NN37, May 2006
Special Theme on Education and Training out of Poverty? A Status Report
LITERACY FOR ALL: CHIPPING AWAY AT THE CEILING
By Sonali Nag-Arulmani, Promise Foundation
Literacy is a building block for enhancing quality of livelihoods. This is the simple premise that motivates families to send their children to school, governments to increase spending in the primary education sector and indeed the international community to an ?Education For All? commitment. The primary school is seen as the place where the foundation for literacy development is laid. But in reality do primary schools promote literacy? The answer far too often is, ?No?. Literacy attainment studies show that an alarmingly large proportion of children come out of primary schools unable to read and write a simple sentence. While many struggle with common words, others are trapped in a meaningless world of mechanical reading and writing. For too many children the nature of schooling sets ceilings to their literacy development and thus, a ceiling to future prosperity.There is an urgent need to look at the many reasons why children fail to read and write and to commit to the strenuous process of ensuring that all children get the best chance for literacy development. Our work has attempted to draw together the complex matrix of language, literacy culture, language education philosophy and policy, to understand the literacy opportunities that children have.
We have in India begun to use a multidimensional model to understand the ceilings that different primary education environments place on literacy development. Briefly, the key dimensions in the model are the extent of discontinuity between home and school language experiences, the scope of the literacy culture in the child?s environment, the explicitness with which literacy skills are taught, the richness of resources available to the teacher and the cognitive complexity of learning to read in the school language. When looking at literacy culture two key issues that emerge are the extent of availability of print in the environment and role models through whom children could catch a glimpse of the enjoyment and relevance of reading and writing. Similarly when analysing the language education philosophy, our model examines the explicitness with which reading and writing are taught and the place given to children?s own world of experience. The cognitive complexity of learning to read and write are analysed based on whether literacy acquisition is in a non-dominant language and the nature of the orthography. The multilingual and multi-scriptal demands of the language education policy and the pace set for learning are also examined. The data derived from such an analysis provides clues as to how to ensure literacy for every child. Further, the data provides pointers to understand how to support children?s movement along the continuum of literacy and how to sustain this literacy.
The location of a primary education environment along the above parameters has significant implications for policy and planning. For example, what are the ways in which teacher training programmes need to be structured and what is the length and scope of the training needed in different settings? What is the education spending for teaching-learning resources in a print starved environment? A model such as this helps frame questions about the pedagogical challenges for resource poor communities with a low literacy culture.
It is anticipated that such a model can also be used to predict which schools (and larger units such as districts and states) could place ceilings on literacy development and thus where the benefits of primary schooling could be diluted. Information emerging from research based on such a model could guide the detailing of spending for primary education, especially for the most challenging, resource poor communities.
The approach to EFA that this model proposes is in contrast to what may be called a ?fast track?, numbers approach. Enrolment that compromises quality of education is one example of the numbers approach. Focussing on accelerated learning programmes and pull-out remedial programmes instead of a comprehensive, mainstream programme, is another example. Too often the fast track approaches do not strengthen systems that will sustain the benefits of primary education for all children, after specific education reform programmes have run their course. By their very nature fast track programmes do not address the fundamental processes that set ceilings to literacy development.
Against the background of mass scale under attainment, chipping away at artificial ceilings for literacy development are essential if today?s children are to be adequately prepared for future prosperity and quality livelihoods.