Literacy Change Over Time

Today’s world is a fast-moving, constantly changing place. These days, our culture has advanced so rapidly that it raises the question, should our definition of literacy, the ability to read and write, be altered? Every year language experts sit down to update hundreds of words in our dictionary. Should literacy be one of the words we need to keep updating with the huge waves of change we have experienced in these past 500 years? Before the industrial revolution it was very rare to have the ability to read and write, making literacy a special privilege reserved for the wealthy. Over the past few hundred years, literacy has advanced as society moved forward and reading and writing has become an acquirable skill to most everyone in first world countries today. Now that even 3rd World Nations are moving towards increased literacy rates and technology, our definition of the word literate needs to adapt and advanced with it. The definition of literacy has morphed and evolved into something far more complex than

Literacy has quickly developed into more than skills you can pick up with a pen and paper. Not only is the material 21st century learners are reading is more advanced, it is also being consumed through means never before used. For example, one of the biggest ways people used to receive news, weather and read information was the newspaper. Now with the expansion of a number of free online newspapers, magazines, journals and blogs, the way readers consume their media is ever changing. In most of the first world, the definition of literate has extended beyond just being able to read and write on paper. A 21st Century reader is not considered literate if they cannot read and write through these new mediums of technology, like computers rather than pen and paper. But with technology and change of the definition, comes brand new opportunities for pupils in the 21st