Critical Literacy and the Importance of Education

The importance of education to a civil democracy cannot be underestimated. Nor can its importance to an advanced, technologically-based consumer economy. Educated voters are educated consumers and educated workers. There are economic and social benefits to an educated citizenry; unfortunately for politicians, this also means critical scrutiny of their policies and political behaviour. Indulging the conspiracy theorist side of my personality for a moment, I can't help but wondering that politicians merely pay lip-service to the importance of education. Really, what they want is a basically literate society, not a critically literate one. Enough education to read, write, and count, to follow basic instructions and communicate basic information.

A critically literate society asks questions and demands answers. A critically literate society can tell when a politician, or some other societal or industry leader, is obfuscating, diverting, or digressing. What politician actually wants their policies and political behaviour to be properly scrutinised! I am being somewhat glib, I suppose; most politicians feel the call of civic duty. But all politicians end up playing the game, looking for advantages wherever they can. Perhaps perversely, democracy encourages some rather undemocratic behaviour among our politicians. Better that, of course, than the alternative: open conflict. Politicians will connive and deceive and try to gain any advantage over their rivals (the history of dirty tactics would be a fascinating read!); most counter-productive to such behaviour is a citizenry that can recognise what they're doing.

So the focus is on basic literacy, and not critical literacy. Society only needs a few smart people, an intelligentsia that is small and easily dismissed as out of touch and elitist. Meanwhile, politicians can manipulate a basically literate society, most practicably through appeals to emotion. Most have Classical names: the appeal to fear (argumentum ad metum); to envy (ad invidiam); to hatred (ad odium); to superstition (ad superstitionem); to pride (ad superbiam). These tactics are not new. Low critical literacy makes us vulnerable to low tactics and distracts us from genuine political discourse about the kind of country we want, and what we are willing to sacrifice to achieve a better nation for ourselves and future generations.

I bring this up because I believe that the two major parties here in Australia, the Liberal and Labor parties, only pay lip-service to education. Case in point, the recent proposed cuts to the tertiary education industry. Ostensibly, these cuts will help fund much needed reform at the primary and secondary levels of education. I say "ostensibly" because certain political realities suggest that, while the first stage of this process - the cuts - will be successful (the Liberal party will support the Labor party's cuts), the second stage is looking increasingly improbable, verging on the impossible. Liberal state governments are reticent to engage with the Federal Labor government, partly out of the usual animosity between opposing parties, but they are also waiting to see what the results of the forthcoming election will be; it looks increasingly likely that a Liberal government will result from the September election. Unless the deal that Julia Gillard offers the states is phenomenally good (for them), they will not sign up to any agreement, making the discussions moot. To be clear, education is a responsibility of the states, and the federal government requires a consensus from the states to enact any reforms in this area.

So the cuts are coming regardless of the intended outcome, which is bizarre to say the least. Cutting money out of tertiary education makes little sense. For starters, the primary and secondary school teachers are educated at universities. Cuts to university funding, which is what an "efficiency dividend" really is, will have an effect on the recruitment and educating of teachers. The government risks a cycle of mediocrity. But, again to indulge my conspiratorial brain, politicians don't want highly literate - critically literate - citizens: they want basically literate citizens. Smart enough to pass on basic knowledge and perpetuate a mediocre society; a society that doesn't ask the right questions, and wouldn't recognise the right answers even if they saw them.

A critically literate mind is not one easily manipulated by emotion and rhetoric. One gets the sense of a general "dumbing down" of society over the years in order to maintain the accessibility of the basically literate mind for our political and industry betters to manipulate. This all no doubt sounds like a rant - and it is. I work in the tertiary industry and there is a great need for investment here. The situation is not getting better and cutting funding to universities will only make it harder to educate the future educators of young minds. We are not faced simply with a cycle of mediocrity, but a vicious cycle that threatens our ability to maintain a robust democracy. Critical literacy is democracy.