KAT
Promotes Literacy for Democracy
Reflections on Literacy
Addressing
Your Concerns:
Literacy:
Necessary but NOT Sufficient
Gleanings
from the Field:
From Vocabulary Exercises to KAT Applications
Notes
about the Centerfold Lesson
Using KAT to Enhance
Literacy, Comprehension & Civic Action
CenterFold
Lesson
Aspects of the Literacy Issue for KAT Study
Adding
to Your Resource Base
BreakOut
Lesson
Literacy for Democray
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Addressing
Your Concerns…
Literacy:
Necessary, but NOT Sufficient
For
more than a decade now, Americans have been warned about
the increasing dangers of functional illiteracy among as
much as 45 percent of our population.
As
stated in a 1992 report by the U.S. Department of Education’s
National Center for Educational Statistics,
“Literacy
can be thought of as a currency in this society. Just as
adults with little money have difficulty meeting their basic
needs, those with limited literacy skills are likely to find
it more challenging to pursue their goals – whether
these involve job advancement, consumer decision-making,
citizenship, or other aspects of their lives.”
Indeed,
it’s
difficult to imagine any area of life that is not mediated
by literacy. Our health, access to technology, and basic
freedom of choice and expression are interwoven with our
ability to decipher, make sense out of, and communicate through
literacy.
For purposes of civic responsibility, however, KAT emphasizes
that
Literacy is necessary, but not sufficient.
Naturally, KAT
lauds society’s efforts to leave no
child behind by committing public and private resources to
coach young students up to grade level reading and writing
proficiency. KAT lauds adult literacy efforts as well. But
we must not rest comfortably if and when we achieve such basic
goals.
Keep in mind that
Nazi Germany was a highly literate society. Keep in mind
that Osama bin Laden is quite literate. Moreover, the priests
who engaged in child abuse and the Enron and WorldCom executives
who engaged in fraudulent book-cooking were among our society’s
prestigious elites. Literacy is no guarantee for democracy
or against evil.
If literacy
does not guarantee us
protection against prejudice, malice or corruption, what
is its role in democracy?
First of all, without
literacy, we have fewer protections against abuse. Without
literacy, we have fewer resources, options, precedents, and
networks to tap in order to combat abuse, remediate injustice,
and develop constructive alternatives. Literacy provides
us with a ‘watchdog’ capacity.
Second, to the
extent that literacy translates into power – by
arming its possessors with codes of law, bureaucratic authority,
police and military orders – a literate public decentralizes
and distributes that power (see Hugh Collins, Murdoch University,
Australia: www.aph.gov/au).
As Collins observes, literacy can offer effective resistance
and emancipation from coercive tyranny.
Third, literacy is a foundation on which other civic, social
and economic skills are built.
To the extent that
our educational system equips us, we use our literacy to
continue to learn – and apply our learning
to – specific situations. The better our literacy is
informed, and the higher the level of critical analysis we
can incorporate with it, the better equipped we are to govern
ourselves judiciously.
Raw literacy doesn’t
exist in a vacuum, but is colored by a myriad of variables,
including ideology, religious background, interests, and
cultural opportunities.
KAT experiences
enhance literacy with actual civic experiences. KAT enriches
literacy through pluralism, inquiry, multidisciplinary research,
community work, and informed and creative problem-solving.
Motivated to study their community issue, KAT students typically
read and write more, and more analytically, than their peers
who are not engaged in KAT. Literacy is coupled with higher
order thinking, which together, can build a wiser and more
responsible civic body.
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