In education and technology circles there has been much talk in recent years of multiliteracy - the ability to communicate in different technological media that has become as vital as reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic in today's world. Like the traditional literacy that went before, multiliteracy vastly expands one's platform for receiving, processing and sharing information. There is a lot to be said for the ability to read, write, blog, vlog and tweet one's way through life. Yet having unboxed all these shiny new skills, it is worth checking the bill: what price have we paid?
Pitfalls
A mind no less great than that of Socrates once warned against the dangers of the written word. He argued that writing would be inflexible to subtleties of meaning, blunt the powers of memory and, most dangerously, lead to the risk of superficial understanding. Whatever the virtues of writing (and my own insatiable indulgence in the written word), I can't prove him entirely wrong. Since Socrates' day, similar objections have been raised about all manner of innovations - not least the new media. In fact, as the power of the media expanded from stone tablets to tablet computers, so did the potential for problems. If Socrates was concerned that writing would tarnish the memory, I shudder to think what he would say of the multiliterate shopping list, which could be anything from a quick photograph of the refrigerator to the Out of Milk smartphone app. (Not to mention the fact that I had to Google the app's name, having forgotten it. Googling is another vital multiliteracy, of course.)
Reading the Word and the World
Education icon Paolo Freire, in his work on adult literacy, referred to "reading the word and the world". His take strongly emphasised the empowerment that came with literacy. However, it is the skill of reading of the world - those fine details that do not translate into print - that seems to me to be the literacy we increasingly misplace when we learn to read... and may be permanently losing with our nonstop-hyperactive-always-on multiliteracies.
The Life Literates
I am honoured to have known a good handful of people who do not read or write words - so-called illiterates. And time and again I have been humbled to find that I am the one who is lost in their deep, focused, enveloping presence - a presence that is not disturbed by text or tweet or notification. They are the ones who have read the thoughts I had not dared to cross the threshold of awareness. The ones who analyse the codes of Nature. They are the ones who write in gardens with immortal evergreens, in crafts that far outlive them, and in the stories that they retell from memory and embellish in the heat of the unrecorded moment, never to be rewound, paused or replayed. They are the ones who, rather than reap the words of those gone before, or sow their own for the future, flourish in the ever-evasive present.
Yes, there are injustices in this. Literacy as we know it is the usher for opportunity, and multiliteracy perhaps even more so. Today literacy is theoretically a basic human right, and one nobody should be robbed of it. But how much of the full spectrum of human experience has the modern multiliterate become unable to read and write?
