Brief Explanation about Literacy

Jousairi Hasbullah:
Many parties talk and debate related to literacy/ illiteracy but do not fully understand what the figure tell us about literacy or illiteracy. This is due to our misunderstanding of how these figures are obtained. What concept and definition used to classify someone literacy or illiteracy.

The international definition, UNESCO, differentiate between traditional and the new definition. Traditional definition define literacy as "the ability to read and write" . This definition then been developed by adding words "with understanding". Several year ago Unesco used this definition: the ability to read and write with understanding". It means if one can read Arabic but does not understand the meaning still been classified as Illiteracy.

The most recent definition of literacy odopted by UN/UNESCO is more complex and more comprehensive: " the ability to identify, understand, interpret, communicate, compute, and used printed materials associated with varying context.
Furthermore, among OECD countries the definition of literacy is expanding to include skills to access knowledge through technology and ability to assess complex context.

How about countries in Asia and Pacific? Most of them still of using a very traditional concept only cover: the ability to read and write. This concept/definition is also adopted by Indonesia.
The internarional comparison still of great challenges.

Jousairi Hasbullah
JSHcenter. Bandung, Indonesia. July 2018.