I like to think of illiteracy as a mental “injury.” If your brain was a human body, a literate person would be a normal person with every part of their body in tact and functional. They would have no restrictions on what they can do in their life as far as reading and writing is concerned. An illiterate person on the other hand, would have major restrictions on what they could do, because their brain would be “missing limbs.” Illiterate people can still make it though in life, just as people without limbs can, but it just makes life that much harder. I do not take my arms and legs for granted, so why would I take being literate for granted?
Literacy, or the ability to read or write, is something that gets overlooked by many people. It is really easy to just assume that someone is literate based on certain information about them. Whether it be their job, college enrolled in, family background, etc. For example, a friend of mine is attending a top notch university and is very close to being illiterate. He has no business attending this university, but his ability to hit a baseball a long way landed him a scholarship. Since he affiliated with this university, he is automatically labeled as someone who is smart, or at the very least possesses average reading and writing skills. Jobs can be misleading when it comes to literacy as well. Look at a car salesman for example. He may know the ins and outs of the car business and is literate in that regard, but you can not just assume that he is literate in general. Thats not to say that every car salesman is like this, but it just goes to show how our assumptions may not always be spot on when it comes to literacy.
Taking literacy for granted is something that seems ridiculous to me. How can you not appreciate the ability to communicate effectively though writing? Or understand the writers purpose when you read? How someone can not be thankful for this is beyond me. Just think of how much it would suck to be illiterate. It would limit the number of things you could do or experience in your life. Reading and writing are the two big things that an illiterate person can not take part in. Those two things, however, are tied to so many other things in life that it restricts what an illiterate person can do or achieve. They are unable to have high end jobs, communicate with others effectively, unable to succeed in higher education and many other things. While these are all terrible things, the worst thing a person lacking literacy can not do is raise their kids to be literate. This not only affects the child, but society gets hurt by this as well. Illiterate parents reproduce and eventually their kids become illiterate from being exposed to the parents and their ways. This is a trend that is common and will not end unless people take it upon themselves to become literate, not just to help themselves, but to improve the lives of their children, thus helping society as a whole.
Your point of view it seems like they are making the choice to be illiterate. I agree with you, yes some people can be lazy and chose not be literate in these cases I think they should go the extra mile to be an educated human being. It’s not fair to some people that we stress out doing our homework and push our brains to the limit while other people might be too scared or too lazy to try. Nobody is going to judge an illiterate person for wanting to go and learn, if anything we will supportive and rooting for you to succeed. If you have a child and you can’t read or write, how are you supposed to teach your child to be educated if you can’t teach yourself? Have you ever thought though that maybe being illiterate wasn’t their choice?
ReplyDeleteSome people actually have a disability and maybe they can’t learn to read to write. With this said I don’t think we should be angry with them just because they are different. We should be supportive and helpful to these people who can’t read or write. Have you ever thought that maybe they are trying to get educated? They might be going to classes and having a teacher communicate things to them through verbal communication. They still have the ability to learn through other people teaching them. They aren’t ruining society because they are still educated, but maybe they got there in a different way. We can’t judge people based on their reading and writing skills.
Wow! What a different perspective on this topic. I found myself relating to your twist on illiteracy more than the others I have read. I am a student athlete myself and I have encountered similar situations to your friends. It really amazes me and sometimes aggravates how illiteracy can be overlooked. Ever since I was seven years old, I knew that I wanted to take my softball to the furthest level possible. With that being said my parents had always told me that I had to work just as hard or harder and excel in school just like I had my softball. Sometimes I feel as though illiteracy is ignorance. Of course there are exceptions however, if illiterate people are able to fly under the radar here and there why would they ever be motivated to become literate? Witnessing these illiterate athletes moving on to a “paid for “higher level education gets under my skin. My focus has always been school. My perspective on the situation has always been, I play softball to pay for my education. The ultimate goal being my education. I feel that people who choose to be illiterate will eventually receive some kind of reality check that will make them wish to be literate and want to work to become literate. Meanwhile all we can do is work hard to further our education and in the long run really appreciate the life of being literate. We won’t take literacy for granted like so may do.
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