World Literacy Day: “Social class is a reason for low literacy”

September 8th is World Literacy Day. This reminds us that more than six million adults in Germany cannot read and write properly. Where do these numbers come from and who are these people?

The findings come from the population-representative level one studies, or LEO studies for short, that we carried out at the University of Hamburg in 2010 and 2018. “Level One” stands for the first of five levels at which reading and writing skills are arranged in an increasing order. There are people with reading and writing difficulties in all industrialized nations, but this has long been overlooked. Compulsory schooling does not always lead to reading and writing fluently later on. Poverty, multilingualism and discrimination often come into play and prevent people from building a solid basic education.

They are researching this Hamburg and helped coin the term “low literacy”. What do you mean by that?

Within our LEO study team, we mean that someone can read and write letters, words and very simple sentences, but fails with texts. It would probably even be possible to read shorter texts slowly, but it is so tedious that it is avoided. You can perhaps compare this to having to decipher terribly bad handwriting: if it’s not important, you leave it be.

How should we imagine the everyday life of people with little literacy?

You basically develop your own critical attitudes through the text. You read, look somewhere to see whether what you read is correct, look again at the sources, research the author or the institution, read another source and then gradually come to conclusions and a solidly founded opinion of your own. This is all based on reading complex texts, on conclusions and research, on subtleties and nuances. Our findings show that if you have low literacy, you are much less likely to have confidence in your own position, that you think you don’t have a say and that you depend on friends and acquaintances – or social media – to tell you what you should think is right.

What does this mean for social participation?

For many of those affected, work and family function on the whole, but usually with a relatively low income and a correspondingly small radius in life – sometimes there is not enough for a week’s vacation a year. It is difficult when conditions in industry, trade and services change: change and further training are often linked to reading and that is difficult. Those affected say they are worried about their jobs and that it would be difficult for them to get a comparable position.

In this context you speak of a special vulnerability. What do you mean by that?

We say that those affected are not completely excluded from participation, but they are at risk, vulnerable, and vulnerable. Negative effects of social changes affect them more quickly than others. They have less access to healthy working and living conditions, digital local transport tickets are complicated for them, and they cannot help their children with their homework.

Low literacy is therefore not an isolated phenomenon. What can you say from your research about the social backgrounds of those affected?

As already mentioned, low literacy correlates with low income, more frequent receipt of social benefits, higher unemployment, poorer formally educated family background, with migration and multilingualism and with disability and impairment. Social class is a fundamental reason for low literacy, including exclusion from so-called special or special schools.

At the same time, their research results show that people with low levels of literacy participate in society in a variety of ways, socially integrated and frequently also are employed. What do people do with what literacy they have?

We have recent project results on artificial intelligence in basic education: ChatGPT can be helpful when used on a tablet, ideally with dictation and reading functions. It is particularly important to practice critical questioning: Is what the AI ​​is telling me correct? Can AI do things where facts are not important, such as designing fantasy stories or advising my children on career choices by asking questions?

So do digital forms of communication such as AI, chats, voice or short messages promote literate participation – or do they ultimately represent a danger?

Chats and voice messages are in fact a popular tool in this area, and our findings show more of an effect that promotes participation than a threat to the quality of written language. Texts digitized and read out using a camera are also a good help when dealing with authorities. The AI ​​translation functions of many apps are used successfully in multilingual situations.

If you understand low literacy (also) as an expression of social inequality, how can you best counteract it?

You always attack from two sides. Firstly, one tries to improve the literacy of those affected; secondly, the environment needs to be made fairer – with better labels and symbols, with lighter texts. Two examples: The stop button on the bus says “passenger request” and the reservation notices on Deutsche Bahn say “possibly. release.” This is completely incomprehensible for tourists from the Netherlands and unnecessarily exclusionary for adults with little literacy.

In order to reduce the number of poorly literate people, the federal government, together with the federal states, declared the “Alpha Decade” from 2016 to 2026 and supported numerous research and practical projects. How do you assess the success of this decade as it nears its end?

The decade produced some notable effects. Above all, taboos and stereotyping have decreased, which in turn means that affected adults are more likely to open up and seek support. We now know that basic education courses strengthen self-confidence and thus contribute to the formation of critical opinions. These are also effects of research on the topic and its media visibility, which has been taken into account by the federal and state governments, which have now made a number of improvements to the infrastructure. The federal government is also supporting this development with a new funding line. However, according to the mid-term report of the decade, funding for research is somewhat meagre, with little investment being made here.

What do the political plans look like from 2026? And what do you personally expect from politics here?

We need a lot more research into the supportive environment of adults with low literacy levels, because this is where access to those affected lies, who generally do not go to a course on their own. But we also need research into new risks of discrimination: Anyone who is not considered to be very high-performing is enormously devalued by right-wing populist parties and – if they have their way – is best discarded straight away. This leads to program cuts, to stigmatization, to scapegoating. The democratic parties, but also the associations and educational institutions, must definitely put in place protective structures against this.