Literacy

Literacy: the core of Education for All

The six EFA Dakar goals:

1.    Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

2.    Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

3.    Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programs.

4.    Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for woman, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

5.    Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to ad achievement in basic education of good quality.

6.    Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills.

Literacy is a context-bound continuum of reading, writing, and numeracy skills, acquired, and developed through processes of learning and application, in schools and in other settings appropriate to youth and adults. Literacy helps people understand decontextualized information and language, verbal as well as written. Literate parents are more likely to be able to support their children in practical ways, such as meeting with teachers and discussing progress with their children. When literacy courses instruct parents on ways of helping children in school and inform them about the content of the curriculum, the children’s education benefit is even greater.

Literacy is also a right, indeed an essential part of the right of every individual to education. Some governments have recently begun to devote increasing attention to literacy. Education—and literacy within it—does not concern only individuals, as a rights and capabilities framework alone might suggest; it is also has a critical social dimension. The types of educational inputs (e.g. material and human resources), outcomes (e.g. reading, writing, and numeracy skills), and processes (e.g. curricula, teaching and learning methods) that are relevant to individuals are very much influenced by the social context.

Though the notion of a literate society is highly context-specific, some common lessons have emerged. First, literate societies should enable individuals and groups to acquire, develop, sustain, and use relevant literacy skills. Second, literate societies should provide and develop literacy that is of relevance to citizens, communities and the nation, and at the same time, acknowledge the diverse need and priorities of different groups—particularly those who are disadvantaged and excluded.

Why Literacy Matters

Literacy should be understood within a right-based approach and among principles of inclusion for human development. Literacy has been recognized not only as a right in itself but also as a mechanism for the pursuit of other human rights, just as human rights education is a tool for combating illiteracy.

The benefits of literacy:

The rationale for recognizing literacy s a right is the set of benefits it confers on individuals, families, communities, and nations. Literacy programs and written materials can be a mechanism to indoctrinate people to participate uncritically in a political system.

Providing a systematic, evidence-based account of the benefits of literacy is not easy, for several reasons:

-       Most research has not separated the benefits of literacy per se from those of attending school or participating in adult literacy programs.

-       Little research has been devoted to adult literacy programs and exiting studies focus mainly on women.

-       Research has focused on the impact of literacy upon the individual.

-       Some effects of literacy, e.g. those on culture, are intrinsically difficult to define and measure.

-       Literacy is not defined consistently across studies and literacy data are frequently flawed.

v  The human benefits from literature are related to factors such as the improved self-esteem, empowerment, creativity, and critical reflection that participation in adult literacy programs and the practice of literacy may produce. Literacy may empower learners—especially women—to take individual and collective action in various contexts, such as household, workplace and community, in two related ways. First, literacy programs themselves may be designed and conducted so as to make participants into authors of their own learning, developers of their own knowledge and partners in dialogue about limit situation in their lives. Second, literacy programs can contribute to broader socio-economic processes of empowerment provided they take place in a supportive environment.

v  The empowering potential of literacy can translate into increased political participation and thus contribute to the quality of public policies and to democracy. The relationship between education and political participation is well established. Educated people are to some extent more likely to vote and voice more tolerant attitudes and democratic values. Participation in adult literacy programs is also correlated with increased participation in trade unions, community action, and national political life, especially when empowerment is at the core of programs design. The expansion of education may contribute to the expansion of democracy and vice versa, yet the precise nature of the relationship between education and democracy remains unclear and difficult to measure accurately.

There appears to be no research into the impact on ethnic equality of either literacy or participation in adult literacy programs. It is probably reasonable to assume that the impact of literacy is likely similar to that of educational expansion, i.e. that is has the potential to benefit disadvantaged ethnic groups but will not necessarily do so. Literacy programs can have an impact on peace and reconciliation in post-conflict context.

v  The cultural benefits of literacy are harder to identify clearly than benefits in terms of political participation. Adult literacy programs may facilitates the transmission of certain values and promote transmission of other values, attitudes and behaviors through critical reflection. They also provide access to written culture, which the newly literate may choose to explore independently of the cultural orientation of the literacy programs in which they participated. Literacy programs can help challenge attitudes and behavioral pattern. Adults literacy programs can help preserve cultural diversity. In particular, literacy programs that make use of minority languages have the potential to improve people’s ability to participate in their own culture.

v  Improving literacy levels thus has potentially large social benefits, such as increased life expectancy, reduced child mortality, and improved children’s health.

v  Economic benefits: the economic returns to education have been extensively studied, especially in terms of increased individual income and economic growth. Economies are increasingly based on knowledge and less on physical capital or natural resources, and strong network effects characterize knowledge. The more people with access to knowledge, the greater its likely economic benefits. A country that focuses on promoting strong literacy skills widely throughout its population will be more successful in fostering growth and well-being than one in which the gap between high-skill and low-skill groups is large.