Literacy

World illiteracy halved between 1970 and 2005.

Literacy is the ability to read and write one's own name and further for knowledge and interest, write coherently, and think critically about the written word. The inability to do so is called illiteracy or analphabetism. Visual literacy includes in addition the ability to understand visual forms of communication such as body language, pictures, maps, and video. Evolving definitions of literacy often include all the symbol systems relevant to a particular community. Literacy encompasses a complex set of abilities to understand and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture for personal and community development. In a technological society, the concept of literacy is expanding to include the media and electronic text, in addition to alphabetic and number systems. These abilities vary in different social and cultural contexts according to need and demand.

The primary sense of literacy still represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from a critical interpretation of the written or printed text. Key to all literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Reading development involves a range of complex language underpinnings including awareness of speech sounds (phonology), spelling patterns (orthography), word meaning (semantics), grammar (syntax) and patterns of word formation (morphology), all of which provide a necessary platform for reading fluency and comprehension. Once these skills are acquired the reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to approach printed material with critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."

History

See also: History of writing and History of education

Illiteracy rate in France in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ancient and medieval literacy

In ancient times, literacy in its restricted sense was always confined to a small elite. Although some ruling elite were illiterate, literacy was an important distinguishing mark of the elite, and communications skills were politically important.

In the late fourth century the Desert Father Pachomius expected literacy of a candidate for admission to his monasteries:

they shall give him twenty Psalms or two of the Apostles' epistles or some other part of Scripture. And if he is illiterate he shall go at the first, third and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand before him and learn very studiously and with all gratitude. The fundamentals of a syllable, the verbs and nouns shall all be written for him and even if he does not want to he shall be compelled to read.

Literacy in Europe

England

In 12th and 13th century England, the ability to recite, in Latin, a particular passage from the Bible entitled a common law defendant to the so-called benefit of clergy, i.e. trial before an ecclesiastical court, where sentences were more lenient, instead of a secular one, where hanging was a likely sentence. Thus literate lay defendants often claimed the right to benefit of clergy, while an illiterate person who had memorized the psalm used as the literacy test, Psalm 51 ("O God, have mercy upon me..."), could also claim benefit of clergy.

Wales

Formal higher education in the arts and sciences in Wales, from the Dark Ages to the 18th century, was the preserve of the wealthy and the clergy. As in England, Welsh history and archaeological finds dating back to the Bronze Age reveal not only reading and writing, but also alchemy, botany, advanced maths and science. Following the Roman occupation and the conquest by the English, education in Wales was at a very low ebb in the early modern period; in particular, formal education was only available in English while the majority of the population spoke only Welsh. The first modern grammar schools were established in Welsh towns such as Ruthin, Brecon and Cowbridge. One of the first modern national education methods to use the native Welsh language was started by Griffith Jones in 1731 - see History of Wales#Early modern period. Jones was the rector of Llanddowror from 1716 and remained there for the rest of his life. He organized and introduced a Welsh medium circulating school system, which was attractive and effective for Welsh speakers, while also teaching them English, which gave them access to broader educational sources. The circulating schools may have taught half the country's population to read. Literacy rates in Wales by the mid-18th century were one of the highest.

Dutch schoolmaster and children, 1662

Continental Europe

The ability to read did not necessarily imply the ability to write. The 1686 church law (kyrkolagen) of the Kingdom of Sweden (which at the time included all of modern Sweden, Finland, and Estonia) enforced literacy on the people, and by 1800 the ability to read was close to 100%. But as late as the 19th century, many Swedes, especially women, could not write. That said, the situation in England was far worse than in Scandinavia, France and Prussia: as late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write (government-financed public education was not available in England until 1870 and, even then, on a limited basis).

The historian Ernest Gellner argues that Continental European countries were far more successful in implementing educational reform precisely because their governments were more willing to invest in the population as a whole. The view that public education contributes to rising literacy levels is shared by the majority of historians.

Although the present-day concepts of literacy have much to do with the 15th century invention of the movable type printing press, it was not until the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century that paper and books became financially affordable to all classes of industrialized society. Until then, only a small percentage of the population were literate as only wealthy individuals and institutions could afford the materials. Even today, the cost of paper and books is a barrier to universal literacy in some less-industrialized nations.

