It lasted only about 58 hours--a pittance of time to be sure--but in those 58 hours it left its mark. I’m no medical expert and I think sometimes we civilians have a tendency to categorize illnesses we don’t understand as “the flu” but whether it was or wasn’t, some type of illness gripped my body with a vengeance and held on like a vice-grip for the better part of three days.
I have little memory of the first 36 hours but once I re-joined the land of the alert I passed the time by checking out what daytime TV had to offer. I was informed of a number of topics: a doctor who says we are showering too much, endless critique of what celebrities wore to an awards show, and how to add bling to a basic black skirt for less than $5.00
Between the morning shows, talk shows, news magazines and entertainment programs, producers and editors are always on the look-out for stories to tell. Some were funny, some heartbreaking, some groundbreaking, some inspiring, and some that defied the experience most us of would claim to understand. There was a plethora of politicians, actors, athletes and others who have taken on the task of immortalizing their stories and they have written books. They feel they have something to say and they have worked hard at documenting their story.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization takes notes of the number and the type of books published per year in each country as an important index of standard of living and education, and of a country’s self-awareness.
Of all the books published in a single year some get positive reviews, few have the kind of sales of which authors might dream. Yet all contribute to the overall literary climate of a culture and nation--whether that addition is one we personally consider notable or not.
Every TV host I listened to had high praise for the books their guests had written. Hopefully it was an authentic endorsement, but even if it wasn’t the great news is that any of us are free to access the book and find out for ourselves.
Although our nation’s literacy rates are inconsistent within our borders, statistics put us in a position of strength in our global community. But for those of us who live in a country like Canada, who have access to a bounty of literary resources, is there more involved in the concept of literacy than the ability to read and write? Is there greater responsibility, perhaps?
We may have a higher literacy rate but it appears it is becoming increasingly difficult to be literate in the current world of social media. The ability to navigate the abbreviations, the codes, the shorthand, the idioms and the language of the platforms we are using seem to run contrary to the very nature of true literacy. Yes, we are communicating with the written word more than ever but the rise of these forms of communication has been a detriment to the advancement of literacy. With its clipped phrasing, indifference to spelling, and no concern as to structure, punctuation or grammar, we may in fact be losing ground on the very literacy we consider a benchmark of a strong society.
But there’s more. Being literate should also involve recognizing and understanding what doesn’t need to be stated, what has no place being disseminated and what has no need to be shared if it is salacious, degrading, vengeful, or vindictive. Tossing an LOL or JK behind a statement doesn’t take the sting away when the writer uses the literary tools at their disposal to cause hurt.
January 27 has been established as Family Literacy Day in Canada with the hope that parents and children will engage in some sort of activity involving words. Those are the roots of literacy--from words, to phrases, to sentences to paragraphs--combining to communicate the ideas that matter to us. As we strive to establish those roots of literacy for our children, we need to continue working on our own. With the ability to communicate in many forms comes the responsibility to use those tools in a way that will allow the tree of literacy to flourish and not cut it off at its roots.
If we’re not being diligent and evaluate where we’re going we may be too late to recognize that LOL has now become losing our literacy. That’s my outlook.
