Socrates was probably illiterate, for he never wrote a word. Neither did Jesus. Both relied on others to record their wisdom.
Today, the electronic medium has taken over that function, reducing the need for reading and writing beyond the basic skill of a 3d-grader. Those who can read and write well are becoming specialists who feed machines: film, television, records and tape. The ordinary citizen uses pictoral or aural sources of information in preference to the written form. It is quick, easy and cheap. Writing, a form of encoding and decoding, is rapidly being replaced by electric impulse or computer chip. The new literacy may well be illiteracy. But before crying out in alarm, let`s put this into historical perspective. Any change demands tradeoff and the electronic revolution is no exception. Caveman pictographers, medieval clerics and modern secretaries presented problems in clarity and multiple languages and mutual understanding that remain to this day. The Renaissance might have been hung up on the newly invented printing press, but written language gave rise to our god-awful grammar and spelling rules.
Today we are again in transition, measuring the tradeoff. Perhaps 5th-graders can`t spell, but dyslexics can now learn and join the mainstream via tapes and TV. If 50 percent of Chicago students are reading below grade level, we can also see kids with cerebral palsy manipulate electronic devices and communicate. The same is true for the blind and the deaf.
Meanwhile, Johnny does get by with minimal skill in reading. The telephone has replaced letter-writing. Television is the source of current events, science and classics. Music is performed flawlessly on record or tape, never mind the content. If Johnny has graduated from high school or college with a 5th-grade reading level and has found a job (and most do), he will never open a book or study more than sports or comics anyway. Conservation of energy is not restricted to physics.
As for the child, he enters school as a nonbeliever. The fiction that one must know how to read well to survive runs contrary to everything he sees. Radio, film and television dispense information more easily, readily and effortlessly than the written word. So he turns off the drudgery of vowels and blends. It`s easier to watch a screen and listen.
Although society`s institutions pretend dismay, its actions voice the contrary. In most homes, TV`s pervasive presence is continual, training the aural and pictographic method of learning rather than reinforcing coding through letter and word symbols.
This system is further reinforced in school, whatever educators say to the contrary. Electronics provide programmed learning via cassette and film. The 1st-grade teacher who does teach phonics finds the drill arduous and the students unreceptive, for they`re accustomed to responding to ”Sesame Street`s” slick presentation in 30-second bites. Classroom computers encourage 1st-graders to write even before learning to read or spell, leaving the teacher to decipher if she can. The pattern continues through high school with novels dramatized on film instead of being read, exams administered true/ false or multiple choice and graded by machine.
Yet learning is taking place, and at an accelerated rate. Ask any person over 50. Students come to school with a wider background of knowledge and vocabulary undreamed of 50 years ago. Young people continue learning at home as well as in school. But there is a difference between acquiring knowledge and knowing how to read and write.
Confusing the issue is the assumption that reading and writing indicate intelligence. When ACT and SAT college test scores drop, especially among women and minorities, the media express concern. Yet there has been no proven correlation between the two. Remember the dyslexic, the blind and the deaf. What it does show is society`s priorities. A child may not know the location of Korea or the date of the Norman invasion, but he does know that Chinese students fought for democracy and that the issue of the American flag vs. the Art Institute of Chicago is more complex than that stated by the VFW or the institute`s administration.
Electronics are here to stay. We can`t put the toothpaste back into the tube. Tomorrow may see movement from telecommunication to telepathy.
Writing acts as a substitute for memory, to help humans tally possessions or recall events. It builds onto previous knowledge so as not to re-invent the wheel with each generation.
Today we see that very same information transmitted through machines. Cassettes read literature. Light-sensitive scanning devices are used by the checkout clerk in the supermarket to tally groceries. The same system locates railroad cars and freight. Corporate payrolls are processed by machines. Photography has become opportunity as well as skill. Voice-recognition machines distinguish between homonyms such as ”to” and ”too.” Telephone units handle banking, check approval and sending flowers.
Culture has also expanded. The Dickens novel introduced dozens of characters, revealing a world outside ordinary experience. Today it`s a television mini-series. Short stories take an hour. But why not? The purpose of literature is, according to Joseph Conrad, ”to make you hear, to make you feel . . . before all, to make you see”-something television and film do very well. It is no accident that early drama required no written script.
Whether information comes from books or from machines is immaterial. What matters is what we do with it. To really use the human brain, we need to be exposed to a structure and systematized program promoting a questioning attitude laced with healthy skepticism. We need to be encouraged to ask why or even to disagree. It does matter that it happens, for without the ability to synthesize, interpret and judge, we become factories of information; what difference whether books or machines are the source?
Content is only food for the brain. It is we who determine how it will nourish and sustain us. Thinking is the issue-not literacy.
