Giving all people a level of knowledge sufficient to be in society is the common minimum of coexistence and, on the contrary, no democracy can survive without the majority feeling that they have access and are invited to participate in the world that is to come.
In 1975, Spaniards went to school, on average, for about 9 years. Only one in three finished primary school. It must have been quite evident to the governments of that time that a country where the majority of the population was functionally illiterate and could not perform mathematical operations beyond the most basic, was not going to be able to join the modernity that arrived from Europe without help.
That is why the last quarter of the 20th century in Spain can be understood as a colossal exercise in literacy that included libraries, cultural institutions, the media -public and private-, museums, universal exhibitions and the creation of a network. entire offices and offices that served as translator between citizens and the administrative procedures that a modern society required. From the agencies to the administration offices, initiatives of all colors were launched so that people not only understood the future that was coming, but also felt invited and protagonists of this new time. So that the future was for everyone.
Today reality is changing, I would say much faster than at that time, and yet no one seems to care because the majority of people feel invited to the world that is to come.
We have not created new institutions where people can come to learn. Quite the opposite: “cultural” institutions continue to teach the same things they taught in 1980. Today it is infinitely easier to access ballet or zarzuela with the support of the State than to artificial intelligence or data analysis. If you want to become an expert on a Czechoslovak composer from the 18th century, you will find many more resources at your disposal than if you want to learn cybersecurity, even the most basic.
So many knowledges that are essential to live in the 21st century, such as digital security, or languages, or online communication skills, are not available to everyone.
So we are witnessing the return of illiteracy. We walk like zombies towards a world where a few people will know everything necessary to behave in society, but the majority will live with the same feeling of not understanding anything that my grandmother must have had when she arrived in Madrid from a very poor town at the age of 18. As if the world were an incomprehensible and incomprehensible entity.
As a consequence, more and more people will have the perception – and they will be right – that they are alone in the face of the unknown, that the world changes, but they are not invited. That they are being left behind.
And surely it would be the responsibility of the State to set the conditions so that this was not happening but, in the past, it has been civil society that has first taken the reins of literacy. It happened at the beginning of the 20th century with the Free Teaching Institution and the Pedagogical Missions, with the athenaeums and with La Barraca. It also happened in the 80s with culture and, to a large extent, with the editors of public television and the first democratic media, who shouldered the task of explaining the world to their audiences. You only have to think about the amount of “educational” content that was on television in the 80s to realize the size of the effort that was made in those years.
It happened, of course, with a generation of teachers who made the literacy of an entire society their life project. And they surely had to make a permanent effort themselves to learn new things every day to teach others.
Could we replicate that same effort in 2025? Can we exercise co-responsibility from companies, from schools, from associations and from the media?
There are good examples to inspire us, such as the initiative launched by the Finnish government, which a few years ago launched This course is open to the entire population to learn the basics of artificial intelligence (which, by the way, is a course accessible to anyone and can be taken in Spanish). Or free learning platforms Futurelearn and edXwhich compile courses from the main universities of the world (most of them in English).
But the fact that learning resources exist on the Internet, by itself, will not solve this problem. The solution will come if communities – such as a group of workers, an AFA or the community of partners of a newspaper or even workers who are retiring these years with a lot of energy in their bodies to do new things – commit to with that literacy and land it in a collective learning experience.
And surely no one would have learned about theater, or about dance, or about classical music, if there had not been a community and country experience around all that learning. The development of democracy in Spain was indivisible from that literacy process. Literacy, giving all people a level of knowledge sufficient to be in society, is the common minimum of coexistence and, on the contrary, no democracy can survive without the majority feeling that they have access and are invited to participate in the world they is to come.
#return #illiteracy
