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Plural Literacy II
How do these signs become clear? Magritte formulates it here splendidly: "This is not a pipe".
But colloquially we would have said:"It’s a pipe isn’t it?". It is the representation of a pipe.
That transparency of the sign is a huge trap, meaning that we think no-one can trick us, and yet everyone is tricking us.
If we are aware that a sign is always a possible trick, we will discover the sign and be able to mistrust.
It is true that the internet is a door to knowledge. It is also true that never has so much rubbish been able to circulate so freely in our cultural universe.
I think that critical reading does need some distance from technology,
a certain feeling of mistrust of innovation, which is good for progress, in order to progress more surely.
Third component of critical reading: we cannot accept any front, any apparently informative message at face value.
We need to compare and contrast, we have to be critical, we have to search. Of course it is difficult! Our world is getting more and more complex and we need lots more benchmarks.
We have to be aware that each time we accept a piece of information, whatever it may be, our mind changes,
and therefore we have to filter through a lot of information.
The European Commission has been working to group together certain values under this skill of media literacy
which makes up reading ability and critical reading in the face of the media and in general,
of all vehicles for information and knowledge characterised by these values:
"Critical reading is just as important as producing. Receiving information is just as important as communicating it,
it is just as important to express as it is to participate, to have a good media education as to have sufficient independence of expression".
This education, as formulated by the European Commission, would draw on three major sources: all reading,
audiovisual literacy and digital skills.
I don’t like the term Digital Skills because it is too technical and operational. It reduces the skills to an ability and therefore it becomes simplified.
Nor do I like our old literacy, although I love books, just like all of you, because it’s not enough,
because it’s not enough in order to access information today. You can’t just read books and not access the internet.
Nor is audiovisual literacy enough, because the texture is part of the flesh of our soul, of our spirit.
So, it’s the combination of everything. By way of a synecdoche we have called this media literacy.
It could have been called something else but, in any case literacy brings in connotations of text, language, alphabet
and media, and associates all the coded or physical means which make up the media.
In order for there to be good media literacy we need there to be good media education, but not only in schools.
Good citizenship which stimulates participation through the media and the development of critical ability.
This has been translated into a number of indicators which I don’t want to bore you with, which will be published in June 2012.