Boosting Indonesian Literacy

Problems and how to solve them

Internet

Last three months of 2016, Indonesia was hit by tons of hoax news, which seized our time, thoughts, efforts, and money. According to the report released by the Cyber Crime sub-division of Metro Jaya Police Station, there was approximately 300 fake news identified spreading in numerous social media and online portals.

Due to the massive hoax, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo had to clarify some news that has the potential to disintegrate the nation personally. And one of them is the news linked to the influx of Chinese workers coming to Indonesia. It said that there were up to ten million workers coming to the country.

He noticed that the news was designed and aired systematically, structurally, and massively to create a domestic instability. This fake or libel news wildly crowded in the virtual world, utilizing social media and online portals as the medium. Oddly enough, thousands and even more people, particularly those in the middle-income group and the educated ones, blindly trapped in the junk news.

They did not filter and carefully selected false and authentic news. People just "swallowed" them as it is. Sadly, not only did they consume the story, but they also spread them. They assumed that the content of the news in social media and the online portals were valid.

The literacy disorientation had taken place within the levels. Undeniably, it is true that social media and online news have given positive impacts on society. For instance, they help people to update their information in no time. But, unfortunately, at the same time, several online mainstream media tend to "copy" the same action, reporting the unclear information.

Like it or not, it gives a negative contribution. To some extent, the negative effect of the hoax content resulting in the polarization of the society: the pros and cons group. And the polarization of the community in responding to the news is the outbreak of how shallow the society literacy level is.

On the other hand, the people, which do not understand and master the aspects of traditional literacy, such as reading, writing, and counting, must now face digital literacy (internet, social media, and other online platforms). The situation requires the users to have excellent ability in reading, high order thinking skills, and unique analysis capacity.

As a result, society becomes the victims of the hoax produced by either fake news industry or some "naughty" mainstream media.

Lie Industry

From the perspective of economics, one of the critical successes of running a business is the availability of markets for the products. Related to the lie industry, it is clear that the market is Indonesia's low-level literacy society.

Release of 2016 PIAAC ( Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) survey confirmed our country's miserable literacy competencies. It described how bad our productive adult competencies in working fields are. Based on the sample test taken in Jakarta, which covered the ability in literacy, numerical problems, and problem-solving found out that the result was disappointing.

All participants equally got the lowest rank in all categories tested. Jakarta was chosen as a sample because it has the highest human development index, beating Indonesia as a country, namely 78,99: 69,5.

Moreover, in its publication on March 9, 2016, the World's Most Literate Nations put Indonesia in the position of 60th out of 61 participating countries. The survey revealed that Nordic countries such as Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were among the top ones. In contrast, Indonesia's neighboring states, for instance, Thailand (59), Malaysia (53), and Singapore (36), was much better than Indonesia.

Both surveys proved "the attractiveness" of Indonesia for those who have some interests in exploiting the country's "flat" literacy levels. Countless victims of Indonesian were evidence of the hoax. The worst thing was numerous individuals consciously resend the news.

These phenomena transformed social media and online news, either the mainstream or the fake ones, including the news content, into what so-called as lie industry. To against the lie product and at the same time to prepare the society to become more aware, we need to increase our knowledge regarding the right and correct literacy.

Why is literacy essential? As said by John Miller, the founder of the World's Most Literate Nation, knowledge is always linked to influence, power, and the success of economic. Having high literacy capacity is the only way to reach the goal of owning those mentioned advantages above. Knowledge and literacy create power in the world.

All forms of profits belong to those who can read. They, then, will gain, organize, and use the knowledge for their benefits. In line with that, Kirsch and Jungeblut, as quoted by Endang Fauziati, defined contemporary literacy as one's ability to use written information to develop the knowledge that is helpful to the people.

Someone is said to be literate when he/she has an innate capacity to understand something through reading and do it based on his or her reading comprehension. And to gain a high level of literacy competencies, it is necessary to conduct some significant steps.

As a regulator, the government's interferences are essential to clear up the teaching at schools, which should rely on higher-order thinking skills, ranging from problem-solving skills, inquiring skills, reasoning skills, communicating skills, and conceptualizing skills.

In the end, the learning process itself should avoid memorizing patterns but focus on understanding and comprehension.