Literacy rate

“ Unless otherwise specified, all rates are based on the most common definition - the ability to read and write at a specified age. Detailing the standards that individual countries use to assess the ability to read and write is beyond the scope of the Factbook. Information on literacy, while not a perfect measure of educational results, is probably the most easily available and valid for international comparisons. Low levels of literacy, and education in general, can impede the economic development of a country in the current rapidly changing, technology-driven world. ”

“ Instead of trying to standardize, education should stimulate differences in order to derive the most benefit from them. Education should stimulate complementary avenues to excellence, instead of equal access to mediocrity. Some people may be uneducatable. They might have characteristics impossible to reduce to the common denominator that literacy-based education implies. These students might require alternative education paths in order to optimally become what their abilities allow them to be, and what practical experience will validate as relevant and desired, no matter how different. ”

“ Much of the lack of literacy could be attributed to the fact that children of school age either were not enrolled in school or, if they were enrolled, did not attend classes regularly. There was also a fairly large percentage of children who left school without completing their studies or, having completed only the mandatory first four grades, relapsed into illiteracy in adult life. ”

“ The administrative set up needs to be thoroughly reorganized. It should be emphasized here that imparting literacy skills to an illiterate population is more than imparting mere ability in what is called rudimentary reading, writing, and arithmetic. ”

“ Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education; and Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, constitute themselves in the pragmatic framework of literacy-based education. They declare, and appropriately so, that educational standards are declining, that education is failing to produce the type of citizen a democracy needs. As reputable as they undoubtedly are, these scholars, and many of those in charge of education, do not seem to realize what changes have been taking place in the real world. ”

“ Consider our so-called educational "problems": "How may we keep pupils in the high school?" Feed and clothe them. "Shall we teach Latin, Greek, and mathematics to the 'masses'?" If they are worth teaching to anybody, the masses need them most. "Who shall go to college?" Everybody. "When shall culture training give place to technical education for work?" Never.
These questions are not "problems." They are simply "excuses" for spending less time and money on the next generation. Given ten millions of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million children? ”

“ We notice that literate language use does not work as we assume or were told it should, and wonder what can be done to make things fit our expectations. Parents hope that better schools with better teachers will remedy the situation. Teachers expect more from the family and suggest that society should invest more in order to maintain literacy skills. Professors groan under the prospect of ill-prepared students entering college. Publishers redefine their strategies as new forms of expression and communication vie for public attention and dollars. ”

“ Without basing our discussion on human pragmatics, it would be impossible to explain why, despite all the effort and money societies invest in education, and all the time allocated for education-sometimes over a quarter of a lifetime-despite research of cognitive processes pertinent to literacy, people wind up less literate, but, surprisingly, not at all less efficient. ”

“ It is now time to consider the effect of this system of compulsory education upon the masses of the people. In the first two chapters an attempt was made to sketch some of the anomalies brought about by the educational methods of our public schools and universities, and by the pernicious system of public competitive examinations. We will now turn our attention exclusively to the masses, and endeavour to see what national instruction does for them.
The common people labour under the delusion that children who have passed the standards of an elementary school are educated. ”

“ In the elementary grades of American city schools, investigators find fifty, sixty, and in some extreme cases, seventy pupils under the charge of one teacher, while the average number, per teacher, is about forty.
Recrimination is idle. The obvious fact remains that the rate of growth in school population is greater than the rate of growth in the school plant. The schools in many cities have not caught up with their educational problem. The result is a multiplication of administrative problems, not the least of which is the question of class size. ”

“ Normal schools have also developed till there are 45 with over 10,000 students. The colleges are also flourishing; and of professional schools the South has more than 160, with above 12,000 students.
A rough measure of the need of education is the statistics of illiteracy, which in the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education is defined as the status of a person over ten years of age who is able neither to read nor to write. Such illiterates in Germany are about one per cent of the population; in England about six per cent; in the whole of the United States about ten per cent. ”

“ Among many possible literacies, it maintains a domain of appropriateness, and within this domain it allows for local performance synchronized with the general expectation of efficiency. The shift from literacy to literacies-in fact, the shift to the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy- takes place against the background of conflict between means of restricted efficiency and new means for coping with larger populations, and with the newly acquired right to well-being, or even affluence. Almost all new sciences evolve in new technologies. ”

“ According to this census the greatest proportion of illiterates was still to be found in the rural areas and among women. Literacy courses were continued until late 1958, when the government officially declared that illiteracy had been eliminated. Despite this authoritative statement, Western demographers consider that, although illiteracy has been significantly reduced, it probably still exists among older segments of the population, particularly in remote areas of the country. ”

