World Literacy

How Countries Rank and Why It Matters

John W. Miller,Michael C. McKenna

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317437970
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Languages & Linguistics
• Sous-sujet: Literacy

International literacy assessments have provided ample data for ranking nations, charting growth, and casting blame. Summarizing the findings of these assessments, which afford a useful vantage from which to view world literacy as it evolves, this book examines literate behavior worldwide, in terms of both the ability of populations from a wide variety of nations to read and the practice of literate behavior in those nations. Drawing on The World's Most Literate Nations, author Jack Miller's internationally released study, emerging trends in world literacy and their relationships to political, economic, and social factors are explored. Literacy, and in particular the practice of literate behaviors, is used as a lens through which to view countries' economic development, gender equality, resource utilization, and ethnic discrimination. Above all, this book is about trajectories. It begins with historical contexts, described in terms of support for literate cultures. Based on a variety of data sources, these trends are traced to the present and then projected ahead. The literate futures of nations are discussed and how these relate to their economic and sociocultural development. This book is unique in providing a broader perspective on an intractable problem, a vantage point that offers useful insights to inform policy, and in bringing together an array of relevant data sources not typically associated with literacy status.

1
Keys to the Kingdom: The Long Struggle for Literacy

The 1991 film, Black Robe, contains a remarkable scene illustrating the power of literacy, a power we frequently take for granted. The story traces the journey of two Catholic priests through the Canadian wilderness of the seventeenth century. While one of the priests writes in his journal, an Algonquin guide asks what he is doing. When the priest explains that words can be written as well as spoken, the Algonquin is clearly skeptical. To prove his point, the priest asks the guide to tell him a fact he cannot possibly know. He writes it down and carries the message to the other priest – well out of earshot – who reads it aloud. The looks of astonishment on the Algonquins’ faces reflect the dawning significance of what they have witnessed.¹

To say that we have lost any sense of astonishment concerning the power of literacy would be an understatement. Though few dispute the importance of becoming literate, the attainment itself is often dismissed as the mere ability to read and write, a technical accomplishment.

We offer an analogy to demonstrate how this tendency is only natural. Literacy’s role in society is similar to that of drinking water. It is not an end in itself but enables individuals to achieve the ends that matter to them. Like water, when literacy is widely available it becomes invisible. We use it unconsciously to pursue a better life. And like water, we take literacy for granted, as a given, and the result can be complacency and loss of perspective.

In reality, however, the attainment of widespread literacy is both recent and fragile. In this chapter, we argue that members of literate societies can only understand the true stakes at play by appreciating the sacrifices that many have made in order to become literate. We illustrate how these sacrifices can involve violent conflict, and how a great many individuals nevertheless continue to make them in the present day. The perspective we champion is consequently far different from the everyday notion that literacy is synonymous with instruction and test scores. While these are certainly important considerations in becoming literate, focusing on them risks confusing means with ends. Behaving in literate ways is far more than simply acquiring proficiency. Patronizing bookstores and libraries; reading newspapers, novels, emails, and blogs; broadening our horizons by traveling to unseen places are actions that make us part of the literate community.

The power and value of being literate in a literate society are played out every day around the world. Many individuals, and in fact whole societies, make considerable sacrifices to become literate just as others take it for granted. Societies that do not practice literate behavior are often squalid, undernourished in mind and body, repressive of human rights and dignity, brutal, and harsh. Present-day examples are easy to list, but in fact this has always been the case. As Samuel Johnson observed more than two centuries ago, “The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing.” We concede that various forms of “barbarity” can be found in all societies, but they are much more prevalent where literate behavior is absent. Literacy and quality of life go hand-in-hand. With literacy comes the power of belonging to a privileged group and the freedom that derives from that power. Frederick Douglass, who struggled as a slave to learn to read, said it best: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

The ability to read is a necessary, but not a sufficient, prerequisite of being literate. Malcolm X explained the distinction: “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life.” Learning to read must occur in order to become literate, but it does not ensure a literate life. The term aliterate refers to those who are able to read but choose not to. A life of aliteracy is little different than that of the illiterate. As Mark Twain incisively remarked, the person who doesn’t read has no advantage over the person who can’t.

Beyond a cognizance of the sacrifices of resources, time, and effort that many have made to become literate, another means of appreciating the value and power of literacy is to examine the result of depriving a society of its texts. Acts of book burning, or libricide, are a familiar form of forced deprivation, but we must also consider the self-imposed rejection of literacy, which essentially brings about the same end. Joseph Brodsky, the exiled Russian poet, offered a blunt distinction: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” And Neil Postman, prolific American author and critic, arrived at a similar judgment: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read it.”

