Tomorrow is International Literacy Day. Not that these occasions usually mean very much other than to give the topic du jour a fleeting blip on the global radar screen. However, in this country following the killing and capture of some members of Guyana’s most notorious gang, one cannot help but wonder in view of their youth, exactly what educational opportunities they had been afforded, and whether all of them were even functionally literate. It is difficult to imagine youngsters with several subjects at CXC having a strong inclination to put themselves on the trajectory for a criminal career; they would have other options in life. This is not to say, of course, that education is a guarantee against a life of violent crime; nothing is. However, of all the factors which would militate against children being seduced into taking up a hard-core criminal existence, education must surely come somewhere near the top of the list.
Literacy is the building block of education. The problem is, that education for a long time has not been seen by young people and their parents as a means of improving their chances in life. In a materialist world, the siren call of easy money from the drug trade especially, has drowned out the voices offering alternative avenues to advancement, because those avenues demand effort and application over the long term. Yet we live in a knowledge-based world, and anyone who does not have the tools to function in that world, will be far more likely to be condemned to a life of poverty than someone who does. Illiteracy equates to a lack of empowerment, and it should hardly be surprising that the unempowered would be tempted into illegal activities which give them a sense of power and importance in a world from which they are otherwise excluded.
In today’s Latin view (page 7) columnist Andres Oppenheimer talks about the economic success story which is Finland, and from which he feels South American countries can learn. When that country’s Minister of Education was asked about Finland’s success, which has come about in the last two decades, she said she could answer the question in three words: “Education, education, education.” And what is the reason for Finland’s success on the educational front? She replied that the answer was very simple – good teachers. What attracted people into the profession it seems, was the high pay and generous holidays, but it must be said that in comparison with anglophone nations, teachers have to be unusually highly qualified.
There are different dimensions to the illiteracy problem of course. One which comes fully within the purview of the Ministry of Education is ensuring that every child in the school system becomes functionally literate – which some of them are not at the moment. We know there is a teacher crisis in this country, and it would be a tragedy if the ministry’s literacy drive within the schools foundered because of poor quality teaching. This column has often made reference to the need to treat educators as a special case in terms of salaries if any headway is to be made in raising educational standards, and here we have the example of Finland where success is attributed to good teachers who are very well paid.
But as the Ministry of Education has recognized, making headway also means going out into the community, confronting adult illiteracy, and persuading parents and others that education is not just an option, but is absolutely essential both for children’s development and for the society as a whole. Decades ago education was a community project in a sense; the schoolteacher had a high status and all the adults in a village or ward supported that teacher. We nowadays live in a far more complicated universe, with a greater emphasis on the material; distractions such as TV and video games or whatever; the breakdown of a rule-governed society and the destruction of the extended family system as a consequence of migration. The larger disciplinary framework which made it easier for a teacher to keep order in a classroom – an absolute prerequisite for learning – is not what it was.
The Ministry of Education is currently engaged in a kind of literacy blitz, and no doubt recognizing the need to bring the communities on board, the campaign involves working in co-operation with a variety of community and other organizations. There have been earlier literacy projects before this one, of course, (some of them are ongoing) one of the more notable being the ‘On the Wings of Words’ programme, which has been addressing the problem of adult illiteracy, among other things. There have been, and still are, literacy projects targeting specific communities like Sophia, while the Rotary Club of Stabroek more recently has been working in Buxton to promote literacy. Efforts have to be sustained over an extended time-frame, however, before one will be able to judge how successful these have been.
In the meantime, illiteracy has to be recognized as a national problem, and as many people as possible have to try and contribute their little bit to combating it. It might be as seemingly small a thing as persuading an overworked, impoverished single mother about the importance of her child attending school every day; it might be reading a story to a group of children who otherwise have no contact with books; it might be even telling young children anansi stories (for example), which would take them away from the TV set and stimulate their imaginations, thereby laying the groundwork for reading. There are a hundred things those of us who have been brought up in a book culture can do to pass on some tiny portion of our skills to a generation which regards books and reading as an alien pursuit.
In the end the hope for this society, as in Finland, lies in education, education, education. And that hope begins with literacy, literacy, literacy.
