Aliteracy vs. Illiteracy

Introduction

I struggled with my level of literacy until I was in my early 20s. I had a long, difficult history with reading, which is why I started this blog. Today, I considered to be at the highest level of literacy. In any case, I am a Canadian citizen and as far as I can gather, the literacy rate in Canada is under par. In fact, the situation is quite drear. I cite the following, to give context:

"Forty-eight per cent of Canadian adults are considered to have inadequate literacy skills. This total includes 31.7 per cent at level 2, 12.6 per cent at level 1, and 3.8 per cent of the adult population scoring below level 1. This implies a sizable share of the adult population—almost a third—are at level 2 and could potentially reach level 3 with limited assistance. Another 16 per cent, who are at level 1 or below, would need significant assistance and training to reach level 3." - Ref. Adults With Inadequate Literacy Skills - The Conference Board of Canada

This is going to be quite a long citation, but the studies I've consulted give "levels" of literacy - like in the above quote - and I think it's important to understand those levels before moving onto today's text. I haven't yet read the underlying studies that gave us the 48% number (statistic). If my calculations are correct, much more than 48% of people living in Canada have what I would consider very poor literacy skills. I said this because in today's world, I don't think you can truly function and succeed to your highest potential unless you have attained at least level 3. Here is the long citation I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, to give you an idea of what the different levels entail:

"The OECD defines literacy across six levels. People with Level 1 or below literacy skills are considered to have very poor literacy skills, while Level 3 is considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life. The levels are defined as follows:

• Below Level 1: Adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information. Only basic vocabulary knowledge is required and the adult is not required to understand the structure of sentences or paragraphs. 

• Level 1: Adults can read relatively short digital or print texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question. Knowledge and skill in recognising basic vocabulary, determining the meaning of sentences, and reading short paragraphs of text is expected. 

• Level 2: Adults can make matches between the text, either digital or printed, and information. Adults can paraphrase or make low-level inferences. 

• Level 3: Adults are required to read and navigate dense, lengthy or complex texts. 

• Level 4: Adults can integrate, interpret or synthesise information from complex or lengthy texts. Adults can identify and understand one or more specific, non-central idea(s) in the text in order to interpret or evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse relationships. 

• Level 5: Adults can search for, and integrate, information across multiple, dense texts; construct syntheses of similar and contrasting ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence based arguments. Adults understand subtle, rhetorical cues and can make high-level inferences or use specialised background knowledge." - Ref. What do adult literacy levels mean? - National Literacy Trust

Aliteracy vs. Illiteracy

With all that being said, my concern is not merely with illiteracy or low levels of literacy. What I see more and more online and offline is people who CAN read but don't, and/or don't WANT to. People can have different reasons for having low skill levels of literacy. You can come from an underdeveloped country, there are many reasons. The same goes for aliteracy. Maybe you don't have time, you have three jobs and you're raising 4 kids. But that's not really what aliteracy means: It means not being INTERESTED in reading.

That, to me, seems to be leading us down a terrible path. What I mean by this is that I think there's a mixture of both in our society, of low literacy rates and high aliteracy rates (I have found no measures of aliteracy rates in percentages or other forms). I think of the expression, "Use it or lose it." I think that is true for many things in life and potentially for a certain level of literacy skills.

What happens when we have a developed country with already a great number of people who struggle with literacy and on top of that you add an adult population which just isn't INTERESTED in reading? I will be honest, I had no intention of reading for half of my life. I was a practicing interdisciplinary artist and wanted my art to be "informed", so I forced myself to learn to read. Later on, when I shared a flat with a doctoral student, I had far great access to books and so pursued my studies. That's when I began reading extensively, everything from art history to philosophy and beyond.

Where I am now

I started this blog a few years ago and mentioned that I had taken many MOOCs or massive open online courses. This isn't to brag or be pompous, but I took over 100 MOOCs in the last 10+ years. I learned to program in Python and have been doing so for over a decade. In fact, I spend countless hours reading other people's code inside GitHub repositories. This is a topic for another day, but as far as coding/programming goes, I think it's as important to (learn to) READ other people's code than it is to (learn to) WRITE it.

I also took many courses in advanced mathematics, theory of computation, computational complexity, logic, the functional programming paradigm, so many different things, differential equations, statistics and probability, calculus, linear algebra, the list goes on. Am I a master mathematician? Not at all. I'm still just a passionate amateur, but I wouldn't mind going back to school someday to get a degree in mathematics, since I love it so much.

