[Opinion] Conventional Literacy and Civic Illiteracy

Its very nice approach made by an individual,we all need to think about it, lack of awareness about political parties has left all of us oblivious, all parties on eve of election become the benefector of the poor public when its over they start politics and criticism in their orthodox way, i suggest all of our young youth to be practical in all aspect of life on parrallal to their formal education, it will definately lead our society toward the main hub of awareness and better life.

Literacy and Civic Illiteracy by Parveen Roy is good focused article challenging the the basis of functional literacy which is confined to the mechanistic process of basic skills of reading and writing and which has seeped into our educational systems. Such literacy generally lacks reflections, deep thinking, challenging the bases of stereotypes, and exploring alternatives. An apt description of such literacy is given by Postman in his article, “Politics of reading”, where the basic purpose of functional literacy is to understand the orders and instructions and obey them. I recall an interesting excerpt from Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe which is about an Englishman who, after the shipwreck, starts living in and island. One day he happens to meet with a native boy. The English man teaches him (the functional literacy I believe?). Here is the actual paragraph:

“I was greatly delighted with my new companion, and made it my business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially make him speak, and understand me when I speak, ad he was aptest scholar that ever was.”

The point to note is the the boy becomes useful, handy, and helpful for whom? Of course for the Englishman. The real work that needs to be undertaken now is to realize the political significance of education has been historically used to control others. But the same tool of Education can be used to put up resistance and realize the dreams of freedom, development, and justice.

Congratulations Parveen for writing such a succinct, relevant, and contemporary piece. I am sure people like you can contribute a lot to challenge the political and social stasis and this can only be done by consistent efforts by progressive forces.
Congratulations once more 🙂

Parveen, you have mentioned an important attribute of the failure of formal schooling in preparing democratic, critical and responsible citizenship in Pakistan. However, the history of universal formal schooling in the West, which later on spread throughout the world, was mainly initiated and undertaken to prepare educated workforce for the industrial capitalism. More so, education system as an ideological apparatus was to prepare citizens who believed in the ‘fair’ function of education in social mobility and accept their existing social positions as objective. The preparation of critical citizenship does not seem to be the goal of education, thus Freire and Illich were able to identify the modern education’s latent function and found the space for developing civic literacy in the nonformal education sector (Freire) and complete deschooling the society (Illich). As educators, who have access to critical radical education and ability to systematically analyse education system and pose questions about it, we need to identify the alternative spaces, parallel to our efforts to influence educational policy making, where the ordinary citizens have opportunities to read the world (Freire). My own country, Kyrgyzstan with its almost universal literacy rate (close to 98%) is an excellent example for lack of critical citizenship skills and attitudes. We failed to recognize the mechanisms of ‘power’ in manipulating our ’emotional feelings’ towards achieving their own goals and interests. Our regionalism, our ethnicity make us blind to the facts that at the end of the day, as ordinary citizens, we are being manipulated for the interests of ‘power-hungry, selfish, dominant’ political elites. We may need to start the processes or identify already-existent spaces and mechanisms of counterhegemonic education (Gramsci) or literacy among the ordinary citizens in order to increase the possibility for radical change in our society. I also find the term ‘literacy’ a bit functional and more mechanistic. However, I believe this term’s meaning of developing functional-critical, practical and pragmatic skills and knowledge for bringing about social change. More importantly, I am very happy that local people like you should be the ones to contribute to such change in thinking in the regions which require leadership and strong moral support. I liked the way you continue questionning the social structures of your locality and your country in general.

The above article is well written.Civic literacy plays a pivotal role in nurturing a fair and just society, it can be observed in the developed countries that how their strong civic literacy helped them in overcoming their social and administrative problems.
While in Pakistan, the civic literacy has been neglected from the last 6 decades by the policy makers because policy makers belongs from the upper class, who find the civic literacy at mass level as a threat for their social stratification.
No doubt, Hunza has achieved a huge increase in literacy rate in a short span of time but still the region lacks the true essence of civic literacy. In spite of acquiring higher education, people still do not know what their political and social rights are. People lack the vision who has to rule them and who are their true representatives.
Nonetheless I feel the Ataabad disaster has brought a paradigm shift in the thinking of the common man after going through their civic positions and the distaste for the local administration which can now motivate them politically and socially. Thus it is a right thinking that every threat bring opportunities with itself. But availing these opportunities is the biggest testimony of the people of the region.