We suspect that few would take issue with these sentiments, which will ground our examination of nearly every aspect of literacy. They express the importance of not only becoming literate but of subsequently participating in literate communities. Literacy conveys power, confers advantage, and connects us to the living and the dead. As a few examples will show, these qualities are manifested in ways that are often obvious yet sometimes surprising. They have raised teaching to a noble calling yet have occasioned some of the most heinous acts imaginable.

Keys to the Literate Kingdom

Consider the case of two soldiers inserted into a foreign land and charged with preventing armed insurrection. These two men were not officers, nor were they raised in privileged homes. They were not persons of sophistication. They were merely two enlisted men holding the rank of private and doing the dangerous job assigned to them.

Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery were apprehensive to say the very least, and perhaps intimidated and threatened as well, by the inhabitants, both indigenous and immigrant, of the land they occupied. As with many occupying forces, they were viewed by some as necessary but unwelcome visitors and by others as hated subjugators. The political issues that swirled about them did not concern or even interest them. They were soldiers doing their duty.

Uncertainty traveled with them daily as they completed their tours. Around every corner and behind every door there was the possibility of hostile attack. The disrespect of the locals, expressed in catcalls, jeers, and even isolated attacks, caused these soldiers to be ever alert. They were on edge every moment of every day, not only when they were patrolling the streets, but when they were garrisoned. While they held no preconceived malice toward the locals, they themselves felt increasingly despised. While they viewed their role as one of maintaining the peace and preventing violence – ostensibly noble goals – they were at the same time disrespected. How could this be the case when they were there to help? Why were they so detested?

As time passed, tensions rose among the inhabitants, who increasingly viewed Kilroy and Montgomery as occupiers. Almost daily, stones, chunks of ice, and pieces of coal were hurled at them by both children and adults, sometimes over walls and fences, and at other times thrown by perpetrators in plain sight who then scurried off down King Street. This was not the worst of the affronts, however. Events escalated. Eventually shots rang out.

These events emboldened the locals, who were encouraged by the lack of response. At the same time, Kilroy, Montgomery, and their fellow soldiers felt increasingly frustrated. Though under orders to exercise caution, their training was built on aggression not restraint, on winning battles not keeping the peace, and on conquest not “nation building.” As tensions swelled, the protests led to large-scale destruction of property. Armed groups of as many as 60 locals wandered the streets. The pressure on the troops to put down insurrection grew as the escalation involved the destruction of more and more property.

As you may have known (or guessed), Kilroy and Montgomery were British soldiers stationed in Boston shortly before the American Revolution. They were brought to prominence by a signal event that occurred on March 5, 1770, an event now known as the Boston Massacre. On that evening, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy found themselves deeply immersed in a confrontation with the colonials. Marching as part of a group to the Custom House to extricate one of their fellow soldiers from a crowd, Montgomery was hit and knocked to the ground with a club. Many believe he was the first to fire. In the altercation that ensued, five colonials were killed. The first was Crispus Attucks.

As a result of the incident, eight British troops and their captain were tried for murder. They were ably defended by John Adams, then a Massachusetts attorney and later the second U.S. president. Only two of the defendants, Kilroy and Montgomery, were convicted – of manslaughter, not murder. Though convicted, Kilroy and Montgomery claimed “benefit of clergy” before sentencing, a centuries-old legal strategy to avoid the death penalty.

Their claim brings us to the point of the story, which is all about literacy. The legal term, benefit of clergy, was part of British common law through the eighteenth century, and Kilroy and Montgomery were two of the last people to make use of it. To receive this benefit, one originally had to be of a religious order, as the phrase implies, but in time it meant only that the defendant was literate, a fact demonstrated by reading aloud a Bible passage. If the connection between being literate and avoiding punishment seems unaccountable, remember that literacy was then far from universal. A literate defendant was likely to be well educated and thus to warrant special consideration. Illiterate convicts in time learned to game the system by memorizing a psalm or some other verse and then pretending to read it. Kilroy, for example, is thought to have been illiterate but managed to pass this high-stakes “test” in order to avoid the gallows. Nevertheless, in these two cases, and in thousands of others across centuries and continents, the value of being literate is concretely demonstrated, the merit of entering into a literate society made demonstrable.

The Cost of Literacy

Certainly the benefit of being literate – of holding the “keys to the kingdom” – has always been high. But so has the cost. And because literacy confers power, one way of maintaining a power differential has been to deny literacy to groups with low social standing. Preventing members of these groups from learning to read has repeatedly been a method of ensuring subservience. One example is the plight of women in certain Muslim countries. Others include people of color in South Africa during apartheid, child factory workers in Ireland, and Irish-Catholics in the United States.

