Literacy

Widespread participation in a global economy would have been hard to accomplish if people could not read or write — or produce according to specifications or instructions.
The contribution of basic education to development is not, however, confined to economic progress. Education has intrinsic importance; the capability to read and write can deeply influence one’s quality of life. Also, an educated population can make better use of democratic opportunities than an illiterate one. Further, an ability to read documents and legal provisions can help subjugated women and other oppressed groups make use of their rights and demand more fairness. And female literacy can enhance women’s voices in family affairs and reduce gender inequality in other fields, a benefit to men as well as women, since women’s empowerment through literacy tends to reduce child mortality and very significantly decrease fertility rates.

Incidentally all the way they have talked of literacy for the masses. Why can't they ever think of "education" for the poor? Why must they be content to give them only literacy? Or why should one suppose that the receivers would be happy with literacy only? Is it enough for them to read a newspaper and sign their names on some document, e.g. ration cards, and bank loans et al? Is that all they can genuinely offer to the masses? This is not education at all. This is hypocrisy on the part of a nation towards a vast section of its population calculated to keep them under heels of the privileged. The first ever move, therefore, to impose education cess is welcome.

- EDUCATION FOR THE POOR, A K Biswas, Frontier, 01/08/2004, N00 /eldoc/n00_/01aug04fro1.html

There is plenty of evidence to show that this over-emphasis on literacy, making it almost synonymous with education, is part of the international literacy `conspiracy', conceived by the World Bank and the agencies of the United Nations. The Jomtien Declaration (1990), issued by the first World Conference on EFA and followed up in the Dakar Framework (2000), is evidence of market forces working over-time to push the literacy paradigm in the global education scenario. Literacy skill is all that the masses need, argue the market forces, so that they can read the product labels and advertisements. Its somewhat evolved form would be adequate for factory workers to read production instructions and to use even the Internet. Critical thinking, creativity, scientific temper, analytical abilities, sense of history or philosophy, aesthetic appreciation and other such educational attributes need to be reserved for the privileged few - this is the implication of the literacy paradigm and the market forces. The Ambani-Birla Report (2000), submitted to the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry, was prepared to extend the market framework into Indian education.

- Education for too few, ANIL SADGOPAL, 05/12/2003 N00 /eldoc/n00_/05dec03frn6.htm

Now, let me add a point that came to my mind while reading the concluding remarks of BF (p 1747) where they had mentioned the possibility of literacy skills being associated with a market. What one can add to this is that they are of various types. A particular individual may be lit-erate in one aspect but not in another. Say, for instance, an individual who is literate
in the conventional sense need not be computer literate.
Again, because of the time constraint or some other factor, all persons cannot be literate in all respects. Hence, people with different literacy skills have to help each other out either through the market or through some other networking. Thus, what matters is that in a society, more proportion of people should have access to the functioning associated with different literacy skills. It is also true that certain literacy skills will have a greater value than other skills and if the literacy skills are not complimentary to each other then, in due course of time, the literacy skills with greater value are likely to re-place the one's with lower value. It also means that acquiring of literacy skills should be considered as a process. Further, I would like to add that like institutions, new literacy skills could emerge, the existing ones will either continue to persist or perish. Again, at any given space and time, there will be a limit to the possible literacy skills.

- Isolated and Proximate Illiteracy, SRIJIT MISHRA, Economic & Political Weekly, 02/06/2001, /eldoc/n00_/02jun01EPW2.pdf

The system of education as it exists has been described as a kind of apartheid, separating the literate from the non-literate. The simile is more than superficially apt since it is the under-privileged for reasons of social identity and of gender that are often denied literacy. The existing condition is continuously aggravated by rapid changes in the technology of communicating and acquiring knowledge, and by its becoming increasingly the preserve of the few. With more sophisticated technical requirements of education, the divide will become worse. Not only does the lag between the educated and the non-literate in such circumstances become greater but also even literacy by itself becomes inadequate and insufficient. If we had had a commitment to education fifty years ago this lag could have been reduced. As it stands, even if tomorrow, school education is made compulsory and available, there will still be an enormous distance between the literate and those proficient in the skills of modern education. It requires a far more thoughtful education policy than has been proposed to make these skills more widely available. And education is not merely about making millions literate. It is also about citizens realising their rights and their obligations, both necessary to democratic functioning.
The new mantra of Information Technology will not in itself solve the problem since the minimum technological infrastructure required is, as of now, absent in many places. When electricity is irregular and the telephone system unreliable, the new technology is not of much help; still less will it be for those who have had no education.

