International World Literacy Day 2023

I was browsing a list of upcoming special calendar dates and this one immediately caught my eye; especially as it came with the following tagline;

1/5 people in this world are illiterate

and

2/3 of those people are women

If that isn’t a figure to make your privilege smack you straight in the face then I truly don’t know what else could.

One in five people are unable to read.

This means that 1/5 are unable to access education beyond their family or peer’s knowledge base. Unable to escape into the fantasy worlds of books or academia. Unable to research topics of interest or sate their thirst for knowledge. Unable to look for answers to questions of why and how in relation to the world around them.

It’s hard enough for me to recall the days when we couldn’t google any question at any time, solve any dispute or fill memory gaps on demand. It’s impossible to imagine never having been able to do this.

Since 1967, International Literacy Day celebrations have taken place annually around the world to remind the public of the importance of literacy as a matter of dignity and human rights, and to advance the literacy agenda towards a more literate and sustainable society.

UNESCO

I imagine that the vast majority of us on this site all learned to read at a very young age. It is so normal to be literate that we don’t ever pause to think what our life would look like without literacy.

Can you? For a moment?

Can you imagine how that would impact your day to day life? How impossible that would make even the simplest of tasks. This is by no means an exhaustive list of suggestions but rather a few prompts you may forget to consider beyond the academic.

Imagine a world with no to do lists, no letters, no cards, no internet. Being unable to read a receipt. Or a job advertisement. Read a contract. How easy would getting on a bus be? Or navigating an airport? Would it be easy to understand laws and nuances of the law? How would you apply for a driving licence? How would you even know these things existed unless you were told? How would you know anything existed beyond what the people who raised you, exposed you to?

You would be wide open to abuse and exploitation.

We are living in an age where we joke about ‘first world problems’ and yet also take them completely seriously. We get ourselves so worked up (often to the point of outrage) over the failings of our western school systems, attacking our governments for what they are not providing us, that we have truly forgotten where we would be without them. It’s very normal in a middle class Scottish household for the news to be on and one of both parents to be ranting about the government, funding, schooling or teachers.

The saying familiarity breeds contempt is one that easily evidenced in the Western world. We expect so much. We expect the finest educations from our overburdened and underfunded state schools. We expect the best living standards for us and our children and if we can’t afford those we expect the government should provide them. We expect to be provided for.

We have somehow forgotten the absolute privilege it is to live in a country where you will not stave to death should you hit upon hard times. A country where we can receive funding even to University level. We receive free healthcare and dentistry. There are countless charities, public and privately funded services that are designed to help raise up those caught in the poverty cycle. We are arguably one of the most privileged countries in the world in these regards.

IF ONLY WE COULD SEE IT.

To be clear, I am not suggesting we shouldn’t aspire to have the absolute best and create positive change in our systems - I absolutely champion that in every part of life. We need that. We need systems to be continually improved in alignment with evidence based best practice and to constantly do better for each generation behind us.

The problem that I see is that we are so blinded by our forward expectations of better that we forget to look back at what was. We forget to appreciate what we already have. We forget where we came from. Perhaps it’s easier for me to do having lived in a ‘third world’ country for so long.

A country where parents work night and day in the sweltering heat in low level jobs in desperate efforts to send their children to school. School that they must purchase textbooks and stationary for at extortionate rates. Schools that lack the basic things that we take for granted.

When you understand that our western world began with the same levels of poverty and lack of privilege (and not all that long ago really), you suddenly gain far more appreciation and perspective for what we currently have. Appreciation for the privilege we were raised with is the main thing that we are missing in our society.

We once had ‘poor’ houses in the UK where people would work all day, every day (no working time laws or regulations, no such thing as holiday pay) in return for food and board. We were completely uneducated. Literacy and school were for the privileged, for children of wealthy families who didn’t require their children to work, or for those families like those I see today in Sri Lanka. Parents willing to work day and night in sacrifice to pay to educate their child.

Just as there has been a growing contempt for healthcare services (or lack thereof) in more privileged countries, there is also a deep rooted one for education services. Many of our children view school with a strong distaste. Something they have to do. It is certainly not commonly viewed as the absolute privilege that it is.

It’s enforced brainwashing by the government is one chorus frequently sang by the most fearful in society. The lowest / poorest classes.

There is certainly a case to be made for conspiracy theories about our education systems prepping children for the rat race but it is not the only one to be made. Schools resemble / resembled factory lines not because they are intended to create factory workers but because that’s where they began.

Benevolent land and factory owners genuinely wanted to help their workers by proving free education for their (many) children. They wanted to alleviate the mass suffering there were witness to and they saw education as the way to do best do this.

