Iliteracy

Title: Illiteracy – A Quiet Global Crisis Most of the people may realize that reading is an integral part of our daily lives. Yes, we have to read. We can't get jobs, order food, excel in school, or enjoy our favourite novels without the benefit of understanding the written word. But for many people, literacy is the snitch that even Harry Potter cannot catch. There are currently twenty percent of the world population, (1.257 billion people), are illiterate. What is illiteracy actually' Illiteracy is defined by the UNESCO as the inability to the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written material. Therefore, in order to come out with a comprehensive solution, we have to deep into the causes of illiteracy, which are poverty, family background and learning disabilities. One of the major causes of illiteracy among developing nations is poverty as the economy of these countries is not completely established. In particular, India struggle with the most illiteracy. There are 258.42 million children are illiterate in India in 2001. People living in slums and villages cannot send their children to school while they starve for a morsel. Related to this issue is Maslow’s theory on the hierarchy of needs. Maslow, a well-known psychologist, wrote that people deprived of basic needs, such as shelter, food, clothes, and basic safety, are less likely to develop themselves with higher education (Janet A.Simons, 1987) Undeniably, social background influences the way children feel about school from an early age. Donald Hirsch, author of the Round-up summary of the work, said, "This doesn't necessarily mean teachers are prejudiced, but that low-income children find themselves in schools where the pressures are greater, and this reinforces prior disadvantages." Sooner or later, they will drop put if schools. As indicated above, children in poverty face greatly reduced educational prospects and future life chances. Moving on, another cause of illiteracy could be due to family background. Illiteracy seems to work in cycle as how poverty does. Parents develop most of their child’s character during their childhood. Hence, we can conclude by saying that parents play an important role in the character building of their children. In addition, reading readiness is provided by parents during first five years of life. However, when a child is raised in a household where literacy is either not valued, not visible, or where parents are unable to read, the child begins to think that literacy activities are unimportant. Even if the parents do not want their children to be illiterate, their children, observing the parents, see that they somehow manage to live and adopt the idea that illiteracy isn't actually a bad thing. Thus, this cycle continues: The child would eventually turn into an adult with poor skills (WHAT SKILLS') and would then raise up their child in a similar way. This process repeats over and over again throughout the generations until someone makes some changes. Over and over it repeats. As noted earlier, it is crystal clear that family background plays an important role in contributing the ascending rate of illiteracy. Simultaneously, the most common and also most uncontrollable reason for illiteracy is having a learning disability. Learning is a disorder in which a person has a difficulty to learn effectively, caused by an unknown factor or factors. They cannot cope with common educational practise that adopt a single method for teaching reading, with the assumption that it will be effective for everyone. Research indicates that some students with learning disabilities need a multisensory phonics approach, with instruction in phonological awareness; some students need a more meaning-based approach; while other students need interventions to address comprehension problems. For many students a combination of approaches is effective. (Jack Mcfarlin, 2007) Learning Disabilities Association emphasizes that no single reading method will be effective for all students with learning disabilities. Often these disabilities go unnoticed or ignored, and therefore the children fall behind in school and are never able to catch up. Thus, a flexible education system is essential to provide an equivalent opportunity to learn as it is never too late to read. In a nutshell, illiteracy has many interrelated causes, which are poverty, family background and learning disabilities. If this issue is not solved promptly, it may works as an inhibitor, disabler and destructor to the development of country. If the rate of illiteracy continues to rise radically, nations that initially have the ability to expand, urbanize and industrialize are being obstructed, as they are unable to participate in political events or basic tasks such as a reading sign for direction on a road. Therefore, innovative and creative resolution should be implemented to take advantage of this unique time in history. (792 words) -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. Janet A. Simons, Donald B. Irwin and Beverly A. Drinnien, Psychology - The Search for Understanding ,West Publishing Company, New York, 1987 [ 2 ]. Jack McFarlin Fletcher,G. Reid Lyon, Lynn S. Fuchs, Marcia A. Barnes, Learning disabilities: from identification to intervention, The Guilford Press, Guilford Publications, Ic,2007, page 9