Talk:Literacy

message: In considering earlier comments about the lack of an international view in this article, I think the teaching literacy section is too long to exist as it is in this article because it is so English-centric.....................  
I would like to suggest that we consider including a summary about teaching literacy in English here, create an separate article that addresses this topic specifically, and link to that article from this section (as in WP:Summary style. It is certainly a complex enough topic to warrant its own article.  
There is an existing article on reading skills acquisition, however, as mentioned above, literacy refers to a much broader range of skills than does reading acquisition.  So I don't think it would be appropriate to try to combine "teaching literacy in English" with "reading skills acquisition," even though the topics overlap.  
Thoughts?
Best,
Rosmoran 14:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Teaching literacy section

message: Hi, all.
One thing I think needs to be addressed in some way is that a comprehensive "phonics" method of teaching reading covers a great deal more ground than most people realize.  In addition to teaching phonological awareness and sound-symbol correspondence, a comprehensive program also includes instruction in irregular words, the 6 syllable types, morphology (root words, prefixes, suffixes, etc) and word origin.  
I'm not sure how best to include this in the article.  
Thoughts?
Best,
Rosmoran 09:38, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I copied what you said into the article almost verbatim, though it should be properly referenced.  It would also be a good idea to update the phonics article. -- Beland 02:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonics section 

message: I removed these two paragraphs, which are a rather strongly opinionated criticism of how text messaging is allegedly making children illiterate.  Any such discussion would need to be more well-rounded; I'm sure you could find other authors who have written that text messaging is putting normal pressure on the language to change, and some who would call this author overly proscriptivist.  The their/there example is a weird one to pick on, since those two words sound the same when spoken, and as such are commonly confused when written.  Is any of this really an appropriate level of detail for this encyclopedia article? -- Beland 01:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed passage on texting 

message: Hi,
The following sentence needs a verifiable citation because it is a statement of opinion :  
::Consideration should be given to alternative methods of teaching reading since neither the phonics method, the whole word or whole language method, nor any combination of them is completely successful with every student.
Rosmoran (talk) 16:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation request in "Which approach is better section" 

message: Hello. Noticed that the World Literacy map for some countries might be outdated. Like Pakistan for example needs to be orange in the 50-69% according to all estimates including UN and world factbook. Can someone fix this chart? - SG  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.113.85.116 (talk) 07:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can't read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills. " - LOL 3rd world level ... the us army is printing comic strips to replace user manuals ... --91.62.155.142 (talk) 20:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Recent reports in mainstream USA media state that around half of adults in Detroit are "functionally illiterate" - might this be the case in, say, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia etc which are similar socio-economically? In this case it would certainly suggest that there could indeed be millions illiterate, or is Detroit just an atypical "cluster"? --MichaelGG (talk) 13:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I just added a section mentioning this to the Literacy in the United States article. My addition there could probably use a rewrite. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map is outdated 

message: Both of them currently redirect here. I believe they should have a separate article, as, simply, literacy and illiteracy are two related but different phenomena.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  22:18, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. Pdxuser (talk) 15:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Analphabetism]] and [[illiteracy]]

message: Can anyone take a look at the article Postliterate society? Looks like weird original research to me. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 10:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postliterate society 

message: There was a vadalism on this page. Due to lack of experience in wiki system, I can't undo the change. The vandalism includes deletion of whole section on 16:37, 29 September 2008.
Please help.
:I've reverted the article to revision 240316085 as of 07:10, September 23, 2008. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:04, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: Surely there must be earlier data available for world illiteracy than 1970? If somebody knows of such data, could they include it in the article? Jacob Lundberg (talk) 00:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older data 

message: It strikes me as a good example of WP:Fringe. "Wikipedia is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere."
This Sudbury model is taught in 40 schools around the world according to its own article. That's 40 schools out of hundreds of thousands, needless to say, a very insignificant fraction. I don't think their non-mainstream teaching methods/opinions deserve their own section, and to be honest, it all sounds very opinionated and matter of fact-like. It sounds like someones trying to sell their idea and spread the word of this fringe teaching method. If anyone disagrees, please post your argument here before reverting. Sbw01f (talk) 20:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree.  Furthermore, there are only two citations, one of which is to the sudbury valley school itself and the other to a research talk which is about self-teaching but not about literacy.  Since no one in 1.75 years has addressed this concern I am removing the section pursuant to WP:Fringe and WP:Notability since it only provides citations to a single source which is not "independent of the subject". -- InspectorTiger (talk) 22:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The criticism section (Sudbury Model) 

message: Why is this article almost entirely about reading? What about writing?? There is only the smallest mention of writing here. Why is the nearly the whole article about learning to read with no mention of learning to write?!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.41.204.190 (talk) 18:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Writing