- Link between Democracy, Education & the Acquiring of Knowledge, Romila Thapar, Vikalp, 01/04/2001, /eldoc/n00_/01apr01VKP.pdf

First-generation learners in government schools lack this social capital. There are no official structures in place to offer guidance to this group of students. "Preparation for post-secondary education requires a certain kind of training but for my classmates and me, even information about options at the higher secondary level is scarce", a 10th grade student in Chennai laments. "Do we have the skills and the knowledge base to cope with the various specialisations offered in a higher secondary course? If we don't, how do we acquire them? Where do we go for information on the possibilities for scholarships or educational loans? We need to pester our parents or their friends for such information. Many of us have parents who are menial labourers who barely read.
A 13-year old labourer argued that he preferred adult literacy classes to going to school, since such classes combined meaningful activities with instruction on reading and writing. According to him, his work as a child labourer in a match factory gives him skills that cannot be learnt in any school, and this training plus adult education would open more doors for him.
"When I am 16 1 am going to be in a better position to start my own unit than any school graduate. I know where to go to get loans, who to hire and what to invest in. You show me one school graduate who can match this." In this folk theory of possibility, school-based education has no firm place.
This ambiguous attitude towards public education is made sharper by the common perception of a middle class flight from it. To many parents, the public education we as a society have planned and built is a luxurious accessory. "Literacy without a sense of empowerment is what is on offer in schools, and we cannot afford it", said a parent. Obtaining this education in a meaningful and empowering way is deterred by the very system - its pyramidal structure. The socio-economic conditions of the majority of families make the incline of this pyramid steeper. We need to rethink primary education in the context of parental aspirations as well as children's propensity to learn. Very sensitive localised adaptations to accommodate the socio-cultural milieus of the marginalised groups are called for.

INDIA CAN boast of the largest educational network in the world and the country has undoubtedly made considerable technical progress and, we are bound to reach greater heights in future. No wonder Amartya Sen remarked "The number of students enrolled in higher education in India is considerable distance ahead of any other country of comparable economic level." Yet, we house the largest number of adult illiterates in the world — an appalling 290 million. In a country where 25 million people are homeless and 172 million people have no access to drinking water, the illiteracy rate is nothing much to be alarmed about, if only the high illiteracy rate was not a bottleneck to growth and economic progress. Why is it that, 54 years after independence, we have not been able to achieve universal literacy, in spite of producing excellent software engineers, mathematical geniuses and innovative scientists?

Even political organisations with the best of intentions and honesty believe in 'doing good 1 to the deprived in accordance with their perceptions, subconsciously shunning community empowerment for fear of losing influence. Such groups would prefer to depend on their elected candidates bound by party discipline to follow their dictates. Unfortunately, this is today the reality in West Bengal, which has otherwise made good progress on the rural front. The only viable alternative is to pursue a protracted rural campaign of various interlinked facets. This should encompass literacy, health, land literacy and participatory planning and development. Such an effort is certain to generate confidence, articulation and the capacity of the people to press for their rightful dues. The emerging democratic awareness and power of the rural electorate will boost this process of empowerment and self-reliance substantially. Some space has also now been created by those in power, maybe for motives of their own, for starting such a campaign. Socially motivated voluntary organisations and political groups with faith in secularism and democracy should grasp this opportunity. THE launch of the Literacy Mission has been one of the most significant event after independence. Although missions, inter alia, were initiated for drinking water and oilseeds, it was only the one for literacy that could' blossom into a major campaign of social significance. The trail blazing was done by the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) by succeeding in achieving total literacy in Ernakulam. Since then, the campaign has spread, but with mixed success, in various parts of India. The spin-offs from the campaign include the women's anti-liquor movement in Andhra Pradesh; and for their rights in Tamil Nadu.

- Literacy Campaign, Land Literacy and Watershed Development, Subrata Sinha Arun Ghosh,

Further, we have a strange explanation that mass education depends upon the level of per capita income. We have already seen that with less spending of GNP on education, it is possible for even low-income and developing countries to experience spectacular increase in literacy rates. It is also proved that there is no clear relationship between literacy and per capita income because there are so many Asian countries which achieved higher literacy rates even before their rapid economic growth. Even one of the Indian states, Kerala, has a literacy rate of 85 per cent despite the fact that its per capita income is not higher than that of the rest of the country.

- Education as a right and a duty, Sk. Sadar Nayeem, Indian Express, 20/04/1995, /eldoc/n00_/20apr95ie1.pdf

Let me give just two instances of priorities for development it is a great pity that our economists have chosen to treat -these as irrelevant. The emperor, of Japan decided to concentrate on only one welfa-re programme in 1869 with a view to tackling all other problems he introduced universal primary education.
Great Britain introduced this programme in 1870 and through successful implementation of this programme esta-blished its supremacy in the industrial world and arrested population rise and child labour.
One tries in vain to find a rational explanation as to the singular lack of will to make this all-important social welfa-re programme successful in our country.
With our planners, both past and present, the unwritten law has been that universal prima-ry education cannot be imple-mented until poverty is removed. This habit of putting the cart before the horse is also ingrained in many of our high-flying social activists.

