(wk 44 – 2014)
On a regular basis, a debate arises about whether the literacy of young people has declined. The usual suspect is the computer, which lures the innocent away from literary classics to the wonder-world of the Internet. However, reading is too complex a skill for such simplistic reasoning, as is clear from Kaisa Leino’s recent dissertation The Relationship between ICT Use and Reading Literacy. When the amount of computer use was compared to the PISA literacy test results, moderate usage seemed to improve reading skills. Students who used a variety of media did almost as well as heavy readers of literature in hard copy. The lowest PISA scores were for two groups: those who did not use the computer at all, and those who simply did not read. All forms of reading and information search seem to serve the development of diverse reading strategies. In the information society people need multiliteracy; that’s why pupils have to study online texts in addition to classics.