Literacies

It took two hundred and thirty-two years for this article to be written in what is now the United States of America. Charles Firestone has essayed a look at what literacies should be de rigeur for someone attempting to be a modern citizen of a modern state.

To some, this kind of thing is elitist. But another way to look at it is this: we actually have certification procedures for many things requiring responsibility. Voting, on the other hand, as a citizen of a state normally requires only two things: being born in a certain place and living long enough to vote. In many places, that vote doesn't even require you to be able to read or to understand the language of politics (or any language for that matter).

It is as if voting is on par with other human activities that don't require other certification: becoming a parent, purchasing alcohol, owning a pet. In these three cases, abuse of the privilege (by parenting badly, getting drunk and doing something stupid, mistreating an animal) can be an offence in the eyes of the law. But voting badly is not possible, it seems. You can vote for anyone you like, and there is no penalty; in fact, voting for a moron or spoiling your vote may (in many states) incur less of a penalty than not voting at all.

But Firestone's list is a pretty good place to start if you want to aim towards an educated population. His list is one of information-related literacies: how to get information, how to check it and understand what it means, how to apply it in a way which you can rationally justify as good for your fellow citizens. He has contextualised it to the present day — for him, the first has to do with the mass media and digital information sources; the second has to do with understanding civic processes and integrating knowledge into the social framework produced by them; the third has to do with understanding modern finances, the environment, and other large-scale concepts which have impact on the whole world.

To all that, he adds cultural literacy, but shies away from actually going there. It's probably the most contentious element of the lot, but yet it is one which many states actually use as a test for adopting citizenship. The odd thing is that if you have citizenship by birth, nobody bothers to test you for that kind of knowledge. This, to me, is not a good thing.

Can you imagine how much more significant history and social studies would be if you had to pass an examination in the relevant topics in those subjects before you could become a full citizen? Imagine if you could not get a driver's license or vote in elections; imagine if you could not work without a work permit just because you never passed history... ah, what an interesting world it would be!