From another perspective, the historian Harvey Graff has argued that the introduction of mass schooling was in part an effort to control the type of literacy that the working class had access to. According to Graff, literacy learning was increasing outside of formal settings (such as schools) and this uncontrolled, potentially critical reading could lead to increased radicalization of the populace. In his view, mass schooling was meant to temper and control literacy, not spread it. Graff also points out, using the example of Sweden, that mass literacy can be achieved without formal schooling or instruction in writing.

Literacy in North America

Canada

Colonial Days (1600s to 1762)

Research on the literacy rates of Canadians in the colonial days rested largely on examinations of the proportion of signatures to marks on parish acts (birth, baptismal, and marriage registrations). Although some researchers have concluded that signature counts drawn from marriage registers in nineteenth century France corresponded closely with literacy tests given to military conscripts, others regard this methodology as a “relatively unimaginative treatment of the complex practices and events that might be described as literacy” (Curtis, 2007, p. 1-2). But censuses (dating back to 1666) and official records of New France offer few clues of their own on the population’s levels of literacy, therefore leaving few options in terms of materials from which to draw literary rate estimates.

In his research of literacy rates of males and females in New France, Trudel (as cited in Magnusen, 1985) found that in 1663, of 1,224 persons in New France who were of marriageable age, 59% of grooms and 46% of brides wrote their name, however, of the 3000 plus colony inhabitants, less than 40% were native born. Signature rates were therefore likely more reflective of rates of literacy among French immigrants. Magnuson’s (1985) research revealed a trend: signature rates for the period of 1680-1699 were 42% for males, 30% for females; in 1657-1715, they were 45% for males and 43% for females; in 1745-1754, they were higher for females than for males. He believed that this upward trend in rates of females’ ability to sign documents was largely attributed to the larger number of female to male religious orders, and to the proportionately more active role of women in health and education, while the roles of male religious orders were largely to serve as parish priests, missionaries, military chaplains and explorers. 1752 marked the date that Canada’s first newspaper (the Halifax Gazette) began publication.

From the British Conquest (1763) to Confederation (1867)

The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 allowed two Philadelphia printers to come to Québec City and to begin printing a bilingual Quebec Gazette in 1764, while in 1785 Fleury Mesplet started publication of the Montreal Gazette, which is now the oldest continuing newspaper in the country.

In the 19th century, everything about print changed, how it was produced, how it was distributed, and who read it ). Literature in its many forms became much more available. But educating the Canadian population in reading and writing was nevertheless a very big challenge. Concerned about the strong French Canadian presence in the colony, the British authorities repeatedly tried to help establish schools that were outside the control of religious authorities, but these efforts were largely undermined by the Catholic Church and later the Anglican clergy.

From the early 1820s in Lower Canada, classical college curriculum, which was monopolized by the Church, was also subject to growing liberal and lay criticism, arguing it was fit first and foremost to produce priests, when Lower Canadians needed to be able to compete effectively with foreign industry and commerce and with the immigrants who were monopolizing trade (Curtis, 1985)). Liberal and lay attempts to promote parish schools generated a reaction from the Catholic and later the Anglican clergy in which the dangers of popular literacy figured centrally. Both churches shared an opposition to any educational plan that encouraged lay reading of the Bible, and spokesmen for both warned of the evil and demoralizing tendencies of unregulated reading in general. Granted the power to organize parish schooling through the Vestry School Act of 1824, the Catholic clergy did nothing effective.

Despite this, the invention of the printing press had laid the foundation for the modern era and universal social literacy, and so it is that with time, “technologically, literacy had passed from the hands of an elite to the populace at large. Historical factors and socio-political conditions, however, have determined the extent to which universal social literacy has come to pass”

1868 to 1986

In 1871 only about half of French Canadian men in Canada self-reported that they were literate, whereas 90 percent of other Canadian men said they could read and write (Greer, cited in Green, MacKinnon & Minns, 2005), but information from the Canadian Families Project sample of the 1901 Census of Canada indicated that literacy rates for French Canadians and other Canadians increased, as measured by the ability of men between the ages of 16 and 65 to answer literacy questions. Compulsory attendance in schools was legislated in the late 19th century in all provinces but Quebec, but by then, a change in parental attitudes towards educating the new generation meant that many children were already attending regularly. Unlike the emphasis of school promoters on character formation, the shaping of values, the inculcation of political and social attitudes, and proper behaviour, many parents supported schooling because they wanted their children to learn to read, write and do arithmetic. Efforts were made to exert power and religious, moral, economic/professional, and social/cultural influence over children who were learning to read by dictating the contents of their school readers accordingly. But educators broke from these spheres of influence and also taught literature from a more child-centred perspective: for the pleasure of it (Murphy, 2012).

