[NLA] International Literacy Day (long)

[Thomas Sticht]

June 23, 2001

Toward A Celebration of International Literacy Day, September 8, 2002

Thomas G. Sticht
Member, UNESCO’s International Literacy Prize Jury

Saturday, June 29th,  I will go to Paris for my 24th year as a member of
the International Jury that selects the winners of UNESCO’s International
Literacy Prizes.  The winners are announced on International Literacy Day,
celebrated on September 8th of each year. Robbin Sorenson has recently
called attention to a  web site  where those interested in learning about
how they might go about celebrating International Literacy Day can find
lots of good ideas (http://www.nationalliteracysummit.org).
Right now I would like to reiterate a point I have made repeatedly. 
During my years on the Jury there have been recurring suggestions from
well meaning people  that the field of Literacy Prizes should be expanded
to include childhood literacy programs in schools and other institutions.
However, so far I have argued successfully that the Literacy Prizes should
remain focused on adult literacy and adult literacy teachers and programs
because hundreds of applications for literacy prizes over the last two
decades have indicated that adult literacy programs can have many effects
beyond simply increasing people’s literacy. These many "mulitplier
effects," as the Jury has come to call them, include indications that  the
education of adults frequently  contributes to the educability of their
children, it can lead to better pre-natal care and post-natal care,
healthier babies, and children better prepared to enter into and benefit
from primary education. In many cases it has  helped adults get, hold, and
progress in better jobs, and permitted parents to provide a better, more
enriched, happier and healthier life for themselves and their children.
Despite all these favorable outcomes, in most parts of the world adult
literacy education remains a marginalized activity. Adult literacy
educators get very little recognition for the work they do, often under
the most difficult of circumstances. Teachers and other workers in adult
literacy  education desperately need to know that what they are doing is
valued at home and on the world scene. The UNESCO Prizes go a long way in
shining a little light on the workers in adult literacy around the world.
So I argue repeatedly that the Prizes, and Internatioinal Literacy
Day,though largely symbolic, should nonetheless stay focused on adults.
In the United States, too,  adult literacy educators work in 
marginalized, under funded, under appreciated educational contexts and
they get little or no  recognition for the valuable work they accomplish.
Yet, almost without exception, adult learners will praise their schools,
their tutors, and their teachers  for the many ways in which they help
them stay  engaged in and succeed in their educational activities.
So once again this year, I encourage those who set out to celebrate
International Literacy Day to  make sure that  they stay focused upon
ADULT LITERACY EDUCATION and the ADULT EDUCATORS who work across the
nation to  help their students overcome many obstacles to learning and go
on to enjoy the many benefits of  acquiring ever higher levels of
literacy.  In a pamphlet called Literacy, Empowerment and Poverty
Alleviation, a UNESCO publication celebrating International Literacy Day
of 1998, an anonymous literacy student expresses a striving that thousands
of adult teachers have heard and responded to:

Quote: I have words in my head, I have poems in my head and I would like
to write them. I would like to transmit them to my children, I would like
to leave a trace of myself in the history of my community. I have lived an
extremely hard life and I should like to be able to write my life. I have
experience to share. I want to be able, one day, to  write like Pablo
Neruda. I also want to be able, one day, to write like him, I HAVE
LIVED."UNQUOTE

On September 8th of this year, celebrate the adult literacy workers of the
world who , working in the unbearable heat of deserts, the cold chill of
high mountains, across windy, dusty, plains,  in hot, humid jungles,
crowded, uncaring cities, nearly unreachable rural villages, in classes on
the ground, in burnt out buildings, without books, with sand boxes for
writing, and little else besides their uncompromising dedication to their
students, light the lamp of literacy for untold millions of adults around
the globe.

International Literacy Day celebrates these many unsung  heros and the
millions upon millions of adults who have benefited many times over - 
spiritually, socially, humanly, and economically -from their work. Join
with the silent billions they have served in  saying  to these adult
literacy workers,

YOU HAVE LIVED!




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