Lec 12 MIT CMS.930 Media, Education and the Marketplace

I'm Nolan Bowie I'm a senior fellow and adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government carbon University this is my concise short summary version of literacy policy which is a facet of information policy per se what is literacy literacy is a lot more than the ability to read and write and do sample of computational skills but even with those basic skills close to half of the adult population United States has insufficient skills their levels one and two bottom two rates of literacy in essence they become dysfunctional the deeper we go into the information age into the knowledge economy which requires new skills higher skills it requires lifelong learning it requires the ability to learn how to learn what we need well let me tell you there's no single literacy I don't see the term literacies often written down but sometimes it is but literacy itself encompass is not only alphanumeric literacy or text in prose but also what is increasingly called information literacy or networked literacy or technology literacy civic or political literacy literacy is an enabling tool literacy it's officer technology is changes as fast as the technologies of communications change literacy is a basic skill which we need to communicate i would add not only does it provide one with the means of critical thinking but also critical act and the reason that literacy is required of every one is because we don't live to be 200 and we get most of our information vicariously from the outside and literacy is sort of a skill of law is a pull technology skill is when we want information we know where to go and we can pull it out of a resource as opposed to a lesser literacy skill of being a good listener or viewer and having information push status I like the guitar version station push up information to a signal or the Internet increasingly is pushing information following a television model when that happens you're more apt to get propaganda what's the difference between propaganda and other kind of information sometimes not a lot but the propagandist tends not to disclose who the person is what their agenda is what the motives are and sometimes you may not agree with it so you sort of endanger yourself throughout the world their literacy illus stantial problems I have a chart here which I will make available to with a listing of Nations with worse literacy record in the world at the top of list is Niger which seventy-nine percent of the males 93 sim percent of the females and I summit the population is even in terms of gender for a six percent of the popular doll population is illiterate mechana fossil eighty-one percent Nepal 72.5 percent Molly sixty-nine percent it goes down the same nations have the shortest life expectancy at birth and the probably be lowest quality of life Oh can lift literacy turn it around not even by itself Oh literacy is an enabling technology literacy is both content and information technology we have to guarantee universal access to all facets of literacy the term digital divide tends to refer to a recognition that people are better off if they have access to the Internet NT internet connectivity and pcs or internet applies well I disagree with that somewhat what I think is essential is ready universal access to universal ready access to relevant information and what's relevant information well it depends on the individuals needs or societal needs the group or organizational needs with relevant and it's also time sensitive and you have to look at also quality of that information next you need because information is increasingly available only in electronic or digital format ready access to appropriate information technology which may I may not mean internet but in many cases may be a book a tutor pencil and paper again what is appropriate for that individual to understand and within a language that the person can understand again the internet right now is mostly English eighty percent of the websites that may change ten years and not maybe mostly in Mandarin or some other language and we don't know Oh is the problem of illiteracy confined to third world is developing countries no I have a article here that appeared in The Boston Globe dated September fifteenth nineteen ninety five ways it almost half the adults in this state don't read well they read it the lowest levels went into more recent article in the washington post from last year says it's sixty-five percent of the adults in the district of columbia read at levels one and two the lowest levels of literacy which means that they would be dysfunctional and an information-based knowledge-based economy they would lack the skills to be productive creative self realized all that they can be more recent also last year article from the globe I just got out the part on the statistics that show reading gaps this is the study done by the National Assessment of Educational Progress the shows that it's an assessment of reading proficiency levels within the fourth grade sixty-three percent of black school children in the fourth grade are not reading at proficiency levels fifty-eight percent of hispanic or latino kids fifty-seven percent of american indians early or Native Americans are also reading below level whereas twenty-seven percent of whites are reading at the low level and twenty-two percent of Asian Pacific Islanders of reading it at low level you might ask why Asian Pacific Islanders read a better reading skills as they tend to be bilingual bicultural and native-born white good question I think part of the reason for low blacks vote reading scores among blacks is still a residue of history of being heavy metal slaves and having laws that had that prohibited the teaching advice how to read a right and then followed by a long history of inferior schools and Jim Crow segregation and also expectation and continues disparity in terms of quality schools and education which comes to another question can we afford to have it how large or even small portions of our population of our workforce having inadequate skills to participate in the emerging global knowledge based economy because what's implied by globalization is competition competence implied by competitions and winners and losers so the question is who ought to win if it's us who is us is it all of us or should the beneficiaries of our public policies just be wealthy those who already have had advantages and privileges or multinational corporations or a corporation's purse aces they're not necessarily citizens and or should we look at it more broadly and say that well what makes America America what makes our society our society is his people they are the citizens there are the consumers here the workforce if so how should we go about investing in them in terms of ensuring that they have literacy skills literacy skills never stop they're always advancing they're always changing so how do we go about Parvati lifelong learning opportunities to the entire population I would suggest a radical legislation based on our own history after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik Congress during the Eisenhower administration's passed the National Defense Education Act that Eisenhower administration also created the federal highway system based on national defense rationale so the nature of the world post-cold war world is increasingly one about competition for markets and domination of markets if that's true to the extent that it is true again what's being sold in the markets in many cases or information products information services how do we enable our population to acquire those skills and continues to develop i would suggest something like the National Defense Education communications and information so the government provides the means that we can all be all that we can be that we right now we can no longer afford to incarcerate say more than two million people and take them not only out of the workforce but keeping them away from relevant information and knowledge literacy the 1992 landmark study on literacy in the United States showed that in particular illiteracy was associated with low incomes and poverty with welfare with incarceration so there may be a nexus or a link between that if people had a good literacy early on and perhaps they'll be more successful another project or program I think we ought to love to hard lookin is universal access to preschool by the time they're in the fourth grade maybe too late everyone ought to have information advantages if in fact we're going to be competitive in the information age where do we go from here how do we mobilize how do we get others to talk about literacy as main important why literacy in the first place we make an assumption that we needed for the work would we also needed to become effective citizens and democracy itself needs a little literate citizenry in order to keep it in check democracy in the final analysis is a system of government as governance based not on trust but on distrust and as such it requires those who govern the representatives of the people have to be accountable to the people it requires that citizens are informed not just informed well informed enough to know whether or not they're being adequately serve because you read the bill of rights for example or the Declaration of Independence citizens have a duty to put in the new government if in fact it is not serving will do the people ah so the people have a responsibility to know and the only way they can do that is through literacy and us also explains this new kind of literacy this new emerging leaders here but we're recognizing as an illiteracy Civic literacy which may also be referred to as political errors the results of illiterate population is not only people who can read and utilize tools effectively to maneuver through their environments it enables them to think and act critically oh I'll stop there you