The issue of functional illiteracy has been with us for a long time and is a problem that is prevalent in both developing and developed countries and its causes are many but a common denominator in nearly all societies is the fact that because of the growing access to television and the computer people are simply reading less.
One study in the US observes that there are many reasons why any one student may drop out of school or graduate without learning to read well. In addition to the possibility of poor reading books, poor teaching methods, eye problems, dislike of the teacher, and numerous other problems, there are numerous pleasurable activities taking a student’s time that did not exist before the 1920s, such as music on radio, iPods, and “rock concerts,” video games and movies on TV and computers, and many new athletic and school activities. There is also an increased amount of negative influences, such as new drugs, gang activities, and broken homes as a result of loosened divorce laws in the twentieth century. But there is only one problem that affects every student: the inconsistent, illogical, and chaotic spelling of English words. Most of us who are fluent readers learned to read as children and have long since forgotten (or pridefully ignore) the difficulty we had in learning to read. Our eyes glide easily over a multitude of traps for beginning readers. In our yesterday’s edition Delana Isles in an article entitled: Functional illiteracy in Guyana did a brief analysis of the problem and highlighted some of the steps that are being taken by the Ministry of Education to address it.
The article correctly points out that: “Many parents and students blame the educational system for this failure while educators blame the students themselves.  Nonetheless, researchers note that a major contributing factor to this problem is that children are watching too much television and not reading enough.”
“In Guyana, over the past few years, the focus of the educational radar is on low-performing schools in the areas of Literacy and Numeracy; the motive is to improve their results at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination and National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA).
Since 2008, the National Fast Track Literacy Programme has as its goal the improvement of local literacy standards and targeting low performers, out-of-school youths and young illiterate adults; however, a lot more still needs to be done to address the issue of functional illiteracy in our society.
In schools, teachers have to demonstrate more accountability for their stewardship and to move children along the literacy range.”
However, there are two other very important factors which need to be focused on. One is the involvement of parents in instilling the reading habit of the child from a young age. Research has shown that the habit sticks with children throughout their lives when it is inculcated at a young age. At the same time parents need to carefully control the amount of time children spend in front of the TV.
The other important factor which needs to be addressed in a meaningful way is the bringing down of prices of books to make it affordable to the poorest in the society. Today, we have well stocked bookstores but unfortunately prices are prohibitive and therefore only a limited segment of the population can access them.
Also perhaps there is a need to examine in schools whether enough attention is placed on the teaching of grammar in schools because we have to appreciate the fact that while the English Language is our official language it is not natural as creolese is widely used and spoken at all levels of the society. Therefore, essentially English has to be taught as a foreign language and as such great emphasis has to place on the basics.