- Basic education ignored, Pioneer, 07/09/1995, /eldoc/n00_/07sept95pio1.pdf

Education policies should match technological advancement, writes Tapas Majumdar One question that is seldom raised in India's education poli-cy confabulation is what form of literacy or basic education must Indians have to be able to live in a high technology society.

Literacy since the invention of paper had implied two kinds of ability. First, the ability to write by hand. Second, the abi-lity to read the handwritten word. If this idea of literacy had persisted, many graduate students studying in the United States universities would have failed the first test, and some of their teachers the second. That they still thrive in the world of letters is because the typewriter and its sucessor, the word processor, in due cour-se have ousted writing by hand almost completely in the Ame-rican campuses. Literacy there now implies familiarity only with the printed word. But it is probably once again shying away from the question about the form of education India would need for the kind of society it covets. If the ques-tion remains unasked and unanswered, chances are, all the hard work, organisation and resources notwithstan-ding, the country will end up on the wrong track. It is difficult to say in which way new literacy is going to be radically different from the old. But the distinctive feature of high technology unfolding despite India's sluggish econo-mic growth might provide a clue.
This is the almost endless capacity of technology to pro-duce simple as well as complica-ted devices that have "informa-tion" embedded in them. These can be gadgets owned only by the relatively affluent to enrich their quality of life and used to provide the modern infrastructure for tran-sport, communication and edu-cation. These can also be brought to the use of Everyman man provided Everyman is taught to read the new symbols.

- Living life tech-size, Tapas Majumdar, Telegraph, 15/11/1994, /eldoc/n00_/15nov94tel1.pdf

From the perspective of the conceptual framework developed by Harold A Innis, the pursuit of mass literacy in the context of the so-called 'globalisation' of the Indian economy calls for analysis at a number of levels. The advantages that a literate population offers to the growth of a market economy form a central theme of this paper. At a different level, the discussion
covers the implications of becoming literate in terms of 'what is there to read'. In addition to this generalised question, the discussion also looks at the specific problems of survival and development that the illiterates and neoliterates face in the emerging political economy.

- Market Economy and Mass Literacy Revisiting Inni's Economics of Communication, Krishna Kumar, Economic & Political Weekly, 11/12/1993, /eldoc/n00_/11dec93EPW.pdf

While there are significant differences between children attending government schools and private schools, in both cases the situation is far from satisfactory. Close to half of all school-going children in the age group seven to 10 cannot read a simple sentence fluently or correctly write an easy sentence dictated to them.

About two-third of the children in this age group could not solve a simple subtraction problem. Among the older children who were still attending school, one out of 10 could not read a sentence, close to 20 per cent could not write an easy, dictated sentence and a third could not still solve subtraction problems.

A child completing primary schooling must at least be guaranteed durable literacy and numeracy skills. Schools must generate this and citizens must hold schools accountable for achieving this basic goal.

- In school, but hardly learning, Rukmini Banerji, Business Std, 10/02/2005, /eldoc/n21_/10feb05BSB1.html

It may reasonably be argued on the other hand that the existing education up to elementary level only, in the main stream, is likely to alienate the chil-dren from labouring classes from the culture of labour and as a result complicate their problem further reducing their employability. It may not even act as a socialisation process favouring modernisation nor as a process of counter-socialisation. Instead, there may ensue a culture-chaos leading to social degradation.
It is in this connection a few words may be said about the findings of the 42nd round of National Sample Survey regarding the rea-sons for non-participation in the existing programme of elementary education. It has been found that in rural areas only about 10 per cent of 'never enrolled' children did not enrol themselves for want of schooling fa-cilities, 46 per cent of the non-enrolled could not be enrolled because of various economic reasons including domestic chores while about 29.46 per cent were not en-rolled as they were not interested in educa-tion. Likewise, percentage distribution of drop-outs by reasons for discontinuance shows thafS0.83 per cent dropped out for various economic reasons, 16.29 discontin-ued because of failures while 26 per cent dropped out for lack of interest in educa-tion. The scene in urban areas also is not very different. It may be noted that lack of interest in education appears to be one of the major reasons for both non-enrolment and drop-outs, though participation in house-hold economic activities and other eco-nomic reasons together causes the largest number of drop-outs and non-enrolments. However, lack of interest in education may have some economic bearing as well. In fact, lack of interest in education is a broad category which may need some elucida-tions. In the absence of any visible economic benefit people may lose interest in education.
In other words, lack of interest in education may be due to uncertain eco-nomic return particularly from terminal el-ementary education. Toiling people in less advanced rural situations may not find any use of the existing elementary education. Agrarian relations in many areas may even discourage the toiling people to go for edu-cation. The culture content of the elementary programme may also act as a deterrent. It may make children shy of soiling their hands. On the other hand, landholding em-ployers may not like to employ educated labour lest they create labour problems by asserting their rights.

