a little more McLuhan (& maybe Pynchon)

[John Bailey]

Literacies are plural as well, so it's not even a straight scale...

I wrote an article last year after a report stated that 46% of Australians
don't have the literacy skills to "effectively participate" in modern
society - they may know their letters but that doesn't mean they can
understand a mortgage contract or fill in an insurance claim etc. The kinds
of language used by some institutions (banks...) almost seems designed to
exploit this problem. Don't have figures for the rest of the world at hand
but if you compound the similar high rates for numeracy problems it helps
make clear why insurmountable debt is such an issue today.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/you-wouldnt-read-about-it-20100508-ul30.html

And David, I reckon most people today would mistake such an
inner-life-richness test with some sort of measure of "happiness". I think
that's barking up the wrong one.


On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 2:43 PM, David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> "literate" vs. "pre-literate" peoples is gray scale, not an "Us" vs.
> "Them".
>
> For example:
>
> * Does "literate" mean able to read a newspaper written at an 8th grade
> (U.S.) level?
>
> * Or does literate mean recognize that an arrow means "this way"?
>
> A genuine question (I know this sounds factious, but I'm truly curious): Is
> there a test/scale for measuring the richness of one's inner life?
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20110824/a39483a6/attachment.html>