Smart Currency

Defining literacy in the modern age is crucial to building professional learning that prepares students for the knowledge economy.

Policymakers and education professionals have emphasized the importance of literacy in a global economy many times this century — in no instance more directly than when a young U.S. senator from Illinois addressed the American Library Association in June 2005: “Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy we’re living in today,” then-senator Barack Obama told the library association. “Only a few generations ago, it was OK to enter the workforce as a high school dropout who could only read at a 3rd-grade level. … But that economy is long gone” (Obama, 2005). The speech was given more than a year before Facebook was available to anyone other than university students and more than two years before the iPhone was announced. To suggest

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Authors

Eric Celeste

Eric Celeste ([email protected]) is Learning Forward’s associate director of publications.

References

Learning Forward. (2011). Standards for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: Author.

Murnane, R., Sawhill, I., & Snow, C. (2012). Literacy challenges for the twenty-first century: Introducing the issue. The Future of Children, 22(2), 3-15.

National Council of Teachers of English. (2013). The NCTE definition of 21st century literacies. Available at www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.

Obama, B. (2005). Literacy and education in a 21st-century economy. Available at https://obamaspeeches.com/024-Literacy-and-Education-in-a-21st-Century-Economy-Obama-Speech.htm.

Wei, R.C., Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2010). Professional development in the United States: Trends and challenges. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council.

World Economic Forum. (2016). The future of jobs: Employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution. Geneva, Switzerland: Author.