A Turning Point for Literacy. Adult Education for Development the Spirit and Declaration of Persepolis

260 Pages·1976·18.781 MB·English

by  Leon Bataille, Persepolis, 1975 International Symposium for Literacy

Other titles of interest:
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G. BARON Society, Schools and Progress in England
M. BLAUG Economics of Education: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, 2nd Ed,
D. F. BRATCHELL The Aims and Organization of Further Education
L. R. CHAPMAN The Process of Learning Mathematics
H. E. COPPEN Aids to Teaching and Learning
G. R. CROSS The Psychology of Learning: An Introduction for Students of
Education
R. H. DAVE et al Foundations of Lifelong Education
W. D. HALLS Education, Culture and Politics in Modern France
A. HEARNDEN Education, Culture and Politics in West Germany
J. L. HENDERSON Education for World Understanding
F. W. JESSUP Lifelong Learning: A Symposium on Continuing Education
M. LOWE & J. LOWE On Teaching Foreign Languages to Adults
E. SEMPER & P. A. COGGIN Hidden Factors in Technological Change
C. TITMUS Adult Education in France
E. K. TOWNSEND COLES Adult Education in Developing Countries, 2nd edition
A TURNING POINT
FOR LITERACY
Adult Education for Development
The Spirit and Declaration of Persepolis
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM FOR LITERACY
PERSEPOLIS, IRAN 3 TO 8 SEPTEMBER 1975
Edited by
LEON BATAILLE
Executive Secretary of the International
Co-ordination Secretariat for Literacy, Paris
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Preface
In the Third World we talk a great deal about economic development - about
expanding the number of goods and services, and the capacity to produce them.
But the goods are needed to serve men; services are required to make the lives of
men more easeful as well as more fruitful. Political, social, and economic
organization is needed to enlarge the freedom and dignity of men. Always we
come back to Man - to Liberated Man - as the purpose of activity, the purpose
of development.
So development is for man, by Man, and of Man. The same is true of education.
Its purpose is the liberation of Man from the restraints and limitations of
ignorance and dependency. Education has to increase men's physical and mental
freedom — to increase their control over themselves, their own lives, and the
environment in which they live. The ideas imparted by education, or released in
the mind through education, should therefore be liberating ideas; the skills
acquired by education should be liberating skills.
This means that adult education has to be directed at helping men to develop
themselves. It has to contribute to an enlargement of Man's ability in every way.
In particular it has to help men to decide for themselves — in cooperation — what
development is. It must help men to think clearly; it must enable them to
examine the possible alternative courses of action; to make a choice between
those alternatives in keeping with their own purposes; and it must equip them
with the ability to translate their decisions into reality.
If adult education is to contribute to development, it must be a part of life —
integrated with life and inseparable from it. It is not something which can be put
into a box and taken out for certain periods of the day or week — or certain
periods of a life. And it cannot be imposed: every learner is ultimately a
volunteer, because, however much teaching he is given, only he can learn.
The first function of adult education is to inspire both a desire for change, and an
understanding that change is possible. For a belief that poverty or suffering is 'the
will of God' and that man's only task is to endure, is the most fundamental of all
the enemies of freedom. Yet dissatisfaction with what is must be combined with a
conviction that it can be changed: otherwise it is simply destructive. Men living in
poverty or sickness or under tyranny or exploitation must be enabled to recognize
both that the life they lead is miserable, and that they can change it by their own
action, either individually or in cooperation with others.
vu
viii Preface
Mass adult education must be seen as a beginning - a foundation course on which
people can build their own structures according to their own interests and own
desires. And the adult educator must demonstrate this function in his own
activities - that is, by continuing to expand his personal knowledge through
reading, listening to the radio, informal discussions, participation in physical
development activities, and attendance at such other organised education courses
as may be available.
The adult educator must involve the learners in their own education, and in
practice, from the very beginning. Only activities which involve them in doing
something for themselves will provide an on-going sense of achievement and mean
that some new piece of knowledge is actually grasped — that it has become
something of 'theirs'. It doesn't matter what form this involvement takes; it may
be a contribution to a discussion, reading out loud, or writing, or making a furrow
of the required depth and width. What is important is that the adult learner
should be learning by doing.