message: I have altered several statements that included the ability
to listen and speak in the definition of literacy---proclaiming
that this would be the "traditional" view (or similar). This
is manifestly untrue: The traditional view is to read and write,
sometimes even just read. (Cf. even the actual discussions
later in the article.)
From the references, I suspect that someone that someone
used modern US educational material, with its strong
over-inclusive and unscientific tendencies, as a basis.
Please do not do this.
88.77.148.116 (talk) 03:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spoken language 

message: The graph World Literacy graph sites a link that is a blacklisted site on Wiki and also gave my computer a worm. How did a blacklisted site get into the description anyway? Does Wikipedia not clean links after it has blacklisted a site?
71.211.216.187 (talk) 08:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graph references a blacklisted site that leads to a Worm/Virus 

message: In the online world of easy publication and the absence of editors, is it important to include Digital Citizenship or Ethics as an element of modern literacy? For example, there is an ethical code of conduct required by Wikipedia which if it is not followed will result in the remove of your ideas (see the discussion on texting above). In other words, if UNESCO's definition of literacy holds true, is there an ethical responsibility to participating in community? Is online ethical behaviour a criteria for one to be considered literate or is this a value judgment? I think I am either scratching the surface here or I am way off base. I welcome your thoughts. RSOldring (talk) 00:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Digital Citizenship 

message: I've posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sociology#Computer/technology/web/net/online/digital literacy about the profusion of articles on "new literacies", which may need merging and cleanup. Anyone interested in the topic please comment on that thread. Fences&Windows 18:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: New literacies

message: WP doesnt yet have a page on pre-literacy, or pre-literate culture, but the phrase is used a lot in anthropology articles. I may create a stub for the word, but i think its a major omission that editors here could also take up.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Pre-literate

message: How useful is this section? It seems a bit of weird slant on the topic, and doesn't even address any of the issues with it, nor the progress made in Brazilian literacy by Paulo Freire and others. Seems more of just like "Look at those people, how silly."
I'm not offering to update it, because I've got no particular knowledge of South American literacy, but, it seems, neither does the author of the section. If you've got nothing to say... Gabby93 (talk) 09:35, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Literacy in South America" 

message: Will it be possible to add the reference for UNESCO's quotation?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.245.26 (talk) 15:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction section 

message: Hi,
It's mentioned in this section that the Chinese monk Xuanzang came to learn Math and Philosophy in 625BC. According to Wikipedia, Xuanzang lived in the Tang Dynasty, and therefore 625BC might have been a typo. I changed it to 625 AD.
--Tszhangto (talk) 20:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "History" Section Xuanzong 

message: This section reads like it was copy/pasted from a website trying to sell you a book on Web 2.0 or something. It barely communicates anything, and certainly nothing substantial about literacy in the 21st century. I don't want to delete it out of hand, in case there's some merit to it that I'm just not seeing, but I don't think it's contributing anything.
24.124.69.197 (talk) 05:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literacy in the 21st Century 

message: The entire subsection for Pakistan reads like an editorial. And this is unfortunate as this is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a collection of Op.Eds. A more appropriate entry would have involved a brief synopses of Pakistan education system, followed by statistics indicating improvement and regressions, followed by a list of existing challenges.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elnyka (talk • contribs) 20:53, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pakistan Section Reads Like An Editorial 

message: In the opening paragraph, there is this sentence: "Once these skills are acquired the reader can attain full English literacy,"
Shouldn't it simply be "can attain full literacy"? Literacy obviously does not apply to only English; it's being able to read and write in at least the vernacular. 
PhnxFyreG (talk) 19:25, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say yes. I tried to look at the source cited in support of the definition to see what was said there, but I couldn't figure out from the citation what source is being cited. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Full English Literacy?  

message: The change from 14% (which I placed) was unexplained. It took some time for me to find the 14 so I'm not going to look for the 17 but please provide a pointer so that it can be changed to 17 if you have NAAL data to support it. 17 is definitely plausible. The 14 should still be in the sources I gave from NAAL. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, it might have been 17 white, 14 general, 2 black, have an edit with pending verification, will commit it or leave per start entry for this thread. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  US White Full Prose Proficiency 

message: According to the image's description, it's an original work.  Since it's an original work, the labels, rooted in an anti-Christian and particularly anti-Catholic historiography, are NPOV, and the paintings in the background unencyclopedic.  The summary quotes sources for recent centuries, but essentially admits that the (improbably low) numbers between 400 and 1300 are OR, explaining the (dodgy) methodology, and that the numbers for antiquity are from an "unpublished work," making them unverifiable.  For these reasons, I'm removing it entirely.  Twin Bird (talk) 14:28, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you mean "not NPOV" or POV. For you to complain about it being NPOV, as your text does, is absurd, nonsensical. NPOV, (Neutral Point of View) is the quality being sought. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 00:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The Dark Age of Literacy." 

