Chapter 1: The Language of Literacies

• To be literate is to know how to read, write, and count. Societies are measured by the level of literacy its citizens have attained. Prior to World War I, it is said that the literacy rate was at 20%. The rise of the public school system, which is considered the centerpiece project of the American colonial government, made the literacy rate to rise to as much as 75% in the years after 1930, according to an account published by United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2006.
• The most common definition of the word "literacy" is that it is a set of "skills that includes the ability to read with comprehension and write simple messages" (WEF and UNESCO 2015). Numeracy, a related concept, involves the ability to use numbers and perform the most basic mathematical functions.
• Literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. It is fully essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives. For individuals, families, and societies alike, it is an instrument of empowerment to improve one's health, one's income, and one's relationship with the world (UNESCO 2016).
• It is the duty of the states to protect, preserve, and promote human rights. In the international arena and individual states, concern for literacy remains on top of the agenda. In the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by UN member states in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the concern for promoting literacy.
• Beyond basic literacy is a category called functional literacy. The UNESCO website defines a functionally literate person as someone "who can engage in all the activities in which basic literacy is required for the effective functioning of his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading, writing, and calculation for his or her own and the community's development."
• Beyond the set of tangible skills, such as reading and writing, literacy the includes the simples processes of acquiring basic cognitive skills in using these skills in ways the contribute to socio economic development, to developing the capacity for social awareness and critical reflections a basis for personal and social change. Such skill set includes "the ability to identify, understand interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated wit varying contexts.
• Literacy is such a powerful concept that it has been attached to many other areas of human activities and other skills and competencies necessary to move in a more complex world. The Office of the Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization of 35 middle- to high-income countries, identifies technical skills (read, write, measure, compute, etc.) that will allow an individual to perform a task successfully. These skills require problem solving, critical thinking, linking up with communities, and making an impact in the community life.
• Basic and functional literacy pertains to words and numbers on a page or screen. It is the ability to read and write and to use the information and knowledge found on the pages in everyday life. It is the ability to write and pass on information and knowledge to others through the words inscribed on a page. It is also the ability to deal with numbers to use the basic computational functions as transactional tools and as a way of making sense of the world.
• That said, literacy is all about the language and grammar of words and numbers and how to use it to create, construct, interact, and communicate meaning in our everyday lives.
• However, at the onset of the 21st century, the concept of literacy has expanded. Digital technologies and the Internet have redefined the nature of reading and writing technology. New practices such as using search engines, communicating through e-mail, accessing information and conducting research on the Internet, or interacting with a social network in a social media site-have emerged.
• Two major categories constitute what we have referred to as a new set of literacies. The first category is called civic literacies, which are about the skills and competencies necessary to engage with communities and societies as citizens of a democracy; the second is digital age literacies, an ensemble of the skills and knowledges necessary to navigate the Internet and the ever-expanding world of digital technology.
• It is said that the digital age began in earnest with the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web. These platforms are constantly changing and evolving, compelling us to engage with it with more mindfulness and responsibility.
• Digital age literacies span the use of all technologies and content (text, image, and sound) that are created through digital technology. It covers both the cognitive skills that are needed in navigating the digital environment-marking our daily lives and technical ability to use digital equipment in its various forms. The latter includes working with computers for various applications, surfing the Internet, accessing information from the various Internet sites, navigating the World Wide Web, chatting and video conferencing, and using multimedia equipment.
• Digital age literate citizens make use of digital technologies and equipment wisely, productively, and positively. For instance, these digital resources are put to the service of a community, advocacy, or a cause or in instituting improvements in the collective lives of people. They are conscious of digital behavior and the ethical principles that govern the use of technologies, such as being fully respectful of the others, avoiding infringements, and respecting the rights of others while exercising and enjoying their freedoms.
• Computer literacy involves knowing how to use the computer independently-both its software and hardware components. It also includes using specific types of software to enable users to accomplish tasks that need the efficiency of computer systems. A computer-literate individual can access, manage, synthesize, assess, evaluate, create, and disseminate information using the computer..
• Technological literacy is also about the use of computer and emerging technologies such as mobile phones and tablets, video conferencing facilities, multimedia equipment, and other devices that are products of human innovation. It is important because technology is a primary driver of human civilization.
• Visual literacy was first defined by John Debes in 1969 (Avegerinou and Ericson 1997) as group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. He is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication."
• Technologically literate person is someone who appreciates and understands the role of technology in society, how it shapes history, and how society is shaped by it. He/She can situate how technology is used in various areas of human endeavor, such as science, humanities, medicine, commerce and industry, economics, politics, and governance. He/She can elaborate on how the application of technology can yield better results and bring about innovation. He/She can also indicate how technology can be misused for purposes that do not serve human and social development.
• The rise of digital technology has paved the way for an expanded definition of visual literacy. It has come to mean the ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images (e.g., paintings, photographs, video, computer-generated graphics, pictograms, cartoons, charts, collages, infographics, maps, graphic timelines, etc.) using both analog and digital technologies to disseminate information, communicate, produce knowledge, communication, and advance knowledge, or provide aesthetically pleasing experiences. It can also include art and design.
• A visually literate person can integrate visual information with those presented in other forms (such as text); he/she can also interpret visual information, decode meanings, and find its congruence with the information it is presented with. Digital technology has had an immense impact on our way of life, and the visual" has become one of its core elements.
• News literacy is all about appreciating, understanding, and verifying the reliability and credibility of information that comes from a news source, whether it comes from print, radio, television, or the Internet. The sheer volume of news that exists today, both in traditional and social media form, makes the task of imparting news literacy even more challenging. In its simplest form, news literacy asks the question: Why should I believe this news? In the era of fake news proliferation, this could be the most significant question that should be asked by any citizen who consumes news.
• Lastly, a news literate person knows the difference between journalism and other kinds of information dissemination (e.g., journalism versus blogging) and between journalists and other information purveyors (e.g., social media influencers, bloggers, youtubers). He/she can differentiate between news and opinion. With news stories, he/she can evaluate news reports across all media outlets, whether traditional media or social media, based on the quality of evidence presented.
• Information literacy is a set of skills and competencies that enable people to make informed judgments and decisions on the type of information they need, where to access it, and how they will use it to make decisions. It involves the skill to use information and communication technologies, including the applications that will also allow them to create and disseminate information.
• The information literate individual knows how to identify information needs and calibrate the amount and volume of information needed for a particular undertaking or concern. He/She can locate and retrieve appropriate and relevant sources using search techniques and tools, such as library indexes, search engines, catalog, etc. When the information is obtained, he/she can evaluate the relevance of the information acquired, its reliability, or how appropriate it is to the task at hand.
• The information literate individual should also be aware of the ethical bases for creating and sharing information, including the issues surrounding the use, misuse, and even abuse of information.
• Civic literacy is a body of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that enable a citizen to actively participate and initiate changes in the community and the greater society. It is important because it enables citizen participation in the affairs of the state.
• The word civic is derived from civitas, the Greek word for citizen. Civic, or its plural civics, pertains to the discipline that tackles the relationship of the citizen to the state (Meron 2006). Like other concepts in the field of literacy education, the goals of civic literacy are modest: for citizens to think beyond the confines of their homes and extend their participation to the community and society. Using local idioms, civic literacy taps into the notion of pakikipagkapwa-thinking
• The gestures can be both small and big: segregating waste (environmental literacy), honoring and affirming that women are equal to men (gender literacy), curbing consumerism in spite of peer pressure (financial literacy), and honoring members of our community who are different from us (multicultural literacy).
• Civic literacy can be interchanged with civic education, but it must be noted that civic literacy is the goal of civic education. Civic literacy is the foundational aspect of community engagement, the wellspring from where meaningful reforms might possibly emerge. Therefore, its goal should be concerted citizen action.
• A civic literate individual possesses an increasing awareness of issues in his/her immediate community. He/She can link up with the governance institutions to communicate or lobby for certain issues and policies. He/She acts responsibly in all spheres of human activities and is aware of the implications of wrongdoings both to himself/herself and the community. He/She has an incessant desire to know more about national affairs from current affairs to issuance about governance.
• Environmental literacy is often used interchangeably with terms such as "ecological literacy and environmental education Environment interchange as the thrust, while environmental literacy is the goal. Ecological literacy is more specific as it pertains only to an individual's knowledge of ecosystems.
• Environmental literacy is the ability to recognize that an individual choice or action has implications for the environment and the knowledge to identify the most efficient and, more importantly, sustainable solution to a problem.
• Roth (1992) defined it as "essentially the capacity to perceive and interpret the relative health of the environmental systems and take appropriate action to maintain, restore and improve the health of those systems." Carnegie Mellon University (2003) and Disinger and Roth (1992) asserted that action is a defining component of environmental literacy, the stress derived from the reality that environmental degradation, on a global scale, is happening at an alarming rate.
• Environmental-literate citizens are expected to know basic environmental information, the ways by which human action harms the environment, and the potentials and limits of human practices to alter natural processes in the environment. Lastly, environmentally literate citizens are aware that for change to truly happen, for the planet to be truly saved, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes must be transmitted to the future generations.
• Financial literacy relates to an individual's capacity to manage inflows and outflows of money. Remund (2010) cited that definitions of financial literacy fall into five categories: (1) knowledge of financial concepts, (2) ability to communicate about financial concepts, (3) aptitude in managing personal finances, (4) skill in making appropriate financial decisions, and (5) confidence in planning effectively for future financial needs.
• The ability to make informed judgments and to take effective decisions regarding the use and management of money" (Schagen 2007).