“ The number of volunteer literacy tutors has increased dramatically, more public-private partnerships are being forged, and illiteracy has become a key concern at all levels of State and local government. Still, many people who need help in developing literacy skills are unaware of the services available to them. ”

“ Taking the country over, a little less than one in ten of the children who enter our graded school ever enter high school, and not quite one in fifty enter college or university. As many who enter college do not complete the course, I am not far from the truth when I say that only about one young man in one hundred continues his education until he reaches the age—twenty-one—when the law assumes that his reason is mature. I am emphasizing these statistics in order to show that we are indebted to others more than to ourselves for our education. ”

“ Why is it, I would ask, that in spite of the millions of money that have been voted by parliament,—in spite of the increased number of schools,—in spite of the laudable exertions of both clergy and laity,—the government statistics prove that scarce any progress is being made in educating the masses of the people. Nay, I believe I am correct in stating, that year by year, the number of scholars over ten years old actually decreases, and that as a rule, children stay longer at old-fashioned dame schools, than at schools under first-rate teachers. ”

“ The education is conducted at the public expense, and the pupils consequently pay no fees. Parents feel that a free education is as much a part of the birthright of their children as the protection which the law affords to their life and property.
The schools called common schools are supported by an education rate, and in each State are under the administration of a general board of education, with local boards, elected by all who pay the rate. ”

“ And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.
In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. ”

“ I think most parents agree it's time to change course. We must move education forward again, with common sense as our guide. We must put the basics back in the schools and the parents back in charge.
The National Commission for Excellence in Education recommends requiring 4 years of English in high school and 3 solid years, each, of math and science. It suggests more and longer school days, higher goals, and tougher standards for matriculation. Our teachers should be better trained and better paid. And, we must no longer make excuses for those who are not qualified to teach. ”

“ He maintained that we must train children for the station to which, not by birth but by natural capacity, they properly belong. He would select the clever children and spend money liberally in giving them the fullest possible opportunities for higher study. But to the great body of children who are incapable of really using any higher teaching he would give a very low standard of education confined to the three R’s: the teaching of reading should be made the basis, for reading is the key to knowledge. ”

“ Literacy-based transactions involved all the characteristics of written language and all the implications of reading pertinent to the transaction. Literacy contributed to the diversification of needs and to a better expression of desires, thus helping markets to diversify and reach a level of efficiency not possible otherwise. With required education and laws prohibiting child labor, the productive part of people's lives was somehow reduced, but their ability to be more effective within modes adapted to literacy was enhanced. ”

“ Now if we accept these tests we have to conclude that it is useless to grade children for education unless those “grades” correspond accurately and specifically to the capacities of the children. Work must be done in each specific subject with—and only with—those who have approximately the same capacity. The “average” is totally unknown in that “real life” which we are constantly forced to set up in antithesis to the school. In no function of life is any one going to be judged by a composite ability to read, write, spell, figure. ”

“ Scared that in giving up literacy training we commit treason to our own condition, we maintain literacy and try to adapt it to new circumstances of working, thinking, feeling, and exploring. In view of the inefficiency built into our system of education, we try to compromise by adding the dimension characteristic of the current status of human experience of multiple partial literacies. ”

“ Every Grammar School has its own scholarships; the Universities have open scholarships and bursaries often of considerable value; and a free, or partially free, education is open to the majority of the youth of the upper middle class on one condition, that of brains. It is small wonder that every Grammar and Public School bases its curriculum upon these conditions, knows exactly what [86] standard of merit will secure the ‘Hastings,’ knows the boys who have a chance, and orders their very strenuous work towards the end in view. ”

“ If it is not yet true everywhere that all children must go to school, it is true that all may go to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great advance has been made in American scholarship, in specialized learning and investigation; that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the first rank in literature and in science is much larger to the population than a generation ago.
But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to popular education? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education having upon the general intellectual habit and taste? ”

“ But, we are told, the public-school system educates the people more rapidly than private education could possibly do—educates a greater number in a given time. Does that settle the question? Does the quality of education, do the moral influences accompanying it, count for nothing? Whether would it be better to give five hundred an education destitute of moralizing and idealizing influences, or three hundred an education penetrated by those influences, trusting to the action of the smaller number to promote social order and harmony? ”

“ Private efforts, individual and associated labors, all personal benefactions, and various national foundations, have severally exerted the voluntary and in part the coercive methods of education, and, under the most effective operation of them all combined, the national illiteracy has not been diminished, but is rather increasing with the growth in population. How, then, can this system, or, properly, no system, be relied on? With it, can England apply to practical demands the education which the slow growth of the ages has made ready for her hand? ”