message: First sentence under Literacy in Europe reads: "i was come to the shop to get a packet of cigaretes and a got caught from the shopsIn 12th and 13th century England," I'm guessing that's not right... Jack Daw (talk) 03:36, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sabotage 

message: This section asserts, amid lots of other claims, that literacy declines in late antiquity because of the rise of Christianity.  That's quite a controversial, political claim; and it isn't referenced in any way.  The "references" given are to things not related to that claim.  So I've deleted all this unreferenced material, and left what seems to be NPOV and referenced.  I've also renamed the section to something general.
Basically this paragraph was always rubbish.  It needs to contain stuff from books about ancient literacy, not whatever gunk about ancient libraries or whatever happens to be around.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.152.34.122 (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decline of Western Literary in the middle ages 

message: The map needs to be updated, Ethiopia literacy is well above 60%. (2010)--Inayity (talk) 10:57, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map is inaccurate and should be updated (Ethiopia) 

message: That sentence needs to be made simpler, clearer. Maybe break it into two? I'm an avid copy-editor, but there seem to be a lot of people involved in this page, so I'll leave it to y'all.—Wegesrand (talk) 11:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ironic that "Literacy" begins with an unintelligible sentence 

message: The article begins with: "Literacy is the ability to read and write one's own name and further for knowledge and interest, write coherently, and think critically about the written word." [Emphasis added.] Going by what the rest of the article says, literacy isn't primarily defined by being able to read and write one's own name; that appears to be more of a historical thing. As such, it really doesn't belong in the first sentence of the article. What do you guys think about moving it to a different part of the lead? Cheers, — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 16:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead: "one's own name" 

message: Egypt has a relatively high literacy rate. The adult literacy rate in 2010 was estimated at 72.0%
Population of Egypt  = 83, 644, 000 X .30 (% illiterate) = 25,106,000 illiterate. How does this a 'relatively high literacy rate'? Compared to which countries?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 01:50, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egypt 

message: Hello I recently Added a Reference / Citations of the Philippine Section, And I removed the Unreferenced Tag on it. 
Thank you  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philipandrew (talk • contribs) 01:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recently  

message: Hi all. I'm planning on editing the literacy page. I plan on updating the African, South American, Asian, and adding a Latin American section. To revise these sections I plan to add what literacy is defined as in these regions and what programs are in place to improve the literacy rate. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks! Thisismyusername1994 (talk) 22:32, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Changes 

message: Hi all I've added several countries to the African list with their literacy rates and Afghanistan. I've also added what those countries are attempting to do to improve their literacy rates. I also added the section on youth. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks Thisismyusername1994 (talk) 17:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes

message: I found the following line to be questionable from a number of perspectives:
"While literacy rates of English increased, forced assimilation exposed Native children to physical and sexual abuse, unsanitary living conditions and even death."
The above suggests that such conditions did not exist in their native culture, which I am sure is not true. If it is true that such conditions did not exist in the native culture then the writer should be prepared to provide proof of that. At a minimum, the editor should provide a link to a source that clearly supports the contention made by the statement.
:This statement is based upon Government reports like the "Bringing them Home" report submitted to the Australian Government, and similar reports from USA and Canadian authorities, and other government reports in Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America.  Regarding childrearing practices of Australian Aborigines Lawlers "Voices of the Frst Day" and the work of R.M. & C. Berndt show that physical and sexual abuse in these cultures prior to contact just did not exist.  Jean Liedof´s work on the continuum concept also shows a very different childrearing practice amongst these cultures.  "Unsanitary" living conditions amongst hunter-gatherer cultures, based upon nomadism were very rare, but death rates amongst children were high (as they were also in Europe until the late 10th century).John D. Croft (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Highly questionable and contentious statement being made 

message: It was not the Assyrians who exiled the Jews to Babylonia, but the Chaldean Babylonians.John D. Croft (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error of Historical Fact

message: Maybe it is intentional, seeing as how a frequent criticism of Wikipedia pages (and the Internet in general) is its bias towards the U.S.A.
There is a link to a Wikipedia page on U.S. Literacy, but it is only about current literacy, no history. 162.205.217.211 (talk) 16:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ironically, History of White United States Literacy is missing 

