The cost of illiteracy
by Peter LiefhebberAn analysis of the central role illiteracy plays in economics, politics, health and safety at the personal, national and international levels.
"There was this family in Detroit in the USA who were out of work. They saved up from the unemployment insurance to buy at least a proper Christmas dinner and the woman went out to shop. She was completely illiterate, but of course you have pictures on many items, and she brought home a rather large tin, a goose in a steaming pan on the label. It turned out to be olive oil. They had about five liters of olive oil which they did not need, and no Christmas supper."
This true anecdote illustrates how difficult even the most ordinary tasks are for people who can neither read nor write. But to acquire control of these basic skills isn’t possible for many millions, and they would often feel just like this Detroit woman did when she arrived home, once again, with the wrong shopping: humiliated, stupid and excluded.
Arthur Gillette, who told me this story, is better placed than most to keep abreast of the innumerable social, economic and cultural problems which hinge on the fact that there are nearly 900 million people on this planet whose education is so incomplete that even the simplest texts must remain a mystery to them. Gillette, American by birth, works in Paris at the Headquarters of UNESCO where he is involved in the Division of Primary Education, Literacy and Adult Education.
The facts and figures he has available on the scope of the problem are amazing: amazing enough to quash the notion that illiteracy in Western countries has long since disappeared and that, in most, it plays a marginal role. The computer-based-society blindly assumes that everyone has mastered the skills of reading and writing — a far cry from reality, as the facts show all too clearly.
Arthur Gillette: "Even in industrialized countries illiteracy is not at all a marginal phenomenon. In the last 15 years we have come to realize that a significant proportion of the native population (I am not talking now of migration workers) is functionally illiterate. By this we mean that they are unable to use reading, writing and arithmetic as part of their daily life. Basing its report on projections from the school population, France said in 1979 that it had about 1.5 to 2 per cent illiterates. Today, official French government figures based on empirical tests show that the real figure is around 15-16 per cent of the population. Until recently, we have been assuming that young people finishing obligatory education are literate, and that they are so for good. Studies from the Federal Republic of Germany, from Hungary, Canada, France, UK, USA and so on are producing mounting evidence that many young people do not acquire this skill, and that many others may have acquired basic literacy, but loose it."
"In the USA, for instance, we have one estimate that 13 per cent of the adult native-born American population is functionally illiterate. Another estimate is about 23 per cent. And then there are estimates of even 60 to 70 per cent, but those are defined as people who have not finished completely a full secondary education. — the idea being that people who do not complete a secondary education are not adequately equipped to deal with our highly sophisticated society in terms of technology, etc."
While it is thus becoming clear that illiteracy in industrialized countries plays a much larger role than we had thought, in developing countries it appears to be decreasing. Relatively speaking, that is. In absolute terms there are still more people who cannot even write their own names. Gillette points out that the statistics are based — to a certain extent — on ‘guesswork’. "Obviously, if you have a country that is 80-90 per cent illiterate, who is going to produce proper statistics? But even in countries with highly sophisticated statistical monitoring systems, like the US, many people are completely missed in the statistics. Some experts assume that 3 to 6 million Americans do not even figure in the census, because they live such a marginal and fragile existence that they do not have a fixed address, a postbox, a telephone or a social security number."
Gillette makes clear that the following UNESCO figures should not be taken to be absolutely accurate: "In relative terms, the percentage of the world population aged 15 and more that was defined as illiterate in 1970 was about 31, roughly one third. In 1985, it was down to about 26 per cent, roughly one quarter. And the projection is that by the end of the century the illiteracy will be about 21 per cent, one fifth. So you see a decline in relative terms.
"This is totally contradicted by numbers when we look at absolute figures because of the demographic increase. So we go from about 760 million illiterates in 1970, to about 886 million in 1985. We figure about 890 million today, to a probable projected figure of about 911 or 912 million on 1 January 2000. "Now, let’s break these figures down a little bit. Generally, women are more affected than men. Relatively the most illiterate region is black Africa with an average figure of almost 60 per cent. On the other hand, in absolute terms the most illiterate region is, of course, Asia. We find probably more than half of the world’s illiterates in China and India alone."
There are, nevertheless, countries in both Africa and Asia where the great majority of the population have learnt to read and write (Thailand, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia) and I ask Gillette why such achievement is not possible everywhere. "Let’s be absolutely clear," he responds, "it is not with six people working at our headquarters that UNESCO is somehow going to make the world literate. We do get letters and postcards from annoyed individuals who feel that we have not done our job. By the UN constitution and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, however, it is a national responsibility to provide education to citizens."
