Adult Literacy: A handbook for development workers - Softcover

Fordham, Paul; Holland, Deryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0855983159 ISBN 13: 9780855983154

Publisher: Oxfam Professional, 1995

Synopsis

This is a book for development workers who have no formal training in adult education who have to respond - as planners, trainers or teachers - to requests for literacy skills. It sets out to deepen their understanding of literacy and its importance in the process of development and change. Using examples from many countries, the authors give practical guidance, in clear language, for all stages of literacy action from planning to assessment. Besides reading, they cover the skills involved in writing, calculating and interpreting visual images. They suggest ways of using materials that are already available and how to develop new ones designed for specific situations. Authors give practical guidance in clear language for all stages of literacy action from planning to assessment.

About this title

About the Authors

Paul Fordham was Director of Adult Education at the Univerisity of Southampton for 18 years, and is now Honorary Professor in the International Centre for Education in Development at the University of Warwick. His publications include Learning Networks: Non-Formal Education on a Housing Estate (with Poulton and Randle), Participation, Learning, and Change; and Co-operating for Literacy

Deryn Holland is Assistant Education Officer (Staff Development), Buckinghamshire County Council. She works locally and internationally as a trainer, researcher, and writer in adult education and literacy. Her publications include The Progress Profile (Adult Literacy Basic Skills Unit) and Developing Literacy and Numeracy: An intermediate Pack for Trainers (The Open University)

From the Back Cover

Adult Literacy: A Handbook for Development Workers is written for agency staff with no formal training in adult education who have to respond - as planners, trainers, or teachers - to requests for literacy skills. It sets out to deepen their understanding of literacy and its importance in the process of development and change. Using examples from many countries, the authors give practical guidance, in clear language, for all stages of literacy action from planning to assessment. Besides reading, they cover the skills involved in writing, calculating, and interpreting visual images. They suggest ways of using materials that are already available, and how to develop new ones designed for specific situations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Adult Literacy

A Handbook for Development Workers

By Paul Fordham, Deryn Holland, Juliet Millican

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 1995 Voluntary Service Overseas
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-315-4

Contents

A note from the publishers, iv, 
About the authors, iv, 
Acknowledgements, v, 
Foreword, vi, 
Preface: The purpose of this book, ix, 
Part One: Literacy and Development, 
1 The case for literacy, 3, 
Part Two: Planning for Literacy, 
2 Recognising and assessing needs, 17, 
3 Looking at literacies and establishing aims, 33, 
4 Getting organised: some practical issues, 40, 
Part Three: Exploring Teaching and Learning, 
5 Some methods for teaching literacy, 53, 
6 Learning numbers and reading images, 73, 
7 Planning a session, 85, 
8 Selecting and training literacy workers, 97, 
9 Assessing progress and evaluating impact, 106, 
Part Four: Materials for Literacy, 
10 'Special' materials, 127, 
11 'Ordinary' materials, 138, 
Part Five: Continuing with Literacy, 
12 Developing a literate society, 149, 
Postscript, 157, 
Glossary, 160, 
Notes, 162, 
Further reading, 164, 
Index, 166, 

CHAPTER 1

The case for literacy

People often assume that there are absolute states of being literate or illiterate. This idea leads to the belief that a person who is illiterate can be led through a series of simple steps (with a few tests along the way), leading from one absolute state to another. After that, the previous lack of knowledge and skills which prevented him or her from being productively involved in development will have disappeared, and as a newly literate person he or she will become a fully functioning and knowledgeable member of the community.

This notion was always a myth, but it persists, and can be seen in statements or slogans which talk about the 'eradication' of illiteracy, as though it were a disease like smallpox. The myth is promoted by those who have been formally educated (like all the readers and writers of this book), who tend to deny the wisdom and competence of the unschooled. Many people assume that, once the skills of reading and writing are acquired, lives will be transformed.

We probably all know cases of successful non-literate people. For example, Paul Fordham's paternal great-grandmother was a competent dressmaker, raised four children, all of whom went to school, and died in 1917 at the age of 89. She was certainly illiterate at the time of her marriage in 1856, and it seems likely that she remained so. She grew up just before the start of mass literacy in Britain.

In the modern world, there seems little doubt that it is always better to be able to read and to write than not to have these skills. Acquiring them can and should transform people's lives; but the timing has to be right, and the process must take account of the learners' social context. These issues are examined in later parts of this chapter and in Part Two.

One of the advantages of learning to be literate is the increase in confidence which it brings, both to individuals and to their communities. In the aftermath of the Tanzanian literacy campaign of the 1970s, Yusuf Kassam analysed eight conversations with newly literate people. They all emphasised the sense of self-confidence which they had gained. One person recorded: 'Now that I have become literate, I feel that before I was carrying a small lantern, but now a pressure lamp has been brought tome ... I don't feel inferior.'

In the same analysis, one learner recorded how, as a non-literate person, he had been 'made to work like a plough'. He described the sense of personal liberation brought by literacy: it was as though 'the rope that had been twisted around me was untied, and so naturally I felt happy'. He went on to say: 'We can defend our rights; we can't be forced to do anything against our own wishes; we can't be cheated.' Increased confidence often has social and political significance, besides the personal benefits which it brings.

