On its surface, the #LiteracySelfie campaign to encourage tweeted photos of people reading books is a fun activity, a chance to soften the mood amid a flood of sobering statistics about the prevalence of illiteracy on this International Literacy Day. In Cleveland, participants in the #LiteracySelfie campaign sponsored by the Literacy Cooperative of Greater Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Public Library system and the Cleveland Public Library include everyone from big names like Cleveland State University President Ronald Berkman and Cleveland Browns’ players to ordinary people, along with the Books@Work team.
But the campaign is more than a celebration of reading. The #LiteracySelfie effort signals the importance of books in the lives of so many, but in addition, it builds a community around reading. Social media is, by definition, social. It has the power to transform reading from a solitary pursuit undertaken in library stacks or in other private spaces to an activity that we do together, as a community. Commenting on what we are reading, relating our impressions of a text to others, even writing directly to authors about their works engages us in this community.
In order to realize this mission of more engaged reading as a community of learners and thinkers, we need greater investment in building basic literacy skills. That is why programs like those offered by the Literacy Cooperative of Greater Cleveland – including efforts to support grade level reading and early childhood intervention – are so important. Basic literacy is a gateway for lifelong learning and the expansion of educational and economic opportunities.
Even though Books@Work isn’t a basic literacy program, we think a lot about literacy. Among the most common misconceptions is that literacy is a binary equation – either people read or they do not. While we should strive for a country in which every single person knows how to read, this alone is insufficient. Literacy falls along a five-part continuum, with only a tiny percentage of adults falling into the highest levels. According to the most recent global study, the highest two levels account (together) for less that 12% of the American adult public. On the other end of the spectrum, 36 million American adults fall within the lowest two literacy levels. Two-thirds of these adults are in the workforce.
At Books@Work we don’t teach people to read or write. We don’t engage directly with the under-served groups highlighted by UNESCO in its promotion of International Literacy Day. Books@Work targets the middle – those who know how to read, and who may even actively and energetically embrace reading, but who don’t have opportunities to read together, as a community, with all the spirited discussion that comes from learning in a group with an experienced teacher. Although it doesn’t appear among UNESCO’s alarming statistics about the prevalence of illiteracy, this kind of engagement represents a pathway to another kind of literacy, the complex literacy of critical reading. By engaging with the narratives we provide, our participants are afforded an opportunity to reflect and to grow, to change their own narratives about what they can read, learn and accomplish.
On this International Literacy Day, we support the #LiteracySelfie effort as a way of building community around reading. We acknowledge the important work that the Literacy Cooperative of Greater Cleveland and others are doing to give so many the gift of basic literacy that will lead to complex literacies and engagement as a community of learners. Reading opens the door to opportunity, but only when we have the key.
Image: A diagram of reflecting optics from Ars Magna, Lucis et Umbrae (r17 QC17.K6C46), Special Collections of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland via standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com.
