DEVELOPING proficiency in using oral strategies involves several tasks. Literates who want to communicate effectively in oral cultures need to learn about the issue of orality. Walter Ong's book, Orality and Literacy (1982) is a respected academic work on the topic. He offers lengthy, technical discussions of the nature of orality and the impact that the development of writing, then typography, had on oral communication and oral cultures. His approach is largely historical.
Another approach to understanding the extent and influence of orality is to consider it in relationship to literacy skills. The reality of low literacy skills even in developed countries has become apparent from a series of surveys, beginning with the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) administered by the U. S. Department of Education in the early 1990s. 9 Researchers found that 48 to 51% of adults in the United States scored at the two lowest levels (out of five levels) of measurable proficiency at a range of literacy skills. While results of the NALS study showed that only 4 to 6% of U. S. adults were totally illiterate, 46 to 53% were identified as unable to function adequately in a highly literate society or process lengthy written information adequately.
It was reported that while many adults at Level 1 (21-23%) could perform tasks involving simple texts and documents, all adults scoring at that level displayed difficulty using certain reading, writing and computational skills considered necessary for functioning in everyday life. Those at Level 2 could perform simple analysis, but were unable to integrate information from longer texts or documents or carry out mathematical skills when necessary information was contained in the directions. (Interestingly enough, a majority of those at Level 1 and almost all of those at Level 2 described themselves as being able to read English "well" or "very well"!).
When the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) tested adults in twenty-two countries from 1994-98, similar results emerged in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the U. K. and elsewhere among developed nations.10 Although the various governments previously had claimed national literacy rates of 90% or more, the surveys revealed that many people actually had a quite limited range of literacy skills. Such people live day to day largely by oral means even if they are able to read simple, brief materials.
The Bible is certainly not simple, brief material. If half of the population in developed nations, with longstanding literate traditions, is unable to integrate information from a text like the Bible, what is the situation of those in oral cultures with no such tradition, when it comes to gaining spiritual truth?
The survey results from NALS and IALS suggest that there is not a simple, black-and-white dichotomy between "literates" and "illiterates." Other studies similarly give more revealing definitions of literacy that characterize it in terms of the different ways people function with literacy in society. One UNESCO document, for example, says:
9 Irwin S. Kirsch, Ann Jungeblut, Lynn Jenkins and Andrew Kolstad. A First Look at the Findings of the National Adult Literacy Survey, 3d ed. (Washington: U. S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 2002).
10 See http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/IALS.html. See also Albert Tuijnman, Benchmarking Adult Literacy in America: An International Comparative Study (Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Education, 2000); also available at http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/Benchmrk/2.htm. This testing has now been conducted in approximately 30 countries, with similar results.