Testimonies collected more recently in Bolivia echo those from Tanzania. Women learners in a shanty town outside La Paz explained that they went to classes 'So we won't be cheated' ... 'So that we won't have to say that we don't know how to sign our names '... 'Some can help our children with their homework' ... 'So we'll know who to vote for'.

Motivation for literacy

Evaluations of literacy programmes often report that learners lack motivation or that the number of drop-outs is large. A reporter from the current Indian national programme (National Literacy Mission) recorded in one of the 'low-performing districts' (Himachel Pradesh) that, while about 26 per cent of the community had enrolled, more than one third had dropped out before the end of the course. Official attitudes were supportive; slogans on bus windscreens declared: Now there will be no more illiterates. But the intended learners did not read the slogans, and, in spite of the high degree of motivation among the professional staff, 'There is a general dearth of volunteer teachers at the grassroots level, and village-level committees are practically defunct.' The writer calls for 're-planning, based on thorough soul-searching'.

Such disappointment is common, and not just in India. The history of many of the world's large-scale literacy schemes has been one of failure. The 1967-72 Experimental World Literacy Programme (EWLP), sponsored by UNESCO, is just one example. Only in Tanzania, with strong and persistent political leadership, was the EWLP a success. A dynamic movement for political change lies behind other large-scale success stories, in most cases after revolutionary change (as in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua).

The preface to this book stated that the planning and implementation of literacy projects requires firm decisions on four key questions:

• Who needs literacy?

• What do they need it for?

• What kind of literacy do they need?

• How will the programme be planned and implemented?

In all the successful large-scale cases there was clear agreement:

• Literacy was for everybody.

• The purposes were both political (consolidating revolutionary gains) and economic (providing an educated work-force for the new command economies).

• All was to be done via the national language and a clearly structured, hierarchical organisation.

In the later 1990s, development workers are more likely to be concerned with local initiatives and less with the transformation of whole societies than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Literacy can be a transforming experience, both for individuals and for societies. But the timing of its introduction has to be carefully considered, and any programme has to be firmly embedded in its time and place. In the words of Om Shrivastava, working in adult education in India, when is the 'magic moment' for literacy? When and how can good motivation be assumed or generated?

When to introduce literacy

To understand the right timing for a literacy programme, we need to understand how and where literacy will support other aspects of development. This is the most important question for field workers when deciding on timing. Whether or not the 'magic moment' has arrived may well depend on how literacy skills are likely to affect other aspects of development.

There are few societies where literacy does not bring more power (both personal and social), more ability to take part fully in society, and more opportunities for personal and social growth and development of all kinds. Nevertheless, the failures of many attempts to introduce literacy underline the need to ensure that the timing is right, and the importance of answering our four key questions.

Development can and does sometimes happen without literacy. For example, radio broadcasts, or group discussions, or demonstrations by an extension agent may be enough for some kinds of agricultural extension. But experience shows that, sooner or later, as the economy becomes more complex and basic services improve, development agencies and potential learners will see a need for literacy skills. And this argument — a strictly economic one — is quite separate from the more idealistic arguments in support of promoting literacy, like enabling people to read the Koran or the Bible, or believing that literacy is a basic human right. But the idealistic arguments sometimes have to be supported by economic ones, especially when trying to persuade funding agencies that a literacy programme is worthwhile or good value for money.

Why is literacy important? Would it not be better to concentrate on increasing employment and production? The answer to this question is that, while it is useless to offer literacy instead of food, housing, clean water, electricity, or jobs, it may become uneconomic to offer them without it. Literacy may be only a part, but it is still an essential part, of the range of basic services which bring direct economic returns as well as direct social benefits.

Lack of pure water and/or miles of walking to fetch it leaves less time for production and increases the likelihood of illness. Lack of vaccination, health education and basic curative services leaves workers ... too weak to be fully productive ... Illiteracy reduces workers' flexibility and productivity even in 'simple' occupations such as peasant farming, construction or handicrafts.

It is pointless to offer literacy courses instead of the more expensive roads, water, and other basic services, because 'without the motivation of the learner, nothing is going to happen. The effects of the campaign will disappear as rapidly as the posters announcing its launching will fade.' But deciding when to introduce literacy classes is the essential first step in helping to ensure that learners are motivated to learn.

Participation

The fact that people can and do plan and instigate their own development programmes is often overlooked by professional agencies. Recently the idea of 'participation', or the planned involvement of community members in decision-making, has been presented as a new approach. But the idea is not new in the field of adult education. In early twentieth-century England, students in classes promoted by the Workers' Educational Association successfully demanded a voice in the design of curricula and the appointment of teaching staff. In many universities in the Western world in the 1960s, student movements promoted 'participation' as one of the key ideas behind their demands for change in the way universities were administered.

This book takes the view that learners themselves, as well as agencies and field workers, will and should have their own view of what should be done: they should be full participants at all levels of decision making. Their views may be different from the view of an outsider, however well informed he or she may be. If the views of insiders are not taken into account, it is unlikely that the outsider will design a programme that can achieve lasting results.

