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| CAN LITERACY WAIT AMIDST PANDEMIC? | | |
Dr. Parveen Kumar, Dr. D. Namgyal
Literacy is critical to economic development as well as individual and community well-being. The economy of a country gets enhanced when the literacy rates are high. A high literacy rate of a country gets reflected in various other human development indices. Literacy has traditionally been thought of as reading and writing. Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Alberta Education defines literacy as the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. Literacy skills refer to all the skills needed for reading and writing. They include such things as awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print, and the relationship between letters and sounds. Other literacy skills include vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension.
Given the importance of literacy, the world celebrates ‘International Literacy Day’ every year on September 8. This day was declared as the International Literacy Day by United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in its 14th General Conference which was held on October 26, 1966. Since 1967, International Literacy Day (ILD) celebrations have taken place annually around the world to remind the public of the importance of literacy as a matter of dignity and human rights, and to advance the literacy agenda towards a more literate and sustainable society. Despite progress made, literacy challenges persist with at least 773 million adults worldwide lacking basic literacy skills today.
Post independence the country has made remarkable progress in improving the literacy rate. The Indian literacy rate has jumped from 40.76% in 1940 to 74.37% in 2018. It includes 82.14% literacy rate for males and 65.46 % literacy rate for females. Kerala has achieved a literacy rate of 93. 91% while Bihar is the least literate state in India, with literacy rate of 63.82%.
The encouraging thing is that for the third year in a row, average literacy rate of females aged between 15 and 49 years has shown an overall increase 84.8% in 2016, 85.3% in 2017 and 87% in 2018. There are interstate variations in sex wise literacy rates. According to the Sample Registration System survey for the year 2018, the percentage of women completing primary education was same as 2017 at 13.9% but there was a slight improvement in the percentage of those completed schooling. In 2018, 12.5% females were found to have completed school education, up from 12% from the previous year. Kerala once again led the country with a female literacy rate of 99.5%. An analysis of statistics of previous years shows that Kerala has beaten its own record of 99.3% in 2017 and 99.2 % in 2016. Himachal Pradesh is second with 98.8% literacy rate, the same percentage it recorded in 2017.
Tamil Nadu is third in the list with 96.8 %, up from 96.2% in 2017. Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan were the states with worst female literacy rate in 2018 but both states registered better literacy rate as compared to previous years. Bihar reduced illiteracy from 28.3% in 2016, to 26.3% in 2017, to 23.5% in 2018. It was from 25% in 2016, to 24.9% in 2017 to 22.6% in 2018 in Jharkhand. In the case of Rajasthan, it was 23.5% in 2016, 22.5% in 2017 and 20% in 2018. The literacy level has a multiplier effect on other important parameters of development. According to the data compiled by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, the levels of literacy also got reflected in the fertility pattern of women in the country. The overall fertility rate of females among the unlettered was 3%, among those who are literate but without any formal education the fertility rate was 2.5%, among those who studied up to middle school it is 2.5, 1.8% in those who have finished their schools, and 1.7% among graduates. In Bihar, the fertility rate among its literate female population was as high as 3%, Uttar Pradesh came a close second with a fertility rate of 2.9% among its literate female population. Similarly, Bihar with the least literacy rate has one of the highest percent of poor peoples’ (33.74%).
The Corona pandemic has further deteriorated the literacy levels all over the globe. To contain the spread of the pandemic and given the highly infectious nature of the virus, the respective governments were forced to shut down their educational institutions. Schools were closed down in more than 190 countries. It disrupted the education of 1.27 billion children and youth. It also affected 63 million primary and secondary teachers in about 165 countries. But, the literacy cannot wait for the pandemic to be over.
This year International Literacy Day (ILD) will focus on ‘Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond’ with a focus on the role of educators and changing pedagogies. The theme will highlight literacy learning in a lifelong learning perspective and therefore mainly focus on youth and adults. There was already a gap between the policy discourse and the actual ground situation. The recent Covid-19 crisis has further widened the gap and is negatively affecting the learning of youth and adults who have no or low literacy skills and therefore tend to face multiple disadvantages. During Covid-19, in many countries, adult literacy programmes were absent in the initial education response plans, so the majority of adult literacy programmes that did exist were suspended with just a few courses continuing virtually, through TV and radio, or in open air spaces.
The COVID 19 has also provided us an opportunity to assess the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on youth and adult literacy educators and teaching and learning and to reflect on and discuss how innovative and effective pedagogies and teaching methodologies can be used in youth and adult literacy programmes to face the pandemic and beyond. The Day will also give an opportunity to analyze the role of educators, as well as effective policies, systems, governance and measures that can support educators and learning. Through a virtual conference, UNESCO will initiate a collective global discussion to reimagine the literacy teaching and learning of youth and adults in the post-Covid-19 era towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4). |
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