DEFINITIONS
OF LITERACY
Manitoba Education, Youth and Training, Recommendations
of the Manitoba Task Force on Literacy, 1989, p. 2.
Illiteracy is
best defined as a lack of skills perceived by individuals or
groups as being necessary to fulfill their self-determined objectives
as individuals, family and community members, consumers, employees
and members of social or religious organizations ... Literacy
is the ability to read, write, [and] comprehend and use mathematics
adequately to satisfy the requirement the learner sets for him/herself
as being important for his/her life.
National Anti-Poverty Organization, Literacy
and Poverty: A View from the Inside, 1992, p. 15.
Traditionally,
the number of completed grades of school has been used as an
indicator of level of literacy. (Individuals with less than
Grade 5 were classified as "basically illiterate;"
those with more than Grade 5, but less than Grade 9, were classified
as "functionally illiterate.") .... Most literacy
advocates now believe that grade levels are an unreliable measure
of individual literacy. Many people with limited formal education
are literate, while a significant number of people with high
school and even post-secondary education have problems with
everyday reading and writing.
Marilyn Gillespie, Many Literacies: Modules
for Training Adult Beginning Readers and Tutors, 1990,
p. 16.
To be literate
means to be able to fulfill one's own goals as a family and
community member, citizen, worker, member of churches, clubs
and other organizations you choose. This means being able to
get information and use it to improve your life, being able
to use reading and writing to do the things you decide to do,
and being able to use literacy as a tool to solve problems you
face in everyday life.
Ennis & Woodrow, Learning Together: The
Challenge of Adult Literacy, 1992, p. 9.
Adult learners
view literacy as increasing their independence and personal
power to act on the world. It means a level of reading and writing
at which they can communicate with the competence they define
as necessary to deal with situations and opportunities within
their environment.
Statistics Canada, International Adult Literacy
Survey, 1995, p. 14
The ability to
understand and employ printed information in daily activities,
at home, at work and in the community, to achieve one's goals
and to develop one's knowledge and potential.
Nova Scotia Department of Education, Tutor
and Instructor Training and Certification Program, 1991,
p. 2.
Literacy for one
person is not literacy for another. Being literate depends upon
what you need or want at a specific point in time. In this sense,
literacy is a social construct ... Literacy is not something people either have
or do not have. Literacy goes beyond the popular notion of someone
who cannot read or write. It extends across the educational
spectrum and is different from place to place. It is not something
people have or do not have. The need to upgrade skills is a
part of a lifelong continuum. It is not something that is suddenly
completed.
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