  "Individuals are considered financially literate if they are competent and can demonstrate they have used the knowledge they have learned... Literacy is obtained through practical experience and active integration of knowledge. As people become more literate they become increasingly more financially sophisticated and it is conjectured that this may also mean that an individual may be more competent" (Moore 2003).
• The ability to evaluate the new and complex financial instruments and make informed judgments in both choice of instruments and extent of use that would be in their own best long-run interests" (Mandell 2007).

  "Familiarity with the most basic economic concepts is needed to make sensible saving and investment decisions" (Lusardi and Mitchell 2007).
• Multicultural literacy is best understood using the lens of difference. A multiculturally literate citizen recognizes and respects the presence of others in his/her immediate community and society who are different from him/her and that diversity creates a rich tapestry of human beings. Cultural, racial, ethnic, sexual, socio-economic, religious, and linguistic differences govern human societies, and it is through these differences that one realizes that no culture is intrinsically superior to another. Multicultural education functions to provide citizens with this knowledge.
• A multiculturally literate institution starts with the individual as part of a cultural system and moves to the recognition that the individual belongs to a bigger cultural community. Commonalities and differences between and among culture are affirmed while discord, tensions, and contestations are better understood. Cultures are analyzed using the lens provided by multicultural education.
• In many works of literature, media literacy is most commonly defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media in a variety of forms and across a variety of platforms (Livingstone 2004). However, definitions have evolved and expanded because of the changes brought about by globalization, the emergence of the global village, and academic developments brought about by the expanding fields of media studies and cultural studies. Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.