Literacy, Schooling and Revolution, by Colin Lankshear Essay

Let us attempt to understand Lankshears argument. My interpretation of Lankshears position is that he supports the idea of literacy as being best understood as a concept which comes into affect by its application in day to day life. I further assess his statement as literacy being also considered as the formation of ideas which forms the uses of literacy as well as creating an image to convey its use (Lankshear, 1987, p.50). The uses of literacy may be to communicate with one another or to participate in society by working, or to help others in need. Without the idea one can not put literacy into use. Such ideas must make known their use, they do so by reflecting this use to the†¦show more content†¦Thus, a literate person has more and better opportunities than the one who isnt literate. Literacy produces good results and importance to the literate person as well as precious and valued qualities for him/her, the illiterate person gets none of these (Lankshear, 1987, P .39). Lankshear states a minimum of three similar misconceptions within the above views. He begins with the concept that literacy is unitary that is it is a single thing, that is it is the same for everyone (Lankshear,1987, p.39). He explains that literate people share (regardless of differences in their levels of literacy) their possession of literacy, where as what illiterate people have in common is that they dont have literacy or they have so little of it that it is regarded as negligible (Lankshear, 1987, p.39). In this perspective literacy is seen as a technology or otherwise seen as the ability to employ the technology of print (Lankshear, 1987, p.39). Lankshears second description of misconception is that literacy is a neutral process or tool, this is believed to be so due to the tendency to consider literacy to be a skill/technology. It is considered to be neutral in the sense that it is unattached from and not influenced by the concepts of power (Lankshear, 1987, p.40). La nkshear argues that for those who agree to literacy being neutral, its use is differentiated from the term literacy itself