Karen J Schoff posted: " Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Kofi Annan " Living on the Downs
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories.
Kofi Annan
Do you remember learning to read?
I don't remember the actual specifics of learning to read, although I do remember "The cat sat on the mat" and Dick and Jane, Nip and Fluff. With simple drawings and riveting storylines the Dick and Jane readers were the way many of us learned to read in Australian schools. Who can forget…
This is Dick. Run, Dick, run. Nip is a dog. Nip, run to Dick. See Dora run. Here is Jane. I see Jane. Dora has Jane. This is Nip. Dick has the dog. I see Nip and Jane.
Okay, so not exactly riveting text, but thanks to the mystery and magic that occurs in the brain, Dick and Jane helped me put all the literacy building blocks together so that now I can read anything I put my hands on without even having to sound all the words out. That is the gift of literacy.
We take literacy far too much for granted. We wake up, grab the phone, scroll the news headlines, check our emails and our facebook feed and we haven't even got out of bed. After that, the whole day brings a long list of literacy tasks that we don't even think about - road signs, shopping lists, bills, recipes, washing instructions, let alone all the written text associated with our employment, study and everyday living.
The gift of literacy also equips us to negotiate the mysterious workings of government departments and for that we need a literacy skill set that goes way beyond Dick and Jane. Anybody who has a family member involved with the NDIS knows the extent of paperwork and red tape involved in just getting across the line to get some disability support. I consider myself an educated person, (got a handful of degrees) and yet I have often struggled to understand the ins and outs of the NDIS. I often wonder, if I am having so much trouble, how do people with low literacy cope? I guess they don't. And so they probably either give up or just accept what they're offered when they may actually be eligible for a whole lot more. Literacy then is not just a gift, but a necessity for modern life - a human right.
According to the OECD, 40-50% of Australian adults have literacy levels that are below the international standard recognised as being essential for work, education and participation in society. There can be a whole lot of reasons for this including learning difficulties, poor school attendance and childhood trauma. But as many of our daily tasks are increasingly completed via self-serve digital platforms, there is a significant section of our population who are at risk of being left behind. Not everyone can securely negotiate the online space; reading, let alone understanding, complex instructions, setting up digital accounts for everything under the sun or differentiating between the bona fide and the scammer. Computer literacy is becoming as essential as textual literacy.
In other parts of the world, the situation is even more dire. Around the world it is estimated that about 771 million people are illiterate - mostly women. It is important to note that illiteracy and low literacy are not the same thing. People with low literacy can still read and write but not at the level necessary for full engagement in our society. My son Dan, who has autism and an intellectual impairment, can read and write, sort of. He can read most of the basic sight words plus some others and he can write a simple sentence that is dictated, but he has no decoding skills. He either knows it or he doesn't. Illiteracy though is the inability to read or write at all. Just think how that would incapacitate a person in this world. Illiteracy leads to poverty, oppression and the loss of dignity and rights that we take for granted.
Literacy give us a power that we don't really think about. We have the power to read and access any information we please: books, magazines, employment contracts, lease and mortgage agreements, legal documents and so on. Literacy enables us to advocate for our rights, access necessities and opportunities, and seek help when required. Literacy gives us independence.
Today is the International Day for Literacy. It's been celebrated since 1967 - before I even started school. Before I even met Dick and Jane, and you know, we might laugh at the text of readers like Dick and Jane, or Sam and Pam which came later, but at least we learned to read and that's an opportunity too many in our world are being denied. It beats me how if we can put a man on the moon, unite to develop vaccines for the Corona virus and develop action plans for climate change, why can't we deliver the basic human right of literacy to every child and adult in the world?
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