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The New literacy studies provides an alternative view of literacy.
The standards for what level constitutes "literacy" vary between societies. Other skills such as computer skills or basic numeracy may also be included. These and the increasing inclusion of sound, still and moving images and graphical elements in digitally based communication call for an even broader concept of literacy.
Many policy analysts consider literacy rates a crucial measure of a region's human capital. This claim is made on the grounds that literate people can be trained less expensively than illiterates. Policy makers also argue that literacy increases job opportunities and access to higher education. In Kerala, India, for example, female and child mortality rates declined dramatically in the 1960s, when girls schooled to literacy in the education reforms after 1948 began to raise families. Recent researchers, however, argue that correlations such as the one listed above may have more to do with the effects of schooling rather than literacy in general.
The history of literacy is several thousand years old, but before the industrial revolution finally made cheap paper and cheap books available to all classes in industrialized countries, about a century and a half ago, literacy existed only in a tiny minority of the world's different societies. As an example, in 1841 England 33% of men and 44% of women signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write. Only in 1870 was Primary education made available for all in England.
The definitions of literacy have changed throughout history. At one time, a literate person was one who could sign their name. At other points, literacy was measured by the ability to read the Bible. Literacy has also been used as a way to sort populations and control who has access to power. In the United States following the Civil War, the ability to read and write were used to determine whether one had the right to vote. This effectively served to prevent former slaves from joining the electorate and maintained the status quo.
The use of an ideogram based writing system makes basic literacy relatively easier to attain than the use of an alphabetAn alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents or represented historically a phoneme of a spoken language. This as distinguished from other writing systems such as ideograms, in which symbols r based one, so it is estimated that through the more prosperous decades of her different imperial dynasties ChinaThis article is on the geographic and cultural entity. For other meanings, see China (disambiguation). China ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , Hanyu Pinyin: Zhongguo, Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo) is a country in continental East Asia with some oute reached very high levels of basic, functional, literacy.
Similarly, the existence of secular and religious texts as well as references to great metaphysical debates including reading and writing contests in those texts from the Indian subcontinent (South Asia) points to a highly, perhaps selectively, literate culture there as far back as five to eight thousand years ago. Some major Hindu texts and other discourses contensting them are supposed to be eight thousand years old.
Because of its emphasis on the individual reading of the Koran in the original Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the principal script used for writing the Arabic language. It is the alphabet of the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. The alphabet's influence spread with that of Islam and it has been, and still is, used to write othe many Islamic countries have known a comparatively high level of literacy during most of the past twelve centuries.
In New EnglandThis article is about the region in the United States of America. For other uses, see New England (disambiguation . The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. Boston is its business and cultural cente, the literacy rate was over 50 percent during the first half of the 17th century16th century 17th century 18th century more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601- 1700. During this period, the power of England and the United Provinces increased; while that of, and it rose to 70 percent by 1710Events Enactment of the world's first copyright legislation, Britain's Act for the Encourage of Learning (short title) Ongoing events Great Northern War ( 1700- 1721) War of the Spanish Succession ( 1702- 1713) Births January 4 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. By the time of the American Revolution, it was around 90 percent. This is seen by some as a side effect of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading.