LITERACY AND NUMERACY SKILLS A NECESSITY

LITERACY in Guyana has always been a consumer concern and thus this column may again return to it. In the 1950s and 1960s Guyana had the reputation of having the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean other than Barbados and its literacy rate compared favourably with developed countries. Then by the end of the 1960s, its literacy rate began to slide downwards.

It was only in the 19th century that the governments and social leaders in Western Europe began to call for, and take serious action to have their populations literate. The reasons for this movement are many-faceted. In the first place, Western European countries were fast industrialising and industrialisation required workers to be literate. Another reason was that Europe, in that century, had engaged itself in fierce civil wars and had transformed wars from conflicts between armies into conflicts between nations. Leaders such as Bismarck in Germany and his counterparts in other countries felt that through literacy, their populations could be indoctrinated in Nationalism and governmental policies. Intellectuals and social workers saw literacy as a way of uplifting ordinary folk culturally and economically and saw it as something humanitarian and ethical. In the slave societies of the Caribbean and North America, the churches saw it as a way of strengthening the ethical and religious life of the slaves by their reading of the Bible.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, therefore, all Western governments began to establish regimes of free and compulsory primary education and such laws were often extended from the Mother Country to the colonies. Guyana is one such country which profited from the free and compulsory primary education laws of England.

In Guyana, the government did not build its own schools until the 1930s. Before then, it supported the schools run by the various Christian denominations, paid the teachers and even built school buildings while the Churches provided the management. Though the government had embarked upon school-building, the overwhelming majority of schools were still managed by the Churches.

This system of Christian denominational schools supported by public funds unwittingly turned out to be discriminatory in a society which was multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-racial. By 1900, a good number of very able teachers were turned out as well as a good proportion of the country’s children and young people had become literate. Between the 1920s and 1950s a further educational revolution occurred and the vast majority of young people had become literate. The revolution in secondary education also occurred during this time. The main small pockets of illiteracy existed in the Interior communities. By then, Guyana was 90 percent literate.

From the 1960s, however, literacy began to slowly decline. This was due to the social and political turmoil which afflicted the country from the 1960s to the 1980s; the massive emigration; younger parents and children being less understanding of and devoted to education as the generation before; and the growth of poverty and child labour. Since the last 30 years, Ministries of Education have been acutely aware of the problem and have been employing various methodologies to deal with it with moderate success.

It is salutary to remind readers of the benefits literacy would bring to both individuals and society as a whole:

Literacy together with Numeracy is the first step towards liberation from social and economic constraints. Once one could read, it opens new worlds of knowledge, cultural enjoyment, freedom and protection of one’s interest. It leads to greater respect for the literate person. Frederick Douglas, the famous emancipated American slave who authored many books and fought for human rights, encapsulated this idea when he said: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free”.

As important, literacy is the prerequisite to social and economic development at both the individual and the collective social levels. With literacy, one could create wealth and reduce poverty. For example, one is better able to learn and practice a trade, do business, be a better farmer since a literate farmer would be able to accession scientific agricultural methods which will bring him/her greater returns. It also leads to upward social mobility. An example of this occurred after Emancipation, the freedmen and especially their children took to Education, earned themselves regular incomes as teachers and government employees and elevated themselves into the middle class.

Education also helped to eliminate the problems of nutrition and public health education produced the first crop of nurses who served in the public hospitals and also provided medical care to the communities in which they lived. With literacy, the population learnt more about balanced diets and pharmaceuticals and were able to use appropriate medications. It also removed resistance to public inoculations.

We have almost exhausted our allotted space but before we end this offering, we may mention an inescapable challenge modern Man has to overcome to be able to survive in a world where technological advances are continuously accelerating: Literacy and Numeracy skills have to be supplemented with skills in Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

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