message: I am interested in editing the article to include information about gender disparities in literacy rates. Currently, there is a brief mention on the relationship between female literacy rates and women's socioeconomic status in the section on "Economic Impact," but it refers only to Nigeria and could be greatly expanded. I would like to add sections about the linkages between female literacy and economic productivity, as well as maternal and child mortality. Female literacy can also have significant implications for fertility rates and girls' average age of marriage. Discussion of literacy programming efforts that have included women's empowerment as a goal could also help strengthen the article. I have a list of potential references listed on my user page. --KAnds42 (talk) 20:10, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Improvements 

message: Citation #18 in the article discusses differences in the equality of opportunity among genders in varying nations. The abstract has no mention of differentiation in the definition of literacy, specifically, in different nations. The citation is either misplaced (meant for another part of the article) or used inappropriately in context. I may be incorrect, however, as I do not have access to the full text of the source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:31B6:1D20:55D8:61D7:4ABD:91 (talk) 23:06, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation 18 appears to be misplaced? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Literacy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141121194304/http://bibingka.com/dahon/lci/lci.htm to http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/lci/lci.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:33, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Literacy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110723224750/http://www.nala.ie/sites/default/files/press_release_image-2010-March/files/Policy%20Brief%20on%20Adult%20Literacy%20Strategy%202009.pdf to http://www.nala.ie/sites/default/files/press_release_image-2010-March/files/Policy%20Brief%20on%20Adult%20Literacy%20Strategy%202009.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140326132006/http://www.ala.org/offices/olos to http://www.ala.org/offices/olos
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141223170840/http://www.govmu.org/portal/goc/cso/ei977/pop2011.pdf to http://www.govmu.org/portal/goc/cso/ei977/pop2011.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:07, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is a previous comment to this effect from 17 April 2008, with one second over the following decade. I decided to bump. 
I feel strongly that the redirect of "illiteracy" to this page does a terrible disservice to the condition of illiteracy, specifically, functional illiteracy in developed, technological society. (Though I'm sure it's less of a big deal among the Pirahã.) 
This isn't about literacy itself, it's about the social context of the literacy/illiteracy, and what Wikipedia presently brings to bear on this subject is zip squat. Section "Socioeconomic impact" is not a first-person account of life under a neverending burden. 
Of course, literacy isn't all it's cracked up to be. Even highly literate people confronted with the modern grocery store soon give up on parsing the fine print, to grope for a package adorned with a comforting likeness of Juan Valdez or Aunt Jemima. 
And that's only a tiny a step down. "Bringing home the bacon"—in either sense—without being able to make heads or tails of the sodium annotation is a whole other matter. — MaxEnt 18:26, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illiteracy as social condition 

message: needs work! 
* the first paragraph is rather out of context.
* the description of a literacy project is too extensive! sources?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salanola Ortoluron (talk • contribs) 21:52, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  section "Teaching migrant/immigrant language users" 

message: Hello. I accessed this article to check the correlation between illiteracy and crime, but there's nothing written here about this. I think including this kind of info would enrich the article.--MisterSanderson (talk) 01:21, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illiteracy 

message: The 1800 statistic is fishy, sound wrong DemonDays64 (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sweden  

message: The overview section of this article is now profoundly unclear.  It tries to say that literacy can pertain to much more than reading and writing, but then the entire body of the article uses the word "literacy" as synonymous with a capacity to read and/write.  
It would be much, much clearer to have this article be about Linguistic Literacy alone.   Other forms of literacy can be discussed in other articles. Failing that, the overview of this article should be revised so that it provides a balanced overview of this article, which is overwhelmingly about linguistic literacy. 
 Jayintheusa (talk) 20:35, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview section of this article on Literacy is now a perfect example of poor writing 

message: I think it is important to address a theory to teaching reading that is still practiced in many U.S schools to this day, despite research finding it flawed. It is called the three-cueing system, and I think it should be included in the teaching literacy section to bring more awareness to it. Emzrohm (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Teaching Literacy and the Three-Cueing System 

message: Almost none of the information in this subsection is in its sole citation, nor does this section seem to have much to do with literacy as defined in the rest of the article. None of the definitions given can be entirely detached from written language (even those definitions that include other skills), which this article in its present state does in the section on Native Americans. It seems to me, and apparently all of these diverse organizations cited by the article for definitions of literacy, that competency in oral traditions represents a different skill from literacy. Is the topic of how written language being brought by colonizers to people without a written language affects the native culture relevant here? I guess I don't know, this being a topic way outside my areas of expertise. It's certainly interesting, but possibly it would best be placed in a different article. In any case, it ought to at least be taken from reliable sources and be consistent with the terminology of the rest of the article. Ashorocetus (talk | contribs) 23:25, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Native American subsection needs help

message: Introductio of literacy 182.50.66.253 (talk) 06:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction of literacy 

message: — Assignment last updated by LehmanProf (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Language and Literacy Acquisition and Development