Literacy and Work

Glynda Hull talks in her article, "Hearing Other Voices: A Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work" about American workers not having proper literacy skills. While this article is surely outdated (1997) many of its points are relevant today. Literacy is not something you just "get," but something that has to be learned over time. Literacy is not only one skill, but many skills combining and working together. This is similar to writing which is not just one process, but many processes. I thought it was very interesting that Hull pointed out how many other skills there are that go into working at any job, even at an assembly line. It's not just knowing how to read and write, but having adaptability and communication skills. So even back 15 years ago, workers were not necessarily being taught or expected to have all of the important skills for jobs.

In our world today, the situation is somewhat different. While illiteracy in reading and writing is still a problem I am sure, especially with the number of immigrants in our country, there is a new type of illiteracy. Computer illiteracy. With rapidly advancing technology, this is a major problem for the generations before us since they did not grow up with computers. As time goes on, there are becoming more technical skills a person must have in order to get a job, increasing the relevancy of this article.