I think I must have misunderstood what he is saying, but, no, I had heard correctly. "That is right: there are six UNESCO professionals dealing with the problem. That’s all, and it is not enough for one country, not even the smallest. We could add a couple of zeros, or rather several zeros. Therefore, it is quite clear that the national political will of governments is absolutely indispensable to launch a serious, pervasive and successful attack on illiteracy. But even that is not enough: what is needed is not only political will at the top of the government, but what we could call ‘national will’. This includes a kind of psychological mobilization right down to the level of the illiterates themselves. UNESCO cannnot bring this about. What we can do, of course, is put as much information as possible at the disposal of people who want to do literacy work. However, it is not a pedagogical question in the first place; it is a much broader human, social, economic, cultural and political question."
And speaking of politics and economics — the International Monetary Fund, and occasionally the World Bank, have in recent years demanded cutbacks in the education budget. As a UN-employee Arthur Gillette is not free to exercise harsh criticism in response but he can certainly make known his opinion in general terms.
"In the early sixties there was a school of thought stating that education is not a consumption item in individual or national budgets, but an investment item. I think that there was perhaps too much stress given to the idea that, in order to develop, all a nation had to do was invest in education. It has not happened. Sri Lanka is a country where literacy is almost universal and yet it is not a highly developed country. It is a long, laborious and complex process. In fact, some may have come back the full circle to a feeling that education is a waste. And indeed you will find certain major international funding sources recommending that countries spend less on teachers, with the indication that if people want education they can pay for it. This is a well-known story and counter certainly to UNESCO thinking. Sure, people can pay for education, rich people have always been able to pay for it, and that’s why their children tend to be rich. It is true that literacy does not automatically cause development. But it is equally true that there is a clear correlation between the two."
According to Arthur Gillette, illiteracy causes much harm, as much to those directly involved as to society as a whole. He cites an out-of-date figure — which means only that in today’s terms it would be even higher. "A US Senate committee evaluated that the loss in lifetime earnings to men aged 25 to 34, due to the fact that they had a less than secondary education, was in the order of 237,000,000,000 dollars. In terms of social insurance and unemployment check payments, directly attributable to adult illiterates, who are not able to do certain jobs which they could otherwise do: in the US some 6,000,000,000 dollars a year. Another figure is the annual expenditure for maintaining in prison people whose imprisonment is directly linked to functional illiteracy. Here the annual cost is $6,600,000,000. A Canadian study shows that prisoners who have taken some kind of education course, including basic literacy during their sentence, are much less likely to return to prison." Illiteracy is also an invisible cause of accidents at work, and leads to material damage. Just a year ago Arthur Gillette was in Tanzania, where he was visiting a literacy programme which was launched by the manager of a private concern. The course took place at the works — a large garage in Dar es Salaam, and Gillette asked the manager what the advantage would be in promoting literacy. "He said: one thing is that people now are able to read instructions on tools. They know how to put out a fire, and they have some rudiments of first aid. The accident rate definitely goes down with literate people. Of course this is true everywhere. In the stockyard in Chicago, where workers could not read labels on containers, they thought they were feeding the cattle a vitamin supplement, while in fact it was floor cleaner. They killed them all.
Another, absolutely true, anecdote: there were some people in Miami in the airport who were entrusted with maintaining the brake systems on air planes. They could not read a notice that was sent around, saying that there was a new kind of brake fluid being used and they continued to follow the usual procedures. One of the planes that they mis-serviced in this way lost its pressurization at about 30,000 feet and dropped. No-one was hurt, but it was a very near miss. Imagine, 300 people could have been killed simply because of the illiteracy of these two men who were maintaining the brakes. Also, we have evidence that through inability to read labels on medicines there are numerous home accidents. Home accidents kill more people in France every year than highway accidents.
"Then, a fact easily forgotten — illiteracy is producing heavy human waste. I remember a story of a woman in England who came to sign up for a literacy course. She was in a terrible state, black and blue all over her face and her arms. When she was questioned by the guidance counselor, she told him that every time she went to the store she brought home the wrong things.‘And then my husband beats me for wasting money and for being stupid.’ It turned out that she was not stupid at all, just that she had never had a proper schooling. These are all true stories, of course; it would be difficult to invent something like this."
"I have been talking here about the effects on social life, family life and human costs, but there is more. What is the cost to the world of an uninformed citizenry? What is the cost to the world of people not knowing — and I am talking now of ignorance not just illiteracy — about the realities of powerbloc confrontation?I do not need to go into very great detail, but you can imagine that certain military measures may be taken simply through the ignorance of citizenry in a democratic country, involving high costs in human beings killed needlessly, or in terms of wastage of resources on military expenditure, and so on. Obviously, education and information are essential to bring about the changes this world badly needs. I think that if the citizens of industrialized countries really knew the full story of the one fifth of mankind suffering most severely from underdevelopment — in terms of life expectancy, bad housing, bad food, etc — that the situation would not be tolerated. I am sure that they would make very sure that, not charity, but some kind of solidarity was expressed. I may be a little optimistic, but look at the history of industrialized countries: as the more wealthy sectors of the population became more and more aware, the tolerance rate for extreme poverty dropped considerately. In my opinion, this process could and should repeat itself on a world scale."
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