Educational change in Québec began as a result of a major commission of inquiry at the start of what came to be called the Quiet Revolution in the early 1960s. In response to the resulting recommendations, the Québec government revamped the school system in an attempt to enhance the francophone population's general educational level and to produce a better-qualified labour force. Catholic Church leadership was rejected in favour of government administration and vastly increased budgets were given to school boards across the province.

With time, and with continuing inquiry into the literacy achievement levels of Canadians, the definition of literacy moved from a dichotomous one (either a person could, or couldn’t write his or her name, or was literate or illiterate), to ones that considered its multidimensionality, along with the qualitative and quantitative aspects of literacy. In the 1970s, organizations like the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) believed that one had to complete the 8th grade to achieve functional literacy. Examination of 1976 census data, for example, found that 4,376,655, or 28.4% of Canadians 15 years of age and over reported a level of schooling of less than grade 9 and were thus deemed not functionally literate (Thomas, 1983, p. 52). But in 1991, UNESCO formally acknowledged Canada’s findings that assessment of educational attainment as proxy measure of literacy was not as reliable as was direct assessment (UNESCO, 1991, p. 5). This dissatisfaction manifested itself in the development of actual proficiency tests that measure reading literacy more directly.

Direct Systematic Measures of Literacy in Canada, 1987 to Present

Canada conducted its first literacy survey in 1987 which discovered that there were more than five million functionally illiterate adults in Canada, or 24 per cent of the adult population. Statistics Canada then conducted three national and international literacy surveys of the adult population — the first one in 1989 commissioned by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) department.

This first survey was called the “Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities” (LSUDA) survey, and was modeled on the 1985 US survey of young adults (YALS). It represented a first attempt in Canada to produce skill measures deemed comparable across languages. Literacy, for the first time, was measured on a continuum of skills. The survey found that 16% of Canadians had literacy skills too limited to deal with most of the printed material encountered in daily life whereas 22% were considered “narrow” readers.

In 1994-95, Canada participated in the first multi-country, multi-language assessment of adult literacy, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). A stratified multi-stage probability sample design was used to select the sample from the Census Frame. The sample was designed to yield separate samples for the two Canadian official languages, English and French, and participants were measured on the dimensions of prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy. The survey found that 42.2%, 43% and 42.2% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy, Document Literacy and Quantitative Literacy, respectively. The survey presented many important correlations, among which was a strong plausible link between literacy and a country’s economic potential.

In 2003, Canada participated in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). This survey contained identical measures for assessing the prose and document literacy proficiencies, allowing for comparisons between survey results on these two measures and found that 41.9% and 42.6% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy and document literacy respectively. Further, Canadians’ mean scores also improved on both the prose and the document literacy scales.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is expected to produce new comparative skill profiles in late 2013.

United States

Main article: Literacy in the United States

One-room school in 1935, Alabama

In 1820, 20% of the entire adult white population was illiterate, and 80% of the African American population was illiterate. By 1900 the situation had improved somewhat, but 44% of African American people remained illiterate. There were significant improvements for African American and other races in the early 20th century as the descendants of former slaves, who had had no educational opportunities, grew up in the post Civil War period and often had some chance to obtain a basic education. The gap in illiteracy between white and black adults continued to narrow through the 20th century, and in 1979 the rates were about the same.

Full prose proficiency, as measured by the ability to process complex and challenging material such as would be encountered in everyday life, is achieved by about 13% of the general, 17% of the white, and 2% of the African American population. However 86% of the general population had basic or higher prose proficiency as of 2003, with a decrease distributed across all groups in the full proficiency group vs. 1992 of more than 10%, consistent with a general decline.

Literacy in South America

In 1964 in Brazil, Paulo Freire was arrested and exiled for teaching peasants to read.

Since democracy returned to Brazil, however, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of literate people.

Literacy in Africa

Currently, Africa is the continent with the lowest literacy rate in the world.

Algeria

The literacy rate of Algeria is around 70%: education is compulsory and free in Algeria up to age of 17.

Botswana

Botswana has among the highest literacy rates in the developing world with around 85% of its population being literate.

Egypt

Egypt has a relatively high literacy rate. The adult literacy rate in 2010 was estimated at 72.0%. Education is compulsory from ages 6 to 15 and free for all children to attend. 93% of children enter primary school today, compared with 87% in 1994.