- Universal Elementary Education Receding Goal, Poromesh Acharya, Economic & Political Weekly, 14/01/1994, /eldoc/n00_/14jan94EPW.pdf

...data revealed that over 100 per cent children were in school! A wide range of schools and centres have emerged in the last ten years to cater to a spectrum of out of school children. The decade of the 1990s was indeed a period of churning and also a decade when we made significant leap in literacy rates.

The 2001 Census of India revealed that 65.4 per cent people (75.85 among men and 54.16 among women) are literate, and that for the first time the absolute number of illiterates has actually gone down. It recorded a decadal jump of 11.8 in the literacy rate among men and 15.00 among women and hitherto backward regions like Chhattisgarh recorded a jump of 24.87 in literacy levels among women, Madhya Pradesh 20.93 jump in female literacy and Rajasthan decadal increase of 21.47 (M) and 23.09 (F). These figures are truly impressive and no doubt we have much to cheer about it. It was more than apparent that children contributed a major share to this increase — and the government's various primary education programmes, notably the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), had indeed made a difference.

towards the end of the 1960's, the renowned economist Amartya Sen gave a series of lectures on the inequities of Indian education. One of them, the Lai Bahadur Shastri Me-morial lecture, titled The Crisis of Indian Education, was published around 1970. In it, Sen complained of the fact that far more resources were spent on higher education than on primary education. Yet, today, 27 years later, the situation has not improved but worsened. This is the "inversion of priori-ties" mentioned by the Supreme Court. Higher education has expanded dramatically, and India has one of the largest edu-cated populations in the world. According to Sen, for every, .student that China sends to the University, we send as many six. Yet, while China is now close to universal literacy, half the Indian adult population is still illiterate and two-thirds of them women.

- An unconstitutional conspiracy, Raju Z Moray, /eldoc/n00_/05may09oiop1.pdfaju

The NLM was bound to face problems in any case because presumably some persons in charge did not do their home-work in 1992. It was in that year itself that India had also adopt-\ the programme of education for all as part of its nation-al education policy. EFA, of course, is more holistic, logical and in line with the mandate of the Constitution. Plain economics suggests that there may not be enough money in the kitty for both the NLM and the EFA. Ever since the Jomtien world conference of 1990, United Nations Educa-tional Scientific and Cultural Organisation and other interna-tional aid agencies have begun to favour education for all: pro-grammes. Thus it no longer makes sense, either ideologi-cally or pragmatically, to think in terms of investment in educa-tion for literacy alone. It seems that in the battle of ideas between the total lite-racy and the EFA programmes it is the philosophy of the latter that is going to prevail. The NLM might even change to make it indistinguishable from the wider EFA movement. This will however not necessarily end the inconsistency syndro-me in the national education policy.

- Living life tech-size, Tapas Majumdar, Telegraph, 15/11/1994, /eldoc/n00_/15nov94tel1.pdf

The 53rd round of the National Sample Survey reveals that in the six-year period between 1991 and 1997, the literacy rate of the country rose by over 10 per cent, a contribution that is difficult to quantify in its impact, and the upsurge and demand not only for literacy, but more importantly, for the education of children. Though the demand for children's education has al-ways existed, as was confirmed by the Pub-lic Report on Basic Education (PROBE) last year, the literacy campaigns helped to ac-tively involve parents and ordinary people in voicing it.

OUR country has made much progress over the past few decades, of which we are rightly proud. Yet, why do we rank 127 out of 175 countries on Human Development Index? Today, India’s literacy rate is 65% versus a global average of 80%. Thirty-five million of our 192 million children between 6-14 years are “out of school” and of those enrolled, another 15 million are habitual absentees.

Drop out rates are staggering, and only 31% complete basic schooling of grade 10. Amongst those who actually attend class, learning levels are deplorable. Seven million out of 19 million children in Grade V cannot read and write this does not even constitute literacy, let alone education. The time has come to change our thinking and our paradigms and make breakthroughs in the issue of optimum “learning” solutions. We no longer have the luxury of time. Global challenges are forcing the pace on us.

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