Cc: Alfred Bork <bork@ics.uci.edu>

This may be an over-simplification, but for me at
least it clarifies what is wood and what are
trees (a reference to an idiom in English "You
can't see the wood for the trees" when many
details confuse the overall picture)

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture for
visiting university students at which I was
reminded of a project carried out here about 20
years ago. Put simply St Lucia is a community
with two languages - English and Kweyol. There
is, or was, a strong corelation between adults
who lacked literacy (who were unable to read and
write) and adults whose main or only language was
Kweyol. Therefore an initiative was started to
teach literacy skills (reading and writing) in
Kweyol. Similar methodology is (or was) used in
the Seychelles, and I think in Reunion.

My point is that in this case "literacy" refers
to specific skills, reading and writing.
"Literacy" is specifically about interpreting
symbolic markings into language, and interpreting
language into symbolic markings."Literacy" is an
essential foundation for the state so confusingly
termed as "digital literacy", and involves a
skill which is not "digital" at all.

On a related issue, and one that I think clearly
illustrates Rosa Maria's concerns, I have
exchanged ideas with Professor Alfred Bork at the
University of California, Irvine. Professor Bork
has some very exciting ideas about computers and
education. His plan is for a massive project
which among other things will teach the children
of the world "to read and write".
It took several messages before we realised that
when I said (or read) "write" I meant
"interpreting language into symbolic markings"
and when he used the word "write" he meant
"compose; create narrative" because he considered
that "writing" (in my sense) was quickly becoming
redundant. He lives and works in California, I
live and work in St Lucia, we probably have very
different perceptions of the world :-)

So, once again, I agree with Rosa Maria that the
word "literacy" needs to be valued as we value
the specific skills that it represents which we
are all lucky enough to have already.

Hugs from St Lucia
Deirdre
Nearby Sat Mar 4 02:30:27 2006