Ethiopia

The Ethiopians are among the first literate people in the world, having written, read, and created manuscripts in their ancient language of Ge`ez (Ameharic)since the second century CE. All boys learned to read the Psalms around the age of 7. National literacy campaign introduced in 1978 increased literacy rates to between 37% (unofficial) and 63% (official) by 1984.

Kenya

The literacy rate in Kenya among people below 20 years of age is over 70%, as the first 8 years of primary school are provided tuition-free by the government. In January 2008, the government began offering a restricted program of free secondary education. Literacy is much higher among the young than the old population, with the total being about 53% for the country. Most of this literacy, however, is elementary and not secondary or advanced.

Literacy in Asia

China

Main article: Education in the People's Republic of China

The PRC conducts standardized testing to assess proficiency in Putonghua but it is primarily for foreigners or those needing to demonstrate professional proficiency in the Beijing dialect. Literacy in logographic languages like Chinese has been graded on the number of characters in the speaker's lexicon, with a few thousand considered the minimum for practical literacy. Similar tests exist in other countries where Chinese is an official language. Chinese can be expressed phonetically and alphabetically but Chinese speakers prefer the Chinese logographic system.

India

Main article: Literacy in India

Laos

Three Laotian girls sit outside their school, each absorbed in reading a book they received at a rural school book party.

Obstacles to literacy vary by country and culture. Writing systems, quality of education, availability of written material, competition from other sources (television, video games, cell phones, and family work obligations) and cultural influences all influence literacy levels.

In Laos, which has a phonetic alphabet, the mechanics of reading are relatively easy to learn, compared to English, where spelling and pronunciation rules are filled with exceptions, and Chinese, with thousands of symbols to be memorized. But a lack of books and other written materials has hindered functional literacy. Many children and adults can read so haltingly that the skill is of no real benefit. Thus Laos has the lowest level of adult literacy of any South East Asian nation except for East Timor.

A literacy project in Laos addresses this by using what it calls "books that make literacy fun!" The project, Big Brother Mouse, publishes colorful, easy-to-read books, then delivers them by holding book parties at rural schools. Some of the books are modeled on successful western books by authors such as Dr. Seuss. The most popular titles, however, are traditional Lao fairy tales. Two popular collections of folktales were written by Siphone Vouthisakdee, who comes from a village where only five children finished primary school.

Big Brother Mouse has also created village reading rooms, and published books for adult readers about subjects such as Buddhism, health, and baby care.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) aims to bring literacy to adults, especially women.

Philippines

In the Philippines, it is assumed that before the Spanish colonization, the natives of the Philippine islands were universally literate that all can read and write in their own respective languages. During the Spanish colonization of the islands, reading materials were destroyed to a far much less extent compared to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Spaniards tried to rub literacy in the islands to prevent the islanders to unite. Education and literacy was introduced only to the Peninsulares and remained a privilege until the Americans came.

The Americans introduced the public schools system to the country which drove literacy rates up. English became the lingua franca in the Philippines. It was only during a brief period in the Japanese occupation of the Philippines that the Japanese were able to teach their language in the Philippines and teach the children their written language.

After World War II, the Philippines had the highest literacy rates in Asia. It nearly achieved universal literacy once again in 80s and 90s. Ever since then, the literacy rate has plummeted only to start regaining a few percentage years back.

The DepEd, CHED, and other academic institutions encourage children to improve literacy skills and knowledge. The government has a program of literacy teaching starting in kindergarten. New reforms are being brought in shifting to a K-12 system which will teach children their regional languages before English, as opposed to the 10-years basic education program which teaches English and Filipino, the country's two official languages, from Grade 1.

Literacy in the 21st century

Main article: New literacies

Young school girls in Paktia Province of Afghanistan

Economic impact

Many policy analysts consider literacy rates as a crucial measure of the value of a region's human capital. For example literate people can be more easily trained than illiterate people - and generally have a higher socio-economic status; thus they enjoy better health and employment prospects. Literacy increases job opportunities and access to higher education.

Korotayev and coauthors have revealed a rather significant correlation between the level of literacy in the early 19th century and successful modernization and economic breakthroughs in the late 20th century, as 'literate people could be characterized by a greater innovative-activity level, which provides opportunities for modernization, development, and economic growth'

In Kerala, India, for example, female and child mortality rates declined dramatically in the 1960s, when girls schooled according to the education reforms after 1948 began to raise families. In addition to the potential for literacy to increase wealth, wealth may promote literacy, through cultural norms and easier access to schools and tutoring services.

