Brief approach to the concept of functional illiteracy as a poor determination of a fundamental educational problem

Abstract

Functional illiteracy is a complex problem whose understanding and effects go through several dimensions: economic, social, political and, of course, cultural. It is a problem that has deserved sustained attention since the mid-twentieth century, although its conception as an economic problem has been dominant in the policies designed for its solution; an economic problem seen from a reasoning by indicators and based on the theory of human capital. It is true that illiteracy has negative consequences on productivity, the labour participation rate and labour supply, and even that it constitutes one of the pillars of economic inequality, however, an exclusively economic perspective ends up conditioning the understanding of the problem by reducing its complexity and thus putting its solution at risk. For this reason, here we consider illiteracy a complex problem whose determination must go through a critique of the definitions of public policy from which an attempt has been made to confront it, in order to lay the basis for a broad perspective that considers not only the many pernicious implications that illiteracy has, but also the enormous cultural and liberation opportunities that literacy means.