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Literacy: An Alternative Reading

Stephen Black offers a challenge to conventional views of literacy as the solution to many of society's problems

The purpose of this article is to present an alternative way of viewing or 'reading' the role of literacy in society. Many of the ideas for this article emerged from my research with the long- term unemployed. My intention is to provide a 'critical' reading of literacy which is not often articulated because it is not part of the mainstream discourse on literacy. It became clear to me while carrying out my research that too often we are presented with the view that literacy is the answer to so many problems in society, that it is essential for success in life, for employment, for self-fulfilment, for an effective democracy. What we do not often read about, though, is that promotion of literacy can be used as a powerful means by which governments and other dominant groups in society to ensure that society continues to operate very much in the interests of these dominant groups.

To argue, as I do in this article, that literacy is used as a tool for the powerful to control the less powerful in society is to be seen to be taking a strong 'political' position. What is often not realised, however, is that not to adopt such a reading is equally to take a political position. If you as a reader take the view that literacy is an 'unquestioned good' in society, you are taking a political position, except that the politics are effectively masked because such a position corresponds to the dominant discourse on literacy. Most people share this dominant view because it has become naturalised, it represents common sense to see literacy in such a favourable light. But what is often not realised is that such a view helps to ensure dominant groups in society retain or 'reproduce' their dominance, which is hardly a politically neutral view.

For the vast majority of people, as indicated above, literacy is seen as something that must be acquired by everyone, it is an essential aspect of success in life, at both a national and individual level. On the macro- economic level, for example, the former Federal Government Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins, once referred to literacy as 'the difference between competing in the international market with a well- trained workforce-and stagnation'. And during the International Year of Literacy one significant public figure referred to literacy as the 'key' to being lucky in this lucky country. Getting a job, for example, is considered highly problematic without literacy skills. One of the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) 'jobseekers' from my own research, a Sri Lankan woman who had been attending a literacy program, stated, quite matter of factly: 'They (CES) believe that I am get jobs after, if I can study something more, they and I believe I can find a suitable job' (Black 1995, p. 109).

Government publications and the media generally tell us that lack of literacy is related to other forms of social disadvantage such as poverty, crime and homelessness.

While I am not suggesting that people should not acquire literacy skills, what I do argue is that this elevation of literacy as a panacea for society's problems is largely false or, in the words of literacy researcher Rosie Wickert, that it is 'an ideologically constructed myth and largely serves to displace critical analyses of class, race, gender and power'.

The arguments I present are not new; they are based on the work of many researchers since about the mid-seventies. It involves adopting a 'conflict' view of society, recognising that society is structured to ensure the continuing dominance of particular groups representing capital, and that education and literacy in particular are important means of ensuring this dominance.

Educational historians and theorists have shown, for example, that public schooling originated in the middle to late nineteenth century essentially to develop in future workers the appropriate traits and attitudes required by dominant industry interests. In the nineteenth century 'schooled' workers were found to be more productive, by which it was meant they were less disruptive, more skilled, orderly and disciplined, punctual and moral.

There are more recent examples of the use of literacy as a social control mechanism, especially in bad economic times and/or times of social unrest. In the 1970s in the United States, for example, the demand for 'back to basics' with its focus on the three Rs and more traditional teaching in schools can be related to attempts to counter progressive education which was blamed for economic down turns and the social unrest of the protest era.

Australia has also had periods of 'invented' literacy crises and subsequent calls for 'back to basics' which can be related to the discourse of the political right and the desire to return to traditional values during difficult times. And it would appear no accident that during recent difficult political and economic times the ailing British Conservative government under Prime Minister Major should turn 'back to basics', focusing in particular on teaching literacy in schools.

