily basis of being illiterate go far beyond this number. Illiteracy affects one's economic opportunity, one's health, where you will live and the way that one engages with others and shapes understanding of community. Being literate is being empowered to share in the collaboration of new ideas, to understand your health and to share in the process of learning and the creation of knew knowledge.

So, literacy is important...but what can I DO? 

Contact me! There are many different was to address literacy issues in the Ripon area, from assisting with education in the local schools to reading books for children at the Public Library's story hour, or even working as a tutor at the Green Lake Correctional Facility. As the literacy intern at the Office of Community Engagement I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at riesingc@ripon.edu or contact the OCE at 920-748-8153 for more information! 

Blog post prepared by OCE Literacy Intern, Casey Riesing