Why am I writing this? I'm writing this because I'm worried. I finish with another quote and then a final statement:

"As a result of the printing press, more books became available and more people became literate. With literacy came exposure to new ideas and independent thinking. And with independent thinking came many revolutions of a religious, political, social, and scientific nature." - p.9. Understanding Media Semiotics by Marcel Danesi

Conclusion

I still struggle with a rather severe, kind of debilitating learning disability, yet I get up every morning and read 1000-page works of philosophy. I study for hours on end. I like to think there's nothing I cannot read. I just do it in tiny snippets, and take breaks between chapters. I learned to adapt to my neurodevelopmental situation and pace myself. Otherwise, I jump from book to book and the information just doesn't sink in deeply like I like it to, and the flow of consciousness is disturbed. It destabilizes me. There's no excuse for people being UNINTERESTED IN READING, especially at adult age and who grew up with free schooling in a developed nation. I hope my story helps children and older people not only learn to find a love for reading, but also realize that they aren't the only ones with learning disabilities. I was away from this blog for 3 years. I hope to remedy that. Thanks, all.

A.G. (c) 2023. All Rights Reserved.

The Trauma

In 2nd or 3rd grade in elementary school, we had a contest where we competed to see who could read the greatest number of books. I had extreme difficulties with concentration and couldn't really read, so I read no books, and my best friend B. read something like 500 books or something ridiculous. I took it as an utter defeat. I felt like a complete failure and I never read another book until almost my 18th birthday. I read the Dhammapada when I was 16 or 17, and a few years earlier I think I read two books by Anthony Robbins. That was about the extent of my reading for my entire life up until that point. I had read the lines to Macbeth and to Oliver Twist in elementary school, because I played the part of Banquo in Macbeth in the 5th grade and also played Fagin in Oliver Twist in the 6th grade. Otherwise I read almost nothing. I maybe read a bit of poetry, by e.e. cummings and Lord Alfred Tennyson.

In any case, the situation with the reading contest that I experienced as complete existential failure, I experienced as trauma, and it affected me for the rest of my life. It still affects me today. It's become part of who I am as a person, going through those difficulties. I still have trouble at times with my concentration, for various medical reasons, of a neurological nature.


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.

The Arts

I also became fluent in the creative arts in my lifetime, with accomplishments in writing, in music and sound design, as well as in painting and digital design. My father was a professional painter, so I learned the visual arts early on in life. I always had a coach in the arts. I ended up getting a degree in Computer-Assisted Sound Design in the late 1990s. I've been doing Ambient Experimental Sound Design ever since, as well as writing, performing, and recording music, analog and digital. I've also written over a thousand pages of poetry and thousands of pages of fiction and non-fiction. I have written dozens of novellas, and several full-length novels. I have lengthy philosophical essays. More on that later.


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Computer Programming

Computer programming is something that I'm probably going to talk quite a bit about because in the last phase of my learning journey, from about eight years ago, I began learning computer programming and theoretical computer science, which has contributed a great deal to my literacy story. I would never say that someone should be forced to learn computer programming, though at least some knowledge of computers is useful if possible. It's not always possible, I understand that. There can be many complex situations such as refugee status, or a child being sick, or for whatever reason someone is struggling with learning objectives, meeting certain milestones. I would say according to society, language, and culture, and especially just to CONTEXT, realistically. I must say that I am become a humanist and liberal arts and humanities fanatic. My fields are ART | HISTORY | PHILOSOPHY.


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Accomplishments

I just want to say that my story of literacy is that I struggled with it extremely. My struggles with reading had a profound impact on me growing up. The story, though, is of overcoming this great difficulty. Through sheer work and perseverance I overcame all my difficulties and reached the point where I could read and understand 1000-page highly technical or philosophical documents. I had achieved a pretty high level of numeracy. I learned computer programming and theoretical computer science from 2012 on, mostly using MOOCs in the beginning, massive open on-line courses. I took courses in many fields of mathematics as well. One day, I couldn't read more than one or two sentences at a time and another day years later, I was reading large abstract works of philosophy and critical theory, other more technical documents, etc., as well as producing a body of literary work spanning thousands of pages. I've written poetry, fiction, mostly novellas and novels and non-fiction, such as philosophical essays, or discourse analysis, content analysis, etc.

The story is of overcoming hardship. Not of bragging. It was really hard, but with grit and determination I was able to go from functional illiteracy to independent scholar over the course of 20+ years. It's meant to inspire and give hope to those who struggle with literacy.


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.

A Story Of A Literacy

I read maybe one or two books in their entirety before I was 18. I only really started seriously reading when I was in my early twenties. Growing up I had a terrible reading disability. My learning disability had to do with concentration as well as word-retention or verbal memory, among many other things. This blog is an exploration of that learning process, that development process over the years. It is "A" Story of Literacy, of my literacy story but also a Story of "aliteracy".


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.