In Defense of a Comprehensive View of Computer Literacy--A Reply to Luehrmann.

In Arthur Luehrmann's critique of our February 1980 Mathematics Teacher article on computer literacy objectives, he pro poses a rather narrow view of literacy. De spite his claim, there are two (not just one) generally accepted definitions of literacy. One is, as he points out, the ability to com municate, for example, reading and writ ing; and the other, which he neglects, is the state of being informed, "cultured," and well versed. Whereas the first is a subset of the second, both definitions are commonly used. It is not surprising that the term com puter literacy shares the semantic ambiguity of language literacy. The narrow view is that computer literacy is simply a matter of doing things with a computer. The compre hensive view is that computer literacy is an understanding of computers that enables on? to evaluate computer applications as well as to do things with them. The comprehensive view of computer lit eracy is consistent with the long-estab