In 2009, the National Adult Literacy agency (NALA) in Ireland commissioned a cost benefit analysis of adult literacy training. This concluded that there were economic gains for the individuals, the companies they worked for, and the Exchequer, as well as the economy and the country as a whole - for example, increased GDP. The annual income gain per person per level increase on the Irish ten level National Qualifications Framework was €3,810 and the annual gain to the Exchequer, in terms of reduced social welfare transfers and increased tax payments, was €1,531.

Broader and complementary definitions

Traditionally, literacy is ability to use written language actively and passively; one definition of literacy is the ability to "read, write, spell, listen, and speak." Since the 1980s, some have argued that literacy is ideological, which means that literacy always exists in a context, in tandem with the values associated with that context. Prior work viewed literacy as existing autonomously.

Some have argued that the definition of literacy should be expanded. For example, in the United States, the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have added "visually representing" to the traditional list of competencies. Similarly, in Scotland, literacy has been defined as: "The ability to read, write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners."

A basic literacy standard in many places is the ability to read the newspaper. Increasingly, communication in commerce and in general requires the ability to use computers and other digital technologies. Since the 1990s, when the Internet came into wide use in the United States, some have asserted that the definition of literacy should include the ability to use tools such as web browsers, word processing programs, and text messages. Similar expanded skill sets have been called multimedia literacy, computer literacy, information literacy, and technological literacy. Some scholars propose the idea multiliteracies which includes Functional Literacy, Critical Literacy, and Rhetorical Literacy.

"Arts literacy" programs exist in some places in the United States.

Other genres under study by academia include critical literacy, media literacy, ecological literacy and health literacy With the increasing emphasis on evidence-based decision making, and the use of statistical graphics and information, statistical literacy is becoming a very important aspect of literacy in general. The International Statistical Literacy Project is dedicated to the promotion of statistical literacy among all members of society.

It is argued that literacy includes the cultural, political, and historical contexts of the community in which communication takes place.

Given that a large part of the benefits of literacy can be obtained by having access to a literate person in the household, some recent literature in economics, starting with the work of Kaushik Basu and James Foster, distinguishes between a 'proximate illiterate' and an 'isolated illiterate'. The former refers to an illiterate person who lives in a household with literates and the latter to an illiterate who lives in a household of all illiterates. What is of concern is that many people in poor nations are not just illiterates but isolated illiterates.

Greek and Roman were written languages long ago. Ancient Chinese tested candidates for government positions. German and English both became written languages in about 800 AD.

Teaching literacy

Main article: Learning to read

Teaching English literacy in the United States is dominated by a focus on a set of discrete decoding skills. From this perspective, literacy — or, rather, reading — comprises a number of subskills that can be taught to students. These skill sets include phonological awareness, phonics (decoding), fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Mastering each of these subskills is necessary for students to become proficient readers.

From this same perspective, readers of alphabetic languages must understand the alphabetic principle to master basic reading skills. For this purpose a writing system is "alphabetic" if it uses symbols to represent individual language sounds, though the degree of correspondence between letters and sounds varies between alphabetic languages. Syllabic writing systems (such as Japanese kana) use a symbol to represent a single syllable, and logographic writing systems (such as Chinese) use a symbol to represent a morpheme.

There are any number of approaches to teaching literacy; each is shaped by its informing assumptions about what literacy is and how it is best learned by students. Phonics instruction, for example, focuses on reading at the level of the word. It teaches readers to observe and interpret the letters or groups of letters that make up words. A common method of teaching phonics is synthetic phonics, in which a novice reader pronounces each individual sound and "blends" them to pronounce the whole word. Another approach is embedded phonics instruction, used more often in whole language reading instruction, in which novice readers learn about the individual letters in words on a just-in-time, just-in-place basis that is tailored to meet each student's reading and writing learning needs. That is, teachers provide phonics instruction opportunistically, within the context of stories or student writing that feature many instances of a particular letter or group of letters. Embedded instruction combines letter-sound knowledge with the use of meaningful context to read new and difficult words. Techniques such as directed listening and thinking activities can be used to aid children in learning how to read and reading comprehension.

