Claims & Counter-claims
Policy makers & donors
Re-framing the questions
From the past literature on adult literacy one would be excused for thinking that literacy is a "wonder-drug". With a simple dose of literacy adults develop logical abilities, become politically aware, organise to solve their problems and increase their productivity. As a result of this miracle cure, women are empowered, the rate of population growth is reduced, immunisation coverage is increased, infant mortality declines, community organisations are strengthened, countries become modernised and governments become more accountable and democratic.
In recent years these claims have been increasingly challenged and many myths have been exploded. Rogers (1993) stresses "In truth we do not know the effects of adult literacy programmes on the quality of life or the power nexus of the poor." Wagner (1995) emphasises that there is insufficient evidence to show that adult literacy leads to modernisation or changed attitudes, to democracy or to increased productivity. There is a "lack of solid evidence undergirding the claims". Particularly there is a lack of research that separates out literacy acquired by children through formal schools and literacy acquired through adult education. The conclusion Wagner comes to is that "literacy work contains no magic answer for any society".
As the myths surrounding adult literacy have been challenged the very notion of what "literacy" is has also come into question. Street (1993) argues that "to understand literacy requires detailed in depth accounts of actual practice in different cultural settings" and he urges an "ideological approach" because "literacy practices are aspects not only of culture but also of power structures". This is a big shift from the traditional cognitive or "autonomous" approach which either explicitly or implicitly regards non-literate people as "backward", "primitive", or "the other"- with literacy being seen a fixed set of techniques which will improve their mental abilities and transform their lives.
In the ideological approach we need to speak about "literacies" rather than "literacy" - because different literacies serve different independent purposes (see Scribner and Cole 1981). Literacy is defined by each society not by some universally standard independent mark. Rather than just talk about how literacy affects people, the focus should equally be on how people affect literacy:
"individuals in a newly literate society, far from being passively transformed by literacy, instead actively and creatively apply literacy skills to suit their own purposes and needs." (Kulick and Stroud in Street 1993).
Whereas before people spoke of a great divide between orality and literacy, now these are more often regarded as being on a continuum. This is consistent with the challenging of past myths: there is no magical transition or transformation that takes place with the acquisition of reading and writing. There is nothing inherent in literacy which changes people's way of thinking or their outlook on the world. Moreover, literacy in itself will not change social structures or promote economic or political development.
These debates, whilst sometimes becoming abstract and academic are of crucial importance. If literacy is not a magical cure to the "disease" of illiteracy; indeed if illiteracy is not to be regarded as a disease at all, "India's sin and shame" as Gandhi called it, then why bother?
Like the academics, policy makers and donors have undergone a shift in their attitudes to adult literacy. In the 1960s, 1970s and even into the 1980s adult literacy programmes were popular -playing a key role in many national development plans. In 1990 at the conference to celebrate the UN's International Literacy Year in Jomtien, the governments of the world committed themselves to "basic education for all". This appeared to reinforce literacy in general. But since then, despite an increase in investment in primary education for children by both governments and international donors there has been relatively little parallel investment in adult education.
The World Bank (1995) continues to argue forcibly for "good rates of return" to investment in primary education of children but has not yet undertaken similar work with adult literacy. The European Union has committed itself to support basic education overseas but pays only lip service to adult literacy. Bilateral donors have in some cases, after many years of support to adult education, started withdrawing (eg NORAD in Tanzania).
These trends are worrying, not least because of the important role that adult literacy can play in reinforcing children's education. It is parents who decide whether to send children to school (and it is parents who increasingly have to pay for that education). A literate and supportive home environment can be fundamental to consolidating and extending a child's progress in learning. Moreover it is the organisation of parents into PTAs or village education committees that can be one of the best means to improve quality in primary schools.
Why then are donors not investing substantially in adult literacy programmes alongside primary education (to fulfil what they committed themselves to at Jomtien)? Maybe it is, in part, the fact that some of the past myths surrounding adult literacy have been shattered. Maybe it is, in part, a lack of resources and a consequent need to prioritise. Maybe it is related to the difficulty "for donors to justify adult literacy in the kind of hard numbers terms that appeal to their economists" (Iredale 1995). However, a recent World Bank Discussion Paper (Abadzi 1994) perhaps provides the most important reason: most adult literacy programmes have failed. Reviewing adult literacy programmes worldwide over the past thirty years, Abadzi estimates that for every 100 learners who joined classes, on average only 12 of them actually learnt to read and write. Moreover, adult literacy programmes have, in general, failed to link literacy to wider development. There are of course exceptions (particularly with small scale programmes) but this is the norm. Even where remarkable successes have been declared they have rarely been sustained (eg Nicaragua, see Archer and Costello 1990). This has led to widespread disillusion and has made many governments and donors reluctant to invest in adult literacy.
Yet this is surely a mistake. It is not adult literacy itself that has failed - but adult literacy programmes.
We should respond to this by examining, in more detail, what is happening within adult literacy programmes. Even a simple review will reveal that, worldwide, almost all adult literacy programmes have one thing in common - the same basic method. That method is based on the use of a "primer". In order to resolve some of the problems associated with past literacy programmes should we not re-examine this basic methodology and look for alternatives?
Many problems appear to have arisen from the way in which literacy debates have been framed. We have been asked in the past to look for the benefits of "literacy-in-itself" (the raw skills/ techniques) and this has not usually been related to the process of acquiring literacy or to the socio-economic context of particular programmes.
In developing REFLECT we accept that literacy is not in-itself "empowering". It is not, in-itself, something that will bring spontaneous benefits. It does not in-itself transform people and their ways of being.
However, the process of learning literacy is a significant moment in an adult's life. Joining a literacy class represents, in one way or another, a desire for something to change. The experience of learning - what happens within the process - is thus of fundamental importance in determining what happens to that desire. The imparting of literacy techniques will not significantly transform lives, but the wider processes involved and the collective experience of learning may do so.
This is dependent on the literacy methodology used. If people are lectured at, made passive or treated like children, the benefits may be minimal. But if the literacy class becomes a forum in which people can actively participate as equals and engage with some critical issues of their community, then some of the benefits of literacy might pass from the realms of myth to reality.
In this evaluation of the first two years of the REFLECT approach we have sought to explore the extent to which adult literacy programmes can act as a central catalyst for development. We have looked at the past claims and we have tried to determine whether, by using a more effective methodology, we can reassert some links to wider development. The central hypothesis was that there is a relationship between the power practices within the literacy process and the empowering outcomes flowing from that process.
