Global Action Week 2009: Open Books, Open Doors – How to Promote Reading

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• © Global Campaign

29-04-2009
“Unless an entire family or community becomes literate, a literate environment cannot exist”, said Indian linguist and professor Chander J. Daswani during a round table discussion focused on building, maintaining and promoting literate environments held on 23 April 2009 as part of UNESCO’s activities for Global Action Week.

The theme of this year’s annual advocacy campaign, held from 20 to 26 April 2009, was “Youth and adult literacy and lifelong learning.”

Moderated by Mr Saturnino Muñoz Gomez, Director of UNESCO’s Bureau of Public Information, the round table discussions centred on how to encourage newly literate learners to maintain reading and numeracy skills, a difficult prospect in many isolated areas of the world which face a lack of access to books, newspapers, libraries, teachers and basic infrastructures. "The main obstacle we face is the lack of literacy materials in Zulu” said Ms Itumeleng Hilarih Lebajoa, Programme Director for Operation Upgrade, an NGO based in South Africa that has promoted the autonomy of women for more than 40 years, and was a recipient of the 2008 UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy. “We have no local newspaper and no library, so there is little social incentive to maintain literacy skills. People want to read about solutions to their lives: how to run a successful small business, how to earn a living from livestock.”

The importance of holistically addressing lives through literacy programmes was echoed by Mr Gerard Bureau of ATD Quart Monde, an NGO based in France that received an Honourable Mention from the UNESCO-Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human rights in 2008. “When we live in extreme poverty, we live in a world of illiteracy”, he said. “We lose housing, resources and our desire and ability to maintain literacy skills.” Mr Björn Larsson, an award-winning Swedish author, echoed this sentiment, going further to say that “You also have to learn how to write to learn how to read. We have to encourage youth and adults to tell stories using their imagination, otherwise they will remain locked in daily reality.”

Panellists agreed that the widespread use of television has had a negative impact on reading and decreased the motivation to acquire literacy skills. "The problem is that the education system is rigid and based on rote learning. People don't learn critical thinking and free expression and give up reading when they leave school” said Ms Maud Stéphan-Hachem, Professor of Information and Communication at the University of Lebanon in Beirut, referring to the Arab region. “Lack of new titles, small print runs and the difference between spoken and written language are additional obstacles. There is demand in the Arab States for religious books,” she said, “but these again encourage rote learning rather than discovery.”

The need for books that speak to the imagination was stressed by Mr Larsson. "I often go to schools where I meet young people, especially boys, who say they don't like to read. We have to find the right kind of texts that encourage them to read… When well done, a literature of imagination encompasses the whole of a person and has a profound influence.”

Broadening the concept of literacy for different populations was another subject addressed by Mr Kenneth Eklindh, acting Chief of the Section for Inclusion and Quality Leaning Enhancement at UNESCO, who spoke about the urgent need to promote alternative ways of communicating. In particular, he addressed the necessity to recognize the communication needs of the visually impaired and widening their access to Braille, stating that 85 per cent of those who have learned Braille are employed and contributing to the larger society, but a staggering 80 million blind persons still do not have access to Braille.

Several panellists insisted on the importance of learning literacy in a mother tongue before going onto a second language, stating nonetheless that multilingual literacy is way of the future. Positive changes towards increasing motivation of literacy were also discussed, mainly due to new technology trends. Professor Daswani drew attention to the advent of subtitles in mother tongue languages on television programmes and the use of mobile phone text messaging in several of the nine Indian scripts. Furthermore, Ms Stéphan-Hachem informed participants that in Lebanon, more than 80 public libraries now exist in isolated areas that offer a wide variety of reading materials and have turned into lively places for discussing local issues. Similarly, Mr Bureau described a real thirst for learning how to read in the poorest environments, citing his experience in setting up makeshift mobile libraries in Burkina Faso, Haiti and Guatemala.