21st-Century Readers

Abstract

Globalisation and digitalisation have connected people, cities, countries and continents in ways that vastly increase our individual and collective potential.But the same forces have also made the world more volatile, more complex, more uncertain and more ambiguous.In this world, education is no longer just about teaching students something but about helping them develop a reliable compass and the tools to navigate ambiguity.Literacy in the 20th century was about extracting and processing pre-coded and -for school students -usually carefully curated information; in the 21st century, it is about constructing and validating knowledge.In the past, teachers could tell students to look up information in an encyclopaedia and to rely on that information as accurate and true.Nowadays, Google presents them with millions of answers and nobody tells them what is right or wrong, and true or not true.The more knowledge technology allows us to search and access, the more important it is to develop deep understanding and the capacity to navigate ambiguity, triangulate viewpoints, and make sense out of content.PISA 2018 results show that when students were confronted with literacy tasks that required them to understand implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information, an average of just 9% of 15-year-old students in OECD countries had enough of a reading proficiency level to be able to successfully distinguish facts from opinions.True, this figure is up from 7% in 2000 but, in the meantime, the demand for literacy skills has fundamentally changed.The fact that advancements in literacy skills have fallen sharply behind the evolution of the nature of information has profound consequences in a world where virality seems sometimes privileged over quality in the distribution of information.In the "post-truth" climate in which we now find ourselves, assertions that "feel right" but have no basis in fact become accepted as fact.Algorithms that sort us into groups of like-minded individuals create social media echo chambers that amplify our views and leave us insulated from opposing arguments that may alter our beliefs.These virtual bubbles homogenise opinions and polarise our societies; and they can have a significant -and adverse -impact on democratic processes.Those algorithms are not a design flaw; they are how social media work.There is a scarcity of attention but an abundance of information.We are living in this digital bazaar where anything that is not built for the network age is cracking apart under its pressure.The question is then: How can we live successfully in this new world of information?Do we approach the issue from a consumer protection or supply side angle?In modern societies, it seems impossible to treat knowledge in the same way we treat physical products; that is, by making sure they meet consumer protection regulations: requiring information to comply with "protective" standards would be perceived as an immediate threat to democratic principles.

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