The teacher of adults is a leader, a guide along a path which all will travel
together. The organizers and teachers in an adult education programme can be no
more than that; to be effective therefore they have consciously to identify
themselves with those who are participating in it primarily as learners. Only on
this basis of equality, and of sharing a task which is of mutual benefit, is it
possible to make full use of the existing human resources in the development of a
community, a village, or a nation.
The most appropriate techniques in a particular case will depend upon the
circumstances, and the resources, of the learning community and of the nation in
which it lives. For it is no good spending time and money on elaborate visual aids
which need skilled operators and electricity, if either the skilled operator or the
electricity is lacking in the village which wants to learn! It is no use relying upon
techniques which need imported materials if you are working in a country which
has a permanent balance of payments problem. And in a poor country the
techniques used must be of very low cost, and preferably capable of being
constructed out of local materials, at the place where the teaching will be done,
and by the people who will teach and learn. Self-reliance is a very good
educational technique as well as being an indispensable basis for further
development!
There is a saying that nothing which is easy is worth doing, and it could never be
said that adult education is not worth doing! For it is the key to the development
of free men and free societies. Its function is to help men to think for themselves,
to make their own decisions, and to execute those decisions for themselves.
Excerpted with permission from a talk by President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania
given at The International Conference on Adult Education, Dar es Salaam, 21st
June 1976.
Working Document 1
Literacy in the World since the 1965 Teheran
Conference: Shortcomings, Achievements, Tendencies
Document prepared by the Unesco Secretariat
for the International Symposium for Literacy
Foreword
This document was prepared by the Unesco Secretariat for the International
Symposium for Literacy organized by the Iranian Government, which took place
from 3 to 8 September 1975 in Persepolis (Iran) on the occasion of the tenth
anniversary of the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradication
of Illiteracy held in Teheran in September 1965. This is mainly an informative
document and refers, therefore, to events of the last 10 years, emphasizing
significant situations and pointing out their main evolutive trends.
A. WORLD LITERACY:1965-1975
I. The Quantitative Aspects of the Problem
1. AN OVERALL VIEW OF THE SITUATION
The number of illiterates has always been difficult to calculate, partly because
figures are not always reliable, but also because where illiteracy rates are high they
are either unobtainable or incomplete. Even when obtainable, they are often
incomparable, because "illiteracy" is defined differently in different places.
Nevertheless, so far as general estimations have been made, figures available at the
beginning of the last quarter of the twentieth century show that the world is still
far from reaching universal literacy. Although the percentage of illiteracy had
steadily fallen from 44.3% in 1950 to 39.3% in 1960 and 34.2% in 1970, the total
number of adult illiterates in the world had risen and is now approximately 800
million (see Table 1). This increase, in absolute terms of the illiteracy population,
must be imputed to the population explosion and inadequate as well as
misdirected educational provision.
In 1970 Africa and the Arab States still had the largest percentage of illiteracy
in their adult populations, followed by Asia, then Latin America. All four regions
decreased their illiteracy rate by between 7 and 9% between 1960-1970. But
whereas in 1970 this left a rate of illiteracy in Latin America of about 24%, both
in Africa and the Arab States it was still over 70% and in Asia just under 50% (see
Table 2).
Illiteracy has a close correlation with poverty. In the twenty-five least
3
TABLE 1 Adult (15+) literacy around 1960 and 1970 Around 1960 Around 1970 Literate Adult Literate Adult Illiterate Illiterate » ü m '1 Major regions*Illiteracy Illiteracy adults adults adults population adults population (000) percentage percentage (000) (000) (000) (000) (000) 39.3 735,000 World total 1,134,000 1,504,000 34.2 783,000 1,869,000 2,287,000 Africa 81.0 124,000 153,000 29,000 51,100 143,000 73.7 194,000 2.4 1.5 161,000 3,300 2,500 136,000 133,000 158,000 Northern America 32.5 23.6 40,000 38,600 163,000 123,000 83,100 125,000 Latin America 55.2 46.8 542,000 579,000 1,237,000 982,000 440,000 658,000 Asia 5.3 3.6 24,500 18,700 521,000 464,000 439,000 502,000 Europe 11.5 10.3 1,200 1,400 13,000 9,400 10,600 11,800 Oceania (73.0) (42,700) (49,900) (68,300) (52,700) (18,400) (Arab States) (9,900) (81.1) a The world total covers the whole world, including Unesco Member States, non-Member States and non-self-governing territories; Africa covers the entire African continent, including the Arab States of Africa; Northern America includes the United States, Canada, Bermuda, Greenland and St Pierre and Miquelon; Latin America covers the South American continent, Central America, Mexico and the Carribbean; Asia covers the entire Asian region, including the Arab States of Asia; Europe includes the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Oceania covers Australia, New Zealand and the surrounding islands; the Arab States as a separate grouping are presented in parentheses as they are already included partly under Africa and partly under Asia. From Literacy 1969-1971, p. 22, Unesco, Paris, 1972.
