Exam (elaborations) Dynamic history of literacy

communicative and cultural competencescommunicative and cultural competencesThe objective of the European Union is to become the world’s most advanced information society by the year 2010. At the same time, it aspires to a period of economic growth, full employment, with improved quality of life, and increased equality and social cohesion. These aspirations are threatened by the growing global environmental crisis, the increasing gap between rich and poor, and the potential instability of global finance. Europe’ aspirations for information society leadership must also take account of the growth of India and China as significant players in the global marketplace for both information and material goods, and of the critical situation of African populations with scarce access to the quality of life enjoyed by most European citizens . In this context, Europe’s unique offer to an increasingly interdependent global society is its enormously rich and distinctive cultural heritage and its traditions of democracy, intellectual freedom, religious tolerance, uncensored publication and open debate. The new digital technologies present unprecedented opportunities for far wider participation in the continuing development of Europe’s cultural heritage and civil traditions in a global context. At the same time however, these technologies offer profitable opportunities for misinformation, unwanted surveillance, abuse of the vulnerable and infantilization of public discourse. The rapid development of digital technologies has thus made more urgent an issue that has been pressing for some time: the need for European citizens to fully understand the means by which information, ideas and opinions are now created, circulated and shared in modern societies: in other words, for a media literate population. "Today, media literacy is as central to active and full citizenship as literacy was at the beginning of 19th century, "DG INFSO Commissioner Viviane Reding (Press release IP/06/1326, Brussels, 6 October 2006). Only if Europeans have the capacity for access to, and production and participation in the new media environment, acting as active and critical citizens, will Europe be able to take advantage of the opportunities in progress and innovation that ICT generates in the information society. The key to ICT Access and the new communication environment is media literacy. Promoting it among European citizens has become a strategic and integrationist objective for the whole of Europe. A fundamental requirement for the promotion of this new capacity is to have a suitable model for media literacy, and to know all its dimensions, its strategic value and the specific benefits that it can bring to the development of information society in Europe. The question facing the European Commission, therefore, is what can be offered at Commission level that will add value and encouragement to National efforts, diverse as these are. Using this model, we will describe the existing and possible approaches to media literacy and their implications for a policy of promotion and support. Our final objective is an operational working framework. 3 Dynamic history of literacy The acquisition of media literacy from the end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st, is the fruit of a continued and significant historical advance of very distant origin, which has been at times, sinuous, and always subjected to the pressure and tensions deriving from conflicts of interest and power. In fact these conflicts have meant that in all of the historical stages of their development, literacy processes have always been influenced and sometimes interrupted by inequality in every sphere: economic, social, sexual, ethnic, geographical, etc. On the contrary, it has been these factors and their self-interested use which have made literacy a privilege of the few. The first great milestone in this continued development was the appearance of alphabetical writing. Throughout the history of humanity, the knowledge and command of alphabetical code – that is, what we can call literacy of reading, writing and understanding – was, in fact, the driving force behind a huge intellectual and social advancement. It constituted, in fact, a qualitative leap in the cultural history of humanity and marked the start of a continued path of progress - always affected however by social, economic and every other kind of inequality - from the classical era to the present day. Both the Renaissance and Humanism in their day aided the expansion of writing, which with it brought printing. Similarly, the industrial revolution was accompanied by the progressive expansion of reading and writing, which in turn led to the introduction of obligatory literacy. However, inequality which has existed through the ages and still exists means that literacy has been and still is a privilege of the few. Literacy depends mainly on access to education and one of the greatest obstacles has been and continues to be today the economic factor. Neither should we forget the limitations and constrictions that