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It is a very dangerous thing to say that basic literacy
skills are more important now than they have ever been
in the past. While a strong argument can be made in
favor of this idea, making such an argument would imply
that reading and writing were somehow less important
in the past. While there is a grain of truth to the
argument that literacy was not fundamental to the daily
existence of most people in the pre-Industrial Revolution
period, rationalizing such a lack of need for education
in such a way is the first step to withholding education
from certain groups, a great social crime that has led
to the disempowerment of disadvantage groups all over
the world throughout history. However, if we can keep
in mind that education is a basic human right, then
we can discuss the strengths of the proposition that
literacy is more important now than it has ever been
before.
It is true that in the past the majority of people
all over the world made their livelihood from agricultural
activities and that the vast majority of these activities
required little or no literacy skills. In some senses,
we could argue that literacy skills were less important
in the agricultural age than they are now, but to do
so would be to forget that literacy also reflects an
active mind and that people have always needed to engage
in activities of the mind. For example, even though
a farmer might have labored all day in her corn field,
she may enjoy reading the latest Jane Austen novel when
arrived at home. We can see in this example that while
literacy was not directly related to this laborer's
livelihood, literacy was important to her quality of
life.
However, we could make a good argument that literacy
is more important now that it was in the past. As we
all know, the world is experiencing a revolution that
may turn out to be more important than the Industrial
Revolution. We are now entering the Information Age,
an age in which information and knowledge have more
value than the ability to build machines, create "stuff,"
grow crops, or even mine precious metals and produce
gemstones. Nowadays, accurate information may be worth
more than the most expensive Rolls-Royce or the biggest
diamond. The perfect example of this increasing dominance
is the explosive rise in the popularity of the Internet--the
Internet offers the world countless bytes of information
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days
a year. Companies all over the world, but principally
in the United States, are rushing to stake their claim
in cyberspace and stiff competition among companies
has resulted. In order to gain dominance, these companies
must have the best-skilled workers, an advanced understanding
of computer systems, and good intuition about what will
happen in the future. All of these abilities to compete
in the global marketplace stem directly from literacy
skills and those without these skills will be stuck
in the service, agricultural, and heavy industry fields.
In short, we can see that people in the past who were
lacking in literacy skills essentially had more company
than those lacking these skills have today and could
still earn their livelihood. Further, we could argue
that because of the nature of the global marketplace
and because of the emergence of the Information Age,
we could make the argument that literacy is fundamental
to professional success nowadays. However, literacy
should be considered a basic human right in a literate
society--all people throughout history should have learned
to read and write.
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