There's a great lack of financial literacy and understanding in this nation, even among college-educated people.
What are the 10 major legacies that European colonization have left behind? Issues of illiteracy. Issues of ill health. Issues of poor infrastructure. Issues of backward agricultural economies. And it goes on.
You can't have an industrial revolution, you can't have democracies, you can't have populations who can govern themselves until you have literacy. The printing press simply unlocked literacy.
Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.
Is it possible that literacy standards are falling because young Australians are growing up in a culture in which they can be entertained and informed, and in which they can communicate effectively, without having to master any but the most rudimentary literacy skills?
Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.
Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.
The question is, will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system, or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture?
Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested.
I hope to focus on what I'm passionate about because I think I'd do them best job on them - education, urban education, women and children's issues and literacy.
