Running Head: IMPORTANCE OF LITERACY Why is Literacy Important? Abstract Literacy is important for many reasons. It is important to everyday lives. Without literacy civilization as well as communication would be entirely different. History would be taught strictly from hearsay, no one would know the facts for sure. Literacy is important for both cultures and individuals. Without literacy people would go through life making awful decisions. People would be a lot more close minded.

They would not know as much as there is to know with literacy, because there would not be any records of past historical events, and ways of life. Everyone would think the same because there would not be any options for people to research or find out about to help them decide what they believe in, or what they think. Why is Literacy Important Without literacy the world would be completely different than it is today. Literacy is important to everyday lives.

Without literacy people would go through life making awful decisions. What facts are known about history today would be totally different. Civilization and communication would be unlike anything there is today. Most people would be entirely close minded. A world without literacy would be madness. Literacy is important to everyday lives. If literacy did not exist, there would be no driving, because there would be no street signs. If there was driving, no one know what the street signs meant.

The signs would have to be pictures, but even then would the people know what the pictures meant without knowing anything about literacy? There would be thousands of accidents and people getting injured due to failure to understand anything about their vehicle. There would be no addresses or street names. No one would be able to find where people lived. It would be by giving directions by land marks, although it would be difficult because no one would know what the landmarks were without having any record of the significance of the landmark.

Civilization depends on literacy. If literacy never existed, we would not know anything about the history or how people caught food, or the way they did things in the old days. There would be no room for growth of our knowledge, because a lot of things would not be known. Everything about what we know of history would have come from word of mouth, which is not always reliable. When the same story has been told over and over again to different people, it is not going to be the same at the end as it was from the first person.

Would schools even exist if there was no literacy? If there was no literacy, then there would be no teachers who know enough to teach children. There might be certain people who know more than others who may be able to teach the children, but even so, how would they teach the children? It does not seem like that would be very effective as the way it is done today. Communication is the factor that would be the most different if there was no literacy in the world. If no one had ever written a single word, no one would talk. People would have to communicate through