Was it perfect?

Far, far from it.

But it was a start.

Have we truly forgotten the Victorian ages when starving, illiterate and jobless people lined the streets? Have we forgotten that the laws at the turn of the 20th century (enforcing state education until the age of 13) were not created with the intention of harming children or families who relied on the income of said children. The laws were passed with the intention of dramatically raising the standard of living for future generations.

But in the short term - progress often looks like harm. Especially to the poorest families. I honestly believe this is where the roots of hostility towards education began. Angry parents pushed to their limits trying to feed their families had to push that anger somewhere. Parents who were now forced to send their children to state schools up to the age of 13 suddenly faced a desperate crises of income and anger at the state grew. Anger that was added to existing resentment, jealousy and feelings of victimhood.

For as much as the Scottish poor still to this day paint a picture of the ‘evil’ wealthy upper classes, they have forgotten that they only have literacy because of them. Those wealthy classes slowly began to realise (through the important works of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham) that we must work to maximise happiness and minimise suffering for the greatest number of people. The idea that we cannot be truly happy until all are truly happy was becoming widely discussed in these times.

Now, of course nothing is black and white or clear cut. These same generations faced the “Highland Clearances” and had every understandable right to distrust and despise the English Monarchy Rule. A nepotist rule that gifted ‘their’ various lands to friends and business allies - called Lords (land-Lord, anyone?). Tens of Thousands of families found themselves suddenly and forcibly evicted (evicted makes it sound nicer than it was) from their ancestral lands. It is unsurprising that distaste and bitterness from this still lingers in Scotland today. There is most definitely a hereditary injustice and anger evident in the population still.

However, as we all know. There are dark and light forces working at all levels of society. Although stripping away the much needed child labour income from poor families would have felt like further inflicted oppression by evil forces, I am certain that we would agree it was not. It was quite the opposite. This was a time in Scotland when 4 children under the age of 13 died down coal mines in my own family. Children who never even had the chance at life. Sending them to school by law ensured all children would have fair and equal access to an education and become literate.

Imagine how those children would have rejoiced to attend school instead of existing within what was essentially slavery.

We all know Human reproduction is not regulated. You do not require any certification whatsoever to have a child. You do not need to be literate, or prove you can afford to feed and educate a child. You don’t need to reach a minimum standard of emotional intelligence or health - or prove anything at all in regards to your abilities to healthily nurture and love a child. There are a handful of complex laws that say if others prove your neglect or abuse of said child, it will be removed from your custody, but that’s basically it.

You go through more regulation to have and maintain custody of a car. Or to employ someone. Or to open a shop. Or hire out a boat. Literally, everything else is more regulated than the single most important and precious thing in existence - bringing new life into the world. The most important thing of all requires zero qualification?

[The greatest irony being that if parenting were done correctly, there would be zero need for a world with rules and laws for anything else. But apparently it makes sense to everyone to leave parenting to chance and regulate everything else?!?!?!?!?]

But this is a whole other massive tangent that we don’t have time for right now!

I believe we need a little medicine from the past to fuel our appreciation of the present. Not because the present is perfect. Or even acceptable. These ideas must be untangled from each other.

In the same way that our parents may have completely failed us in many ways, when we pause to look back, we can see that they did in fact do the best they could with what they had. We can see then how they suffered in order to give their best, in spite of that best not being the best. Our education system is exactly like this. It is not the best. It is far from the best. But let’s take a moment to pause and look back to where we began. I do believe that the state did the best it could at the time to raise the literacy and consciousness of what was essentially a rabble of uneducated poor who were breeding at phenomenal rates.

Fast forward to today. To the privilege of education that we have today.

Privilege that allows us to look forward and envision better. Privilege that gives us drive and ability to evolve systems and to create. Privilege that has much to do with being literate.

Perhaps instead of complaining about what is not right, we ought to put our energy into being the change we want to see. Perhaps it’s time we began to recognise our privilege and instead of continuing to angrily blaze ahead to create better for us and our own families we ought to help those behind us to catch up. To strike a better balance between these two camps.

To give back.

One in Five People in this World are Illiterate. You can be darn sure than does negatively affect you and your family. Recognising privilege is a necessary and important step in our personal and collective evolution. Many reject doing so they attach guilt. This is unwise and unnecessary. Guilt is toxic and does not serve a purpose here. Recognising privilege is about becoming charged with the energy of appreciation.

Appreciation from realising what you have rather than what you do not have - it is about empowering yourself to become part of the solution.