Literacy has been referred to as a 'code word' for many aspects of political and economic change affecting Australia as various literacy crises have periodically appeared in the media. In recent years, for example, the Commonwealth Government, in trying to cope with a recession, looked to literacy programs for the unemployed as one answer. Nearly one million people were unemployed in 1993 and over a third of these were long term unemployed. There was the potential for a social crisis that could threaten the status quo, and it was in the interests of the government and other dominant capitalist groups to maintain control over this population. How effective it was to convince people that they lacked the 'skills', and in particular, the literacy skills to get a job, and then to occupy them with literacy and other labour market programs that exclusively focus on training for jobs (which in a recession are not there). To focus on the individual 'deficits' of the unemployed, and in particular, their literacy deficits, effectively enables the government and other groups to shift responsibility for unemployment away from any crisis in capitalism, with its cyclical economic downturns and inbuilt unemployment, and from the role of the state, areas where the real responsibility lies. Through this 'victim blaming' literacy has become an important political weapon representing the interests of capital.

Unfortunately, many of the unemployed, like most of the population generally, are prepared to go along with this 'literacy equals jobs' argument and the belief that literacy equates with success in life. This is largely due to the power of the dominant discourse on literacy. We are socialised through discourse into believing that acquiring literacy will bring with it rewards such as jobs. It makes common sense to hear that people are unemployed because they lack literacy skills, and that if they want a job they should first learn to read and write better. No matter that a great many jobs require only minimal literacy, or that there are many jobs where the literacy requirements can be picked up fairly easily on the job, or that many people who are unemployed have had successful work in the past where literacy has not affected their job performance. No matter also that despite all the hype about changing technology involving the use of computers and the need for a more educated workforce, most new jobs are being created in service industries that often involve relatively unskilled work with fairly minimal literacy demands.

By and large, however, this is not what people hear and believe due to the power of the dominant discourse on literacy. Literacy is thus 'hegemonic', which, as researcher Peter McLaren explains, involves the powerful winning the consent of those who are oppressed, with the oppressed unknowingly participating in their own oppression.

The long-term unemployed are one such group of oppressed, and the extent to which they and other marginal groups believe that literacy is a factor preventing them getting a job or obtaining other social goods in society is the extent to which literacy is hegemonic. Interestingly, my own research into the dispositions of long- term unemployed people referred to literacy programs revealed a complex picture. Although my interview sample of 27 was relatively small with many respondents in accord with the dominant discourse, some (about a third), also indicated a degree of resistance to this discourse. Rarely did this resistance extend to actually refusing to participate in a literacy program, because to do so meant risking losing their monetary allowance. But there was 'passive' resistance in the form of participating but refusing to recognise that this participation had any relationship to getting a job.

Certainly the discourse on the power of literacy is continually being reinforced and may be difficult to resist, especially given the virtual absence of alternative explanations such as the one outlined in this article. Just recently, for example, the new Federal Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training, the Hon. Dr David Kemp MP, signalled yet another major push to lift literacy standards in schools (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May 1996) claiming: 'We simply can't have another generation of young people going straight onto the unemployment queues because they have not picked up these basic skills.' So, literacy is to blame for youth unemployment, a view entirely consistent with the previous government's promotion of literacy for the long term unemployed, and a view consistent with the dominant discourse on literacy. From the critical reading I have presented in this article, this latest literacy crisis is a 'code' for changing political and economic conditions. It is no coincidence that the unemployment rate is on the rise again and it is time to pull the literacy card (yet again).

It is important that I am not misunderstood in this paper. I accept the importance of literacy skills for a great many activities and vocations and that literacy can provide considerable personal empowerment. I make my own living teaching literacy to adults. But to present literacy as a panacea for society's ills and, indeed, to present lack of literacy as the blame for many of society's problems, is political opportunism. It helps to ensure that the societal structures that maintain the privilege and dominance of some groups in society remain unchanged and unchallenged.

[This paper is based on a lengthier article entitled 'Literacy as hegemony' published in Open Letter, Australian Journal for Adult Literacy Research and Practice, Volume 6, Number 1, 1995.]

Bibliography

Black, S, Literacy and the Unemployed. Research Report No. 1, Centre for Language and Literacy, University of Technology, Sydney, 1995.


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Stephen Black, Head Teacher, Adult Basic Education, Meadowbank College of TAFE, See Street, MEADOWBANK NSW 2114. Tel (02) 9844 3801 Fax (02) 9844 3555. E-mail: Stephen.Black@tafensw.edu.au.
Last updated 2 September 1996

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