M.A. Jabbar :
As the only United Nations agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education, UNESCO’s work encompasses educational development from pre-school through to higher education, including technical and vocational education and training, non-formal education and literacy. UNESCO in 1965 declared September 8 as International Literacy Day. Since 1966 the day is observed worldwide among the member countires. Every year a theme of the day is selected by UNESCO. The theme this year Literacy and sustainable development is timely and appropriate. On the day UNESCO reminds the international community of the status of literacy and adult learning globally.The purpose is to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies.
According to data released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, literacy rates for adults and youth continue to rise. Young women aged 15-24 are making the strongest gains, but still lag behind young men. In 2011, 87% of female youth had basic literacy skills compared to 92% of males. Overall more than half of countries with data have youth literacy rates of 95% or higher. Despite these gains, 774 million adults (15 years and older) still cannot read or write, two thirds of them (493 millin) are women. Among youth, 123 million are illiterate of which 76 million are female. Even though the size of the global illiterate population is shrinking, the female proportion has remained vircually steady at 63% to 64%.
According to UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All (2006), south and west Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate(54.6%), followed by sub-Saharan African(59.5%) and the Arab States (62.7%). Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina faso(12.8%), Niger (14.4%), Mali(19%). The report shows a clear connection between illiteracy and countries with severe poverty and between literacy and prejudice against women.
According to UNESCO, the definition of literacy and a literate person is vast. A literate person is one, who can with understanding both read and write a short statement relevant to routine life, and capable of analytical understanding of men’s condition in the world. Literacy is a means of personal liberation and development and delivering individuals educational efforts. Literacy is a method of achieving faculties to develop their economic status and general well-being and in calculating values of national integration, conservation of surroundings, fairer sex’s equality, and observance of standard family tradition.
Literacy is not just about educating, it is a unique and powerful tool to eradicate poverty and a strong means for social and human progress. The focus of literacy lies in acquiring basic education for all, eradicating poverty, reducing infant mortality, simmering down population growth, reaching gender equality, and ensuring constant development, peace and democracy.
There are sufficient reasons why literacy is the centre of Education for All (EFA). A good quality basic education equips people with literacy potentials for life and further learning, literate parents are inclined to send their children to school, literate people are prone to access continuing educational opportunities, and educated societies are better geared to keep pace with the pressing development. Hence, literacy is considered as an effective way to enlighten a society and arm it facing the challenges of life in a stronger and efficient way, raise the level of personal living, create and assist change the society. To quote UNESCO Director General – Literacy is much more than an educational policy-it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century.
We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy. As such for over 40 years UNESCO has been celebrating international literacy day by reminding the international community that literacy is human right and the foundation of all learning.
Since 2000, for disseminating literacy across the world in big scale various governments of the world have announced four initiatives in collaboration with several agencies of the United Nations. These four initiatives are i.Education for all, ii.Millennium development goals iii.United Nations literacy decade and iv. United Nations decade of education for constant development. Several educational programmes have been launched by the governments of the world to make the people literate.
Of course, such literacy programmes have become successful, but still a good section of country’s population is still non-literate and as such, many things remain to do on the part of governments, different agencies, NGOs and individuals for successful implementation of the literacy programmes. We must recognize that making the entire literate is yet a far-fetched goal.
The fact is that without making the entire world literate we cannot expect a global development.
As per latest literacy survey report of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the country’s literacy rate of the population aged above 15 reached 59.82 per cent while the illiteracy rate is 40.18 and the literacy of women is 55.71. According to BBS, the literacy rate has been increased substantially (11.75%) during the tenure of present government and this has been possible due to government’s untiring efforts to fulfill its election pledge although more attention is required to focus on this important matter to implement the plan of literacy programme.
The government’s project for launching Fundamental Literacy Project in as much as 64 districts, if implemented, will help provide fundamental literacy knowledge to 4.5 million illiterate people of ages between 15 to 45. MDGs-Bangladesh progress report 2012 reveals that it has made commendable progress in respect of increasing equitable access in education (Net Enrolment Rate:98.7 percent; girls 99.4 percent, boys: 97.2 percent), reduction of dropouts, improvement in completion of the cycle, and implementation of a number of quality enhancement measures in primary education.
It further reveals that Bangladesh has already achieved gender parity in primary and secondary enrolment. Initiatives have been taken to introduce pre-school education to prepare the children for formal schooling.
The government in the process of implementing a comprehensive National Education Policy (2010) to achieve its objectives.
The policy provides Bangladesh’s intention to ensure all citizens with a quality education. The policy aims to reduce regional and gender based disparities in education and has a section on women’s education. Bangladesh, like all other modern countries wants to educate all women to unleash their potential so that they can become confident citizens contributing to social and economic development. The constitution of Bangladesh has provision for free and compulsory primary education.
The challenges under MDG included attaining the targets of primary education completion rate and the adult literacy rate. A large part of the physically and mentally retarded children remains out of the schooling system. According to the report, the quality of the education is also a challenge at the primary and higher levels.
There are many obstacles of lower rate of enrollment in primary education, which include poverty, gender, environmental factors, natural calamities, school distance, cultural entities, parents’ education, and perception of child capability of attending school.
As such, awareness may be created to remove the obstacles. Although Bangladesh has made significant progress in enrollment of primary school children, some parts of the country are lagging behind the national rate like haor and char areas, CHT regions and among some ethnic and socially excluded groups. A large number of children going to school crossing river by boat and risky bridge. The situation becomes worse during the rainy season. Many areas remain under floodwater.
Therefore, environmental factors and natural calamities also act as barrier on education of the children of those areas. Along with government, various NGOs, social workers and other philanthropic institutions and individuals are working to address the problem. Yet, more action from all concerned needed to overcome the problem. Unless the problem remains unattended, the observance of literacy day will not bring fruitful achievements.
Bangladesh is a developing country thriving to achieve various socio-economic targets for the welfare of the people. Keeping mass people illiterate and without a strong base for education for all, a strong nation equipped with socio-economic development cannot be expected. As such, government has given priority for the achievement of literacy rate in the country.
All must work together to achieve the goal. The theme of the Literacy Day this year is timely and persistent to the socio-economic condition of the country. The literacy day is an opportunity for us. Let us take an oath to make our country as well as the world literate. It is possible if we take the very first step ourselves by sparing some time to educate people living around us. Let us work to eradicate illiteracy and enlighten lives.
(M.A. Jabbar writes on health and environment issues and is executive secretary of ADHUNIK, national anti-tobacco organization of Bangladesh.)
