The gift of literacy

I have been laying out web pages in Finnish. Finnish is a language unlike any other and I have been suffering from the frustration of not knowing where to make paragraph breaks. What a small problem.

I have also been working in Finland. Fortunately, Finland is bilingual because until 1806 it was ruled by Sweden and 5% of the population still speaks Swedish. I don't speak Swedish but it is sufficiently similar to other European languages for me to be able to recognise street names and glean a few other essential facts.

Imagine being unable to read in your own country. Reading is the source of so much wealth. Books, magazines, newspapers. But also telephone directories, road and station names. Think how much you take on board every day through reading. Where would you be now without it? Possibly unemployed, certainly in a dead end job. But also living a life so much less rich. Television and radio cannot substitute for the richness of learning for yourself. Asking the way is not the same as finding it for yourself.

Extrapolate, now, to society. What world would we be in without books and papers? How would we have developed without written communication and access to the learnings of the past? There would be no Internet.

And yet we privileged classes live in a society that condones an 'education' system that allows otherwise healthy children to leave school without the gift of literacy. A relation of mine is the governor of an English secondary school. He writes in his Christmas message: “I am still shocked at the low standard of literacy with which some 12 year olds come into school. The best are very good, but the worst do not know and cannot spell the months of the year!”

Much of my work, at its most basic, involves raising the self esteem of individuals and organisations, empowering them to deal with change. I wonder what self esteem these children enjoy?

I was in the USA recently, when George W Bush finally became president elect. I watched on television his acceptance speech, with its commitment to education. I also watched a programme about testing in Texas schools. Junior school children are repeatedly tested in basic literacy and numeracy – and school league tables are based on the performance of the lowest socio-economic ethnic group in each school. The programme focused on the impact of the cramming and coaching for an artificial test. Certainly what we saw in the classrooms was not what we would consider an ideal rounded education. But the change in performance in sink schools and amongst what would otherwise be educational drop outs was dramatic.

Perhaps drastic methods are justified to ensure that every child gains the tools to allow him or her to continue an education. And if such tests are seen as the beginning of an education rather than an end, the teachers and all children can continue a more rounded, creative and learning journey.

In the meantime, how do we make up for past neglect?

Richard Winfield (2/1/2001)