Even as we bemoan our children’s abysmal performance in English Language at the primary and secondary levels as evidenced by the NGSA and CSEC results, the theme for this year’s International Literacy Day (ILD), which was commemorated last Friday – “Literacy in a digital world” should be a wake-up call.
ILD was launched in November 1965, just as we were about to be granted independence, along with so many other colonies. Repressed in some instances for centuries in terms of even basic education, many of these societies, including ours, had severe challenges in literacy, measured simply as the ability to read at a level to be functionally literate.
As the theme for ILD reminds us, while we have been more or less marking time achieving literacy by those old standards that were established for the industrial age launched in the eighteenth century, the very meaning and demands of what constitutes “literacy” in this “Digital Age”, which was born in the last half a century has fundamentally changed. The UNESCO information brochure on ILD succinctly describes the latter: “Digital technologies, including the Internet, mobile phones, and all the other tools to manage information digitally, are fundamentally changing the way people live and work, learn and socialise. This transformation is taking place at record speed with the rapid advancement and expansion of technologies. For instance, mobile subscriptions, which had been a few tens of thousands in 1980, were about seven billion in 2015.” The features of Apple’s latest I-Phone X which was released two days ago, is a stark reminder of this brave new world. It not only enhances video, graphics and text production and transmission but seamlessly integrates its operations with the I-Watch remotely so that a person can always be connected to the rest of the world even without their phone. Our policymakers in the education sector must realise that when it comes to using the tools of the Digital Age, our children are like the children of immigrants in a new land – they will be the first to understand the new technology while their parents are still stuck looking backwards. What this means, however, is there is an opportunity right now to leapfrog our educational backwardness and jump right into the Digital Age.
What are these? According to the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Consortium (2014), success in the 21st century requires mastery of the following critical skills: “information literacy, creativity and innovation, collaboration, problem solving, communication, and responsible citizenship.” To expand briefly, to be “functionally literate” in the new dispensation, there is the need for students to be au fait with several “literacies”: scientific, economic, and technological; visual and information; multicultural and global awareness. Since we are now dealing potentially with the entire world, there will be the need to improve the effectiveness of our communication skills. This becomes even more vital because of the need to be able to work in teams where the members are spread in different parts of the globe. Collaboration and interpersonal skills have to be sharpened in this new interactive environment. One of the more pressing needs for change in our pedagogy in Guyana will be the need to move away from the rote learning which is unfortunately being emphasised by this Government in a naïve thrust to demonstrate that it is making gains in delivering the outdated curriculum. What is needed in this Digital Age is more inventive thinking outside the box that can lead to designing apps that, like Facebook, can change the world without any huge amount of capital. But to do that, students will have to become more adaptable and learn to manage complexity while on their own. This can only come when teachers encourage curiosity, creativity and risk taking – all features that are beaten out of our students. They are already in a different zone – the Digital Age – that their teachers still have not even glimpsed.
