The United States has made literacy into a Holy Grail of education, and our systems have reduced illiteracy levels to record lows. However, in the real world, there are so many basic jobs, unskilled labor jobs, that should not require literacy at all, and for thousands of years there were all kinds of workers who were never required to achieve literacy at all. So there may be a lot of wasted investment in education trying to make people literate when it's not actually required.

Even if the foregoing is completely false and abhorrent to you, we must also come to terms with a "new literacy" in terms of ideograms and emoji. I am learning how to type emoji, and replace many textual expressions with singular emoji and symbols. Computers and electronic devices, as well as our own garments, are frequently labeled with ideograms that transcend human language, but must be interpreted for proper use.

I have noticed some people around me who aren't really good at reading at all, and this is a real handicap to them when paperwork, and computer readouts, and just signs posted all over, are full of words, and our world surrounds us in words to read and comprehend, and if we can't read at lightning-speed levels, and comprehend what we read, we find ourselves at distinct evolutionary/legal/financial/social disadvantages.

So I contend that future literacy will increasingly involve non-English emoji and symbology, and that not every human in the world needs to be literate in a particular written language, and while a majority of society can afford such an education, nothing of value may be lost.