100% of the World is Oral

You may come across statistics highlighting the percentage of people worldwide who are oral-preference learners. I’ve seen anywhere from 70-80%.

While those numbers are interesting, I see it a little differently.

The reality is that 100% of us start as oral learners. By the time my daughter turned five, she had already been shaped by—and contributed to—the culture of our home and the relationships around her.

It’s only around 5 she began learning to read. 

Before age 5, she had already learned to make up her own songs, express herself, shape her evolving worldview, pick up values, interpret language, make connections, and yes, open a box of crayons, destroy a box of crayons.

For a 5 year old, literacy comes after so many other fundamental experiences. It is a, kind of, postscript for life. By then, life has already consisted of relationships, love, affection, laughter, learning complex skills, listening, and understanding that actions have consequences, with values and incentives learned through everyday experiences—an apprenticeship of life.

What if we embraced this natural, oral-preference tendency more as we seek to influence others, complementing it with more traditional forms of communication and knowledge?