The ancient Greek myth about Jason contains a submyth known as "Jason and the Golden Fleece".Jason attempts to rescue the throne from his evil cousin, Pelia, and return it to his father, Aeson. King Pelia promises return of the throne if Jason brings him the golden fleece that hangs from a tree in a sacred grove on the island of Colchis, a tree guarded by a dragon that never sleeps.
King Pelia knows the task is impossible but Jason is determined. He has a sturdy ship, the Argus, built and chooses fifty sons and grandsons of gods and goddesses -- the Argonauts -- to man the ship and aid his adventure.
The King of Colchis tells Jason that he can have the golden fleece if he completes four tasks, one of which is to sow the furrows with dragon teeth from he guardian dragon. The king's daughter, a sorceress, falls in love with Jason and gives him a magic lotion for protection, which enables Jason to kill the dragon.
When Jason sows the dragon's teeth, each tooth transforms into a fierce warrior. But Jason, by magic, kills all of them and claims the golden fleece.
The myth goes on from there, but our concern is with the sgnificance of the dragon's teeth.
The dragonteeth-become-warriors represent the letters of the alphabet (also credited to the legendary Cadmus).
Why warriors? Because the invention of writing made possible extending communication to aid long-distance strategy in warfare. A strategic leader would send a long-distance runner to a tactical leader in the field.
The illiterate runner might be able to remember many details (illiterates often compensate thus), but within serious limits. An illiterate messenger bearing a long, written scroll could transmit extensive military orders to a field commander. Thus was the city-state extended to the empire -- BY THE ALPHABET!
Any person who cannot "read" some letters of the alphabet or turn them into words is called "illiterate"; one who can is called "literate". A person who can read letters and many words but cannot read and fill in forms, cannot understand warning signs, etc., is called "functionally illiterate", otherwise "functionally literate". These distinctions provide only crude measurements of the most important, correctible problem we face!Drawing up the concepts of Semiotics, the study of signs, as initiated by the great American mathematician-logician-philosopher, Charles S. Peirce (x-y) -- and as I have extended them -- we can articulate 7 levels of literacy and illiteracy. WE'RE ALL ILLITERATE IN SOME WAY! AND THE SOONER WE REALIZE THIS -- AND TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT -- THE BETTER!
I've a special interest in this. I first met my dear wife, Esther, in 1947, in the office of The Committee on World Literacy and Christian Literature, of the Foreign Missions Council, 156 Fifth Ave., NYC. She edited literacy publications for the literacy campaigns of Dr. Frank Laubach who developed a unique methodology that allowed him to work in more than 250 languages around the world. And I consider Laubach to be my own teacher.
Laubach was a missionary from the Congegational Church to the Phillipines in the 1930's. He found a novel way of working with the Moros, a fierce tribe of "headhunters", whom American solders fought with during the Spanish-American War, but never conquered. Laubach discovered that their language, Maranaw (part Spanish), had never been written down. Laubach wrote out some of it in Latin letters and began to teach the chiefs, subchiefs, and their sons and others to read Maranaw. Then Laubach was ordered back to the States. The Chief said that, from then on, each man who learned to read must teach one other man -- or have his head cut off! This, minus the threat, became Laubach's motto, "Each One Teach One".
Later Laubach was allowed to teach other groups. Laubach never stood over his students, but sat with them. He tried never to correct a student, but found a way of saying the correct form later, so that the student learned without "losing face". And Laubach insisted that, instead of reading childish fodder about little animals, adults must learn to read adult materials about farming, childcare, health, etc.. One of the works which Esther edited -- translated into many languages -- was Fingers, Flies, and Feces.
Laubach taught me to make the icon a bridge to the symbol in the following way. Laubach took an artist, Phil Gray on some of his Literacy tours. To render the symbol "o", Phil painted a human face with lips pursed in making the "o" sound, and "o" was painted on the lips: ICON AND SYMBOL UNITED. This was my inspiration.
Using the ideas of Peirce, I have constructed a seven-dimensional metric SEMSPACE (Semiotic Space) of Signs, from which it follows that we have 7 Types (for the 7 levels in SEMSPACE) of Literacy and Illiteracy. (We are all illiterate in many ways!)