What Is Functional Illiteracy?

Functional illiteracy refers to adults who do not have the ability to read practical articles (such as newspapers, menus, product introductions, recruitment advertisements, etc.). The U.S. Department of Education defines it as someone who has not completed 8 years of formal school education. The Census Bureau refers to people who have not completed 6 years of formal school education. Some researchers believe that it should refer to people who are over 16 years old and do not have the reading ability for sixth graders. Statistics are very different due to uncertain definitions. In 1983, the U.S. Board of Educational Quality stated in the report "The State is at Risk and Urgently Needs Educational Reform", that functional illiteracy among American adults reached 23 million, while Harmon's 1979 report to the Ford Foundation found that the United States was 25 Half of the above population is functionally illiterate. ^[1]

Functional illiteracy

Functional illiteracy means having

Functional illiteracy and general illiteracy

The number of illiterate illiterates is decreasing, and the number of "new illiterates" that cannot keep up with the development of modern science and technology is increasing.

Exciting news came from Jiangsu Science and Technology Publishing House recently: The "Modern Citizen Science Popularization Reader" edited by Professor Gu Guanqun, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the president of Southeast University, was printed 3 times in less than 4 months, with a total number of 4.2 Million volumes! Relevant experts said that the book s popularity shows that people have become increasingly concerned about functional illiteracy.

Functional illiteracy is different from traditional illiterate "illiteracy". Although they are well educated, they are often as poor as "illiterate" in modern science and technology common sense, especially with the advent of the knowledge economy. New products with scientific and technological content are pouring into daily life, and this kind of "functional illiteracy" will increase. For example, although computers have become increasingly popular, some liberal arts professors in universities may not even understand computers at all. For this reason, many educators have proposed the concept of "lifelong education".

Yu Zhaoxia, deputy editor of Jiangsu Science and Technology Press, said that our province has taken the lead in formulating a science education outline in the country. The "Modern Citizen Science Popularization Reader" published this year shows a number of concrete examples of the latest achievements and development trends in the science and technology field. But to reduce "functional illiteracy", one or two books are not enough. Relevant education experts pointed out that at present we must absorb and integrate social education resources as soon as possible, establish and improve a modern lifelong education system, and fundamentally change the situation of people's unconsciousness in learning.

Functional illiteracy refers to people who do not actively seek new knowledge and cannot adapt to changes in social needs. The development of science and technology, as well as the changes in culture, economy, education, family life and interpersonal communication, have led to many functional illiterates. Zhong Zhixian

In 1994, 1996 and 1998, international adults

Policies in various countries take the United Kingdom as an example. The problems exposed in the "International Adult Literacy Survey" led the British government to set up a "post-school basic skills working group". The group submitted a report entitled A New Start: Improving Literacy and Arithmetic. The beginning of the report states: "Having one in five adults in our country is functionally illiterate, and more people do not do arithmetic. This is simply what we have been doing for decades in school education. A blow, thought-provoking. "In March 2001, the Government of England launched the" Life Skills: National Strategy to Improve Adult Literacy and Arithmetic Skills "project. This is a three-year project with a total government budget of £ 1.5 billion. The goal is to improve the literacy and arithmetic skills of 750,000 people by 2004.

In 2002, the government invested another 1.6 billion pounds in this project. In 2001, UNICEF and the Kosovo Open Society Foundation began literacy projects. They soon discovered that none of the existing teaching materials were available. They changed the original way of working and first set up a preparatory seminar composed of representatives of local women's organizations, consultants of the Institute of Education and a translator to prepare new textbooks. The group developed a set of textbooks called "Window of Life". This textbook has been adopted by literacy projects in 19 cities in all 5 regions of Kosovo. In 2002, there were more than 130 groups of approximately 2,250 people in Kosovo who studied several times a week in schools, clubs and women's groups. Women of all ages participate in this project.

The Uganda government has implemented adult functional literacy projects since 1992. This project focuses on how to solve problems and covers multiple areas. For example, the project connects literacy learning with students' daily lives and helps them acquire skills to deal with everyday problems. In 2000, the number of people learning through this project reached 127,000.

The King Sejong Award of the 2004 International Literacy Prize was awarded to the Office of the Leading Group for Literacy Elimination in Qinghai Province. The reason why Qinghai won the prize is simple: in order to meet the needs of many people in remote areas, Qinghai focuses on literacy work for women and all ethnic minorities, and combines literacy work with skills training that meets the daily lives of farmers and herdsmen . Since the mid-1960s, with the vigorous promotion, promotion and popularization of UNESCO and other relevant international institutions, lifelong education has been widely spread throughout the world as an extremely important educational concept. Many countries, when formulating their own education policies, policies or constructing the framework of national education systems, are based on the concept of lifelong education, take the basic principles of lifelong education as the starting point, and take these principles as the main goal. Lifelong education is a great way to solve functional illiteracy. Individuals should attach importance to lifelong education and continuously improve their ability to acquire new terms and technologies.