Literary Autoethnography
In my experience, literacy is a word spoken, said, and understood as the ability to read and write. Wikipedia admits this fact stating that the word is understood mostly as the ability to read and write. Some members of my community, like my long-time friend, is a victim of this belief. However, that definition placed on literacy is only part of its true meaning. My definition of literacy is the fluency a person has in an area or field. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, literacy is the state of being literate and knowledge that relates to a specified subject. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gave the literal definition. However, there are other groups, institutions, and people who define it differently. Alberta Education defines literacy as the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. Alberta Education gives a more thoughtful and meaningful definition to literacy. Regardless of which definition is chosen, literacy remains as the amount of knowledge a person has in a subject.
Why is literacy important? Literacy is presented in our lives daily from grocery shopping to petitioning. For example, activism. Activism promotes better changes into our lives. Jstor, a database, presents how cultural activism can alter their circumstances, formally or informally like participating in protests from Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power, and Public Life in America by Melissa Checker and Maggie Fishman. These authors expressed the importance of literacy through their writing of cultural activism. To be able to promote a change we want in our lives, it is necessary to know what change we want, how we can change it, &c. Another example of literacy’s importance is the ability to escape poverty. Factsheet #9 — Literacy and Poverty provides a list of how literacy is connected to poverty and one of them is how poor families are in risk of poverty. This is because poor children would be placed in the lower end of the education system and their parents don’t have the ability to help them. Factsheet #9 — Literacy and Poverty also notes how children would drop out of high school because they can’t get the help they need. This cycle would repeat, and their children would be placed in the same place.
Though literacy is an excellent tool in life, there are obstacles everyone has. One of my obstacles is fake news. Literacy is necessary to understand the world we live in, however it could be muddled with fake news and false information. Literacy in false information would only lead one astray, and possibly make their life more difficult.
Overall, literacy is important. It is being fluent and knowledgeable of a subject and its importance is life-changing. Two examples of how literacy impacts and changes life would be through activism and escaping the poverty cycle. Through spreading information about literacy, we could make our lives easier and for the better.
