Super's Pick
Korea's Collapsing Literacy
According to the National Reading Survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2021-2022, only 47.5% of adults read at least one book over the course of a year. In other words, the remaining 52.5%, roughly 20 million people, did not read a single book in a year. In addition, in the 2021 international youth literacy assessment covering 710,000 adolescents from OECD member countries, Korea was found to rank far below the OECD average.
This decline in literacy can be seen in the serious vocabulary deficiency that has spread as memes across the internet. For example, the phrase "simsimhan sagwa (a sincere apology)" actually means "to apologize most deeply and earnestly and to beg forgiveness," yet many misread "simsimhan" as meaning "boring." Likewise, a newspaper article distorted matters as if the president had personally stepped forward to present a solution. While addressing a cabinet agenda item, the president's instruction that "education programs that can raise digital literacy (the ability to operate and write software programs) across all generations must also be systematically provided" was misunderstood as "amid the literacy controversy over the inability to accurately grasp the meaning of sentences online, even President Yoon stepped up to mention 'improving literacy.'" Such misunderstandings appear all too often.
In fact, literacy problems are nothing new. There was even a time when "saheul (three days)" topped Naver's real-time search rankings, because people assumed the syllable "sa" meant it was "four days."
While these cases are undoubtedly literacy problems, we must recognize that their root cause is dyslexia, an "acquired reading disorder." Whether someone disliked reading, wanted to read but struggled, was born with such symptoms, or developed them at some point while growing up, severe vocabulary deficiency stems from dyslexia. Therefore, although a lack of vocabulary ultimately leads to a literacy deficit, we must understand that the vocabulary shortage itself comes first as a result of dyslexia. Filling in the missing vocabulary for such people is not easy, because in the end they have to overcome the wall of dyslexia.
Why is literacy an issue right now?
As dyslexia has accumulated, the phenomenon of being unable to read and comprehend text has finally grown so broad and deep in our society that it can no longer be brushed aside; it has become a visible problem. It was merely accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, but it is an issue that has been building up layer by layer for a long time. As a result, a sense of crisis that something serious has happened is spreading in the field of education.
To the public it may feel like a shock, as if a tsunami were bearing down or as if they were facing the hideous face of an onrushing monster head-on. After all, what they thought would never happen actually came to pass. But if we step back and look at the whole, we can see that the monster's revealed body tells a somewhat different story. This monster called the collapse of literacy is telling us with its whole body about the absolute lack of reading ability and reading volume caused by dyslexia.
Children cannot read carefully through school assignments or exam questions, and naturally cannot understand what is written, and this phenomenon is dyslexia even before the absence of literacy, and it has been so for a long time. Yet no one recognized this important fact. That is because, at school as well as at academies or at home, they have never heard a single word raising awareness about dyslexia. There are no lessons that can prevent or solve it, and naturally there are no teachers who provide such guidance.
As an effective educational gap has continued over the past two to three years, even the lower grades of elementary school are in a very serious state, and the upper grades are no exception either. It is said that middle school teachers who, unaware of this situation, encountered their new students could not help but sigh, "Oh, what do we do about this!" This is why a sense of crisis that public education may collapse is spreading.
This problem is solved by making children read properly. That is, by taking it as a given that they cannot read and resolving its cause, the acquired reading disorder (dyslexia). Yet because people skip over this and instead only highlight and analyze the severity of the resulting decline in literacy, the situation can only get worse.
What is 'literacy'?
It seems like a simple question, but it is not easy to answer. "Literacy" was a word mainly used by the generation that lived through the Korean War, that is, to eliminate illiteracy among the elderly now aged 80 and over, under the banner of eradicating illiteracy. Recently, however, it has rapidly emerged as the most urgent issue in the field of education across elementary, middle, and high schools alike. In a sense, it is an old newcomer. The classic definition of literacy is "the ability to read letters, understand their meaning, and use them."
Just as you build physical strength, you can also develop literacy. At this point, if we were to pick just two things more important than the definition of literacy, one is to find the factors that degrade literacy, and the other is to seek ways to enhance it.
Literacy is ultimately about an individual growing through reading, and it is just like the body growing and muscles and strength developing through food and exercise.
Words, vocabulary, and sentences correspond to food, and reading corresponds to practice. Building reading habits and internalizing them is like repeated training, and cultivating flexibility of thought is like cultivating the accuracy and flexibility of movement. Close reading can be compared to the continuous motion of walking and running while maintaining correct posture, and the change in emotion through the accumulation of knowledge and the emotion felt while reading a book can be compared to the "runner's high" that athletes or performers feel when they successfully compete or perform. They also have in common that accurate motion and speed are key.
The essential condition for developing literacy: Close reading
As explained earlier, today's collapse of literacy appears as a result of dyslexia. Flashy media have developed rapidly, and entertainment such as games, videos, and webtoons has already penetrated deep into children's daily lives, so it is too late to pull them away.
The goal of resolving dyslexia is, of course, close reading. It is not about reading correctly but about reading precisely. What is precise? It is properly recognizing every word while making eye contact with it.
Reading while making eye contact with every word is not as easy as it sounds, but even so the answer is definitely close reading. And what makes that close reading possible is precisely our superbook. If you cannot read every word while reading a book, then even if you read it you cannot fully enjoy its content, and in the end you cannot help but misinterpret the content and the author's intent.
One more element must be added here. Literacy includes comprehension, and as comprehension develops, reading speed ultimately increases. Reading speed shines when close reading is the premise. That is because you can read the same book many times in a short period. Therefore, even reading it over and over is not boring. In this way, as you gradually till the field of knowledge deeply, boredom does not come but pleasure arises.
The only way to become a reader with excellent literacy is "reading many times with accurate speed reading", that is the one and only way. This is the inevitable relationship between close reading and literacy. Never forget that speed without close reading is a habit of skipping while reading, that is, a kind of dyslexia.
A solution to the collapse of literacy