In a 2012 proposal, it has been claimed that reading can be acquired naturally if print is constantly available at an early age in the same manner as spoken language. If an appropriate form of written text is made available before formal schooling begins, reading should be learned inductively, emerge naturally, and with no significant negative consequences. This proposal advances knowledge and understanding because it challenges the commonly held belief that written language requires formal instruction and schooling. Its success would change current views of literacy and schooling. Using developments in behavioral science and technology, an interactive system (Technology Assisted Reading Acquisition, TARA) would enable young pre-literate children to accurately perceive and learn properties of written language by simply exposure to the written form.

The broader impacts of this possibility are far reaching. The inability to read is prevalent around the world and discouragingly present even in American society. The cost of illiteracy as well as the huge cost of formal literacy instruction is one of the major financial burdens on societies. In addition, many students who are considered literate still have difficulty in comprehension which may be related to making reading instruction contingent on spoken language. By embedding the child in written language, their learning to read becomes embodied in the same manner as learning spoken language. The success of the project will have a huge impact teaching, training, and learning. This innovative intervention would also help redirect financial resources where they will have the most impact. Although 90% of private and public education spending is on children between the ages of 6 and 19, 90% of brain growth occurs before age 6. Spending for nurturing children for literacy before age 6 will be a large market and will have the most impact in improving the quality of life, especially those children who reside on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Public library efforts to promote literacy

The public library has long been a force promoting literacy in many countries. In the United States, the release of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) report in 2005 revealed that approximately 14% of adults function at the lowest level of literacy; 29% of adults function at the basic functional literacy level and cannot help their children with homework beyond the first few grades. The lack of reading skills hinders adults from reaching their full potential. They might have difficulty getting and maintaining a job, providing for their families, or even reading a story to their children. For adults, the library might be the only source of a literacy program.

United States

Programs have been instituted in public libraries across the United States in an attempt to improve literacy rates. Some examples are listed below.

READ/Orange County, initiated in 1992 by the Orange County Public Library in California, is an example of a flourishing community literacy program. The organization builds on what people have already learned through experience as well as education, rather than trying to make up for what has not been learned. The organization then provides the student with the skills to continue learning in the future. The program operates on the basis that an adult who learns to read creates a ripple effect in the community. An adult who learns to read impacts not just himself but the whole community: he becomes an example to his children and grandchildren, and can better serve his community. The mission of READ/Orange County is to "create a more literate community by providing diversified services of the highest quality to all who seek them." Potential tutors train during an extensive 23-hour tutor training workshop in which they learn the philosophy, techniques and tools they will need to work with adult learns. After the training, the tutors invest at least 50 hours a year to tutoring their student.

Another successful literacy effort is the BoulderReads! program in Boulder, Colorado. The program recognized the difficulty that students had in obtaining child care while attending tutoring sessions, and joined with the University of Colorado to provide reading buddies to the children of students. Reading Buddies matches children of adult literacy students with college students who meet with them once a week throughout the semester for an hour and a half. The college students receive course credit, ensuring the quality and reliability of their time. Each Reading Buddies session focuses primarily on the college student reading aloud with the child. This helps the child gain interest in books and feel comfortable reading aloud. Time is also spent on word games, writing letters, or searching for books in the library. Throughout the semester the pair work on writing and illustrating a book together. The college student’s grade is partly dependent on the completion of the book. Although Reading Buddies began primarily as an answer to the lack of child care for literacy students, it has evolved into another aspect of the program. While the children are not participants in the tutoring program, they do show marked improvement in their reading and writing skills throughout the semester, due in part to the admiration and respect they gain for their college reading buddy.

The Hillsborough Literacy Council (HLC), operating under the Florida Literacy Coalition, a statewide organization, strives to improve the literacy ability of adults in Hillsborough County, Florida. Working since 1986, the HLC is "committed to improving literacy by empowering adults through education." The HLC also provides tutoring for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). Approximately 120,000 adults in Hillsborough County are considered illiterate or read below the fourth grade level. Through one-on-one tutoring, the organization works to help adult students reach at least the fifth grade level. 95,000 adults living in Hillsborough County do not speak English; volunteers in the organization typically work with small groups of non-English speaking students to help practice their English conversation skills at any time.

See also

• List of countries by literacy rate
• International Literacy Foundation

External links

• UNESCO Literacy Portal
• UNESCO Effective Literacy Practice Database
• Template:Dmoz
• Literacy Assessment
• The National Strategies for Primary Literacy
• The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives
• National Literacy Trust
• List of countries by literacy rate List of Countries by literacy rate.