There is, however, no more salient example than laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read in the United States. This is not to say that these laws were not occasionally ignored. Circumventing them occurred in a number of ways. Sometimes the master or mistress directly taught slaves in defiance of the law. On other occasions, the few slaves who had learned to read taught others. And an especially poignant method was for slave children to learn alongside the children of their masters, even if it meant sitting outside the schoolhouse and listening in.

As these instances suggest, slave owners were clearly not of one mind on the appropriateness of teaching slaves to read. But fears were fueled as word circulated of slave rebellions. Rebellions led by Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and, most famously, Nate Turner all occurred in the early 1800s. Literacy, many reasoned, could only contribute to a rebellious spirit. Some slave owners voiced a more utilitarian objection to literacy instruction. They simply saw no occasion for slaves to utilize literacy in a way that was productive to their work.

For Africans, the motivations to read were clear and numerous. Their families were separated by the slave trade and they wanted to remain connected. They wanted to earn the right to freedom and to gain access to the processes of acquiring that right. They also desired fulfillment as human beings, which meant being vested with membership in the literate community.

A powerful force in favor of literacy instruction was the conservative Protestant belief, held by many slave owners, that it was imperative for blacks to become literate so that they could read the Bible, hymns, and other religious materials as part of their conversion to Christianity. Perhaps the best organized of the campaigns against slave illiteracy was that generated by the Reverend Samuel Davies, who launched a transatlantic crusade. He believed that conversion could only occur if individuals could read religious writings and study the Bible. He initiated an extensive campaign in Europe and raised money to bring books to the slaves of Virginia. Although his success was curtailed by limited resources, his work in the mid-1700s created a corps of literate slaves and free men in Virginia. This initiative became to some extent self-perpetuating as slaves taught other slaves.

In sum, the ambivalence of white Americans, and in particular slaveholders in the South, is clear. The need for slaves to study the Bible afforded a strong impetus for literacy instruction. On the other hand, fears of rebellion militated against these same efforts.²

The individual stories of slaves learning to read and of those attempting to teach them are numerous. Many of the best examples derive from the slave narratives, an excellent compilation of the autobiographical stories told by slaves in their own words.³ These accounts were sometimes written by the slaves themselves, and sometimes dictated to others. None is more relevant than the story of Frederick Douglass.

He wrote of the almost unspeakable atrocities he suffered at the hands of several sets of owners, but then described, with great appreciation, his experience with the wife of one of his masters, Mrs. Hugh Auld. He describes her as “kindly” and explained how she began by teaching him the alphabet and later the spelling of simple words. However, after Mr. Auld discovered his wife’s teaching, he forbade her to continue. Douglass quoted Auld as saying,

“If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.⁴ A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”⁵

Douglass went on to explain that these sentiments transformed his life and ironically instilled within him a powerful motivation to learn to read. He wrote that, “What he [Auld] most dreaded…I most desired.” He further noted that, “In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.”

In his moving account, Douglass provided many details of how he continued learning to read, including taking bread from the house and giving it to poor white children in exchange for instruction. He maintained that the more proficient he became, the more he detested being enslaved. He at last noted that the

very discontent which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I arrived under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.⁶

Notwithstanding those feelings, Douglass’ influence on history, society, his fellow slaves and freemen exemplify the sacrifices made by slaves to hold the “keys to the kingdom.”

While Douglass’ story of help and self-education is inspiring, it was far from unique. Consider the example of Margaret Douglass, a white woman, who was arrested in Virginia after she opened a free school for black children. She and her husband had been slave owners. After his death in South Carolina she returned to Virginia, committed to the idea of teaching black children to read and write. Although she had not transitioned from slave owner to abolitionist, she nevertheless felt a moral duty to help children read “the word of God.” Her work resulted in her arrest and conviction.

What happened next is further evidence of the ambivalence of the times. The jury sympathized with her cause and set the fine at one dollar. She was allowed to leave Virginia to visit her daughter but when she returned for sentencing, the judge ordered that she be imprisoned. In his statement he indicated that he believed that slaves could be converted to Christianity without being able to r...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Keys to the Kingdom: The Long Struggle for Literacy
• 2 What Is Literacy? The Challenge of Framing the Problem
• 3 The Rise and Decline of Measured Reading Ability – National Winners and Losers
• 4 The Crisis of Elementary Schooling – Literacy’s Training Ground
• 5 The Crisis of Secondary and Post-Secondary Schooling – Literacy’s Practice Field and Proving Ground
• 6 Supporting Literate Cultures – The Past, Present, and Future of Libraries, Newspapers, and Bookstores
• 7 Skill versus Will: Important Lessons for Policy
• 8 Are Books Obsolete? Examining Trends in Media Use
• 9 Overcoming the SES/Literacy Relationship – Making Exceptions the Rule
• 10 The Future of the Knowledge-Based Economy and Change in the World Order
• Index