Literacy Since the 1965 Teheran Conference 5
TABLE 2
Male and female adult illiteracy rates (around 1970)
ioc+-
9ok
801 | JAdult females
70 Adult males
i
60 i
$ 5θ|
I
I
30
I
1
20
10
ΖΆ ΓΊττ* W.
Asia Africa Arab States Latin America World total
North America Europe/USSR
Source: Unesco, Learning to Be, Paris, 1972.
developed countries, where the per capita product is less than $100 a year,
illiteracy rates are over 80%.
It should be said also that countries with the highest illiteracy rates tend also to
have higher population growth rates. Further, the proportion of women illiterates
is steadily growing. In 1960, 58% of illiterates were women; by 1970 this
percentage had risen to 60%. In those 10 years the number of illiterate men rose
by 8 millions and that of illiterate women by 40 millions (see Table 2).
The proportionate number of illiterates living in rural areas is also much higher
than in urban areas. Even though much progress has been made in the provision of
primary school education in the last few decades, many children still do not enter
formal primary schools, and many others drop out before completion. For
example, statistics given for enrolment ratios in the twenty-five least developed
countries indicate that if trends observed in the last two decades were to continue
to 1985 less than 30% of the children aged 6-11 would be in school by the end of
the period! Thus new generations of illiterates continue to join the adult
population.
As a result, illiteracy is growing on a world scale, as indicated by Table 3.
2. LITERACY DYNAMICS
Only an estimate can be made about what the situation might be by 1980. At
the present rate of educational progress, and taking into account the ageing of the
6 Unesco
TABLE 3
Growth of the world adult literate /illiterate population and decrease of adult illiteracy rate
50r- 5000
44.3%-
40[- 4500
39 4360^
3Cf- 4000 34.2%^-^
29.0%
3500 3506 x
X*
10 he 3000 2823^«»
oL - 2500
2287^ *
2000 Adult literates
1500, L 1579
1000
Adult illiterates
500
0'
1950 I960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
Source: Unesco, Learning to Be, Paris, 1972, pp. 298-299.
TABLE 4
Literacy dynamics in absolute terms
(11 countries; male and female population over 15)
ΖΟ,ΟΟΟΓ-
fcfO<' vL·
10,000h
Mexico
5000h
2000h Spain
loool·-
1956 I960 1965 1970
' Literacy Since the 1965 Teheran Conference 7
TABLE 4A
Literacy dynamics in absolute terms
(16 countries; male and female population over 15)
population, the percentage of adults who are illiterate should fall, as previously
stated, in Africa from 74% to 67%; in Asia from 47% to 38%; and in Latin
America from 24% to 15%. These estimates mean that, in both Africa and in Asia,
there will still be in 5 years from now over 25 million more adult illiterates.
Some less pessimistic inferences, however, may be made if, instead of looking
numerically at world illiteracy situation, we examine the evolutive trends towards
literacy of certain nations. The following three tables clearly present the literacy
dynamics of twenty-seven countries of various continents, for which recent data
are available.
Tables 4 and 4A show that the number of illiterates has increased in eleven
countries but they reveal, at the same time, that it remains constant or decreases
in the majority of the countries under consideration.
Table 5 shows that all the considered countries achieved a decrease in the
illiteracy rate during the last few years, and that some of them attained this
reduction with a particularly rapid rhythm, as in Venezuela, Algeria and Tunisia.
By comparing these tables it can be recognized that the struggle against
illiteracy is like the task of Sysiphus. In fact, a country such as Brazil, which
achieved a fair reduction in its illiteracy rate (see Table 5), has shown between
1960 and 1970 an increase in the number of illiterates (see Table 4), due to the
rapid population growth.