Programmes that involve users in their design, conception, and organisation are intended to encourage people to reflect more deeply on their own lives, and to take more control over them. However, some words of caution are necessary. Participation has become a widely popular concept, but we have to ask what it means. A recent study commissioned by UNCHS points out that community participation can mean at least three different things. It can mean:

• contributing (where money, labour, or materials are provided);

• consulting (where views are sought in order to elicit contributions, but the decisions may be made elsewhere);

• or controlling (where community members are really performing community-management functions).

Development agencies often claim to practise the third kind of participation, when in reality they concede only the first or the second. Field workers should consider very carefully the sense in which they actually use this concept.

The kind of participation which we advocate in this book is intended to promote changes in people's lives in ways they can believe in. Many programmes have similar aims, but in fact it may be the underlying goals and assumptions of the planners (the outsiders), rather than those of the users (the insiders), that determine the direction of those changes.

In this book, we envisage a certain kind of participatory programme:

• one which recognises, values, and uses the contribution of everyone in the community;

• which recognises people's individual differences, rather than assuming that they are all the same;

• which offers information, rather than seeking to persuade people to make certain choices;

• which accepts that the knowledge of insiders is worth as much as that of outsiders;

• which seeks to exchange that information on an equal basis, where learners will also be teachers and teachers will also be learners;

• which takes a holistic approach, keeping in mind the physical, emotional, and learning needs of a community;

• which does not start from the belief that a literate society is in any way 'superior' to an oral society;

• and, finally, one which does not seek to work towards goals imported from outside by the planners, but is free to follow the learning needs of the community which it intends to serve.

What kind of literacy?

Up to this point, we have avoided any attempt to define what we mean by literacy. The reason is that there is no one literacy acceptable for all time, for all people, and for all places. Most writers on the subject now tend to talk of literacies, rather than one state of being literate. Consider two examples, from very different societies.

In St Vincent in 1975, it was decided to prepare a plan for 'adult education'. The initial brief, although wide, had no particular emphasis on literacy, because schooling was thought to be widely available. An international consultant was hired to write the first proposals and began to look at the issue of unemployment. He called a meeting of the Bel Air Small Farmers' Union to discuss marketing problems. After some time, he noticed that there were more people outside the room listening in than there were inside and participating. He was told that these were the illiterate members who were 'too ashamed' to come in. They had been to school in the past, but had either never learned to be literate or had forgotten what they had learned. The result was a proposal for functional literacy, based on new crops and approaches. This involved simply written handbooks on keeping rabbits and marketing crops. Farmers needed to increase their personal confidence by becoming literate, and in order to participate in the business of the collective of small farmers.

In 1986 in the UK, the same consultant thought it was time to learn how to use a word processor and decided that the first step should be to buy one and practise a little self-instruction. He sought advice from the computer supplier, and began to explore a range of hardware and software options. After a mutually frustrating dialogue, the assistant exclaimed, 'We do expect our customers to be computer-literate — Sir.' The development consultant began to understand a little better the humiliation felt by people who are labelled as 'illiterate'; he knew a lot about books, but nothing about computers, and the scornful shop assistant was a deterrent to further self-instruction. In most societies, standards of what is meant by literacy are in rapid change. It has become easy for anyone to experience at first hand that there is no one literacy.

The question 'What kind of literacy?' can not be answered until the context is thoroughly understood and there is an answer to the first two of the four key questions for planners: Who needs it? and What do they need it for?

One way of defining literacy might be to say that for any one person it requires an ability to communicate through reading and writing all that can be understood and communicated through speech. But this leaves too many questions unanswered for it to be universally accepted and would not, for example, cover the person who wants to learn another language at the same time as becoming literate. UNESCO defines a literate person as one who can with understanding both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life.

What is functional?

Literacy specialists often insist that literacy must be 'functional'. What does this mean? It is easy to give examples of what is not functional. For instance, a water-catchment project which used voluntary female labour plus paid male masons held a literacy class under a tree. The women learned to write a few words related to the project (such as water, well, dam) in their own mother-tongue. But, because the classes were not taken seriously enough to be held regularly, there was no evidence of learning to read sentences, even after a year of classes. And the women were in no better position to contribute to the catchment programme just by learning to read and write a few words. Moreover, their particular mother-tongue is not often seen in written form. The written words they would see in their daily lives, such as advertisements, or government notices, were likely to be in the local lingua franca (in this case Swahili), or in English (the language of the elite, of formal business enterprise, and the major newspapers). So what seemed a clear and simple decision to promote 'functional' literacy turned out to have complex implications which had not been considered in advance. The literacy component of this water programme seemed unlikely to be very useful, either in improving the practical project or in advancing the learners' reading and writing skills; unless, of course, there were fundamental changes in perceptions and organisation. So what steps can be taken, both to make literacy functional and to make some contribution to other aspects of development?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Adult Literacy by Paul Fordham, Deryn Holland, Juliet Millican. Copyright © 1995 Voluntary Service Overseas. Excerpted by permission of Oxfam Publishing.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Oxfam Professional
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0855983159
• ISBN 13: 9780855983154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 178
• Editor: Millican Juliet