Creating a Literate Environment: Hidden Dimensions and Policy Implications

1
Creating a Literate EnvironmentHidden
Dimensions and Policy Implications

• Peter Easton
• Florida State University
• WG/NFE

2
Methodology and organization of the study

• Synthesis of
• two previous research efforts (Club du Sahel and
  World Bank),
• 40 years of personal experience, and
• a review of related literature
• Approach Rely on lived experience to the extent
  possible, seek local frames for
  conceptualization.
• Jiri mèn o mèn ji la, a te se ka ke bama ye.
• But the devil too can quote scripture.
• Organization
• Anatomy of a literate environment
• Analysis of hidden dimensions
• Case examples
• Recommendations
• References See complete document

3
What do we mean by a literate environment?
4
A short history of post-literacy

• Lessons from the origin of literacy in the
  ancient fertile crescent
• Early UNESCO approaches literacy as holy water
• Discovery of the post-literacy problem, a
  useful misnomer
• Drawing the lessons Implement post-literacy
  before literacy.

5
Dimensions of a literate environmentThe well-
and the less well-recognized

• Educational aspects
• Reading material
• Continuing education
• Linkages to formal schooling
• Access to further training and lifelong learning
• Socio-economic aspects
• Assumption of new responsibility
• in existing institutions
• Creation of new businesses and associations

6
Drilling down to the hidden dimensions

• Socio-economic connections often lie outside the
  comfort zone of educators
• First clues from history the challenges of
  management responsibility.
• Use current field experience to better explicate
  the connections.
• The key issue is the articulation between
  literacy and its social, economic and political
  uses.
• And we need an understanding applicable to
  regions where modern labor markets are very
  scarce.

7
Dovetailing literacy and its applications in
rural Africa The example of agricultural
marketing

• The dynamics of progressive self-management of
  commercial crop markets in the Sahel.
• The role of literacy and nonformal education
• The skills required of peasant managers and of
  literacy educators!

8
Dovetailing Literacy and Its Applications
D E S I G N R E Q U I R E M E N T S
Increasing levels of technical skill required
9
A few things to note

• Consequences for the learner
• Alternation between learning and application
• Increasing power and responsibility at each level
• Consequences for the literacy agent
• Learning to see a development activity as a
  lesson plan
• Working out the authorizations, which all lie in
  other realms of development
• Literacy may not start with literacy!
• Consequences for the educational planner
• Learn to prospect new development domains where
  this kind of collaboration can take place.
• Discover to what degree the same type of approach
  is applicable in other sectors as well.

10
From the technical to the socio-politicalLiterac
y as an instrument of organizational democracy

• The problem of management power without
  accountability
• In ba kira, me ya ci gawai?
• But Kowa ya ba ka fawa, ya so kà yi fince
• A natural constraint development on a double
  axis.

11
Spreading the knowledge
Social groups or categories of persons involved
Level of responsi-bility assumed
Requisite knowledge and skill
Actual technical functions
Training needed
D
C
B
A
Axis of increasing
technical competence
I
II
III
IV
.
V
12
BUILDING ON A SOLID AND DEMOCRATIC BASE
Axis of monitoring
Axis of accountability
I. CURRENT STAFF
II. POTENTIAL REPLACEMENT STAFF (AND BOARD OF
DIRECTORS)
III. THE ENTIRE BODY OF STAKEHOLDERS
13
From the socio-political to the
economicManaging, accumulating and reinvesting
resources

• Remember literacy was arguably invented as a
  tool for resource management.
• And similar contexts are often those in which it
  is most immediately useful for rural -- and
  informal sector -- development

• E.g., micro-finance, marketing, new business
  start-up.
• The more so as, in situations of scarcity,
  resources must be somehow collectivized and
  managed.
• And that requires good accounting, management and
  communication.

14
So a critical means for building civil society

• Combining technical, socio-political and
  financial dimensions approximates the formula for
  developing civil society at the local level
• and for attaining sustainable development.
• As long as we dont forget the intellectual and
  learning dimension that serves as glue and the
  cultural dimension on which all is based.
• Whence the notion of five-fold capitalization
  used in the PADLOS-Education Study

15
CULTURAL CAPITAL
INSTITUTIONAL CAPITAL
FINANCIAL CAPITAL
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
Sustainable Development
PHYSICAL CAPITAL (Natural and Built Environment)
16
Implementation

• How likely are literacy programs to
• accomplish all of this?
• Not very. Happily they dont have to. Other
  resources
• The decentralization movement across development
  sectors its possibilities and limitations.
• The challenge of local capacity building
• But they and their counterparts do have to
  transform their own attitudes and practices
• Overcoming the silo mentality in socio-economic
  development.
• Getting out of the education box in literacy
  and formal education.
• Significance for EFA Education By All

17
Two morality tales from the field

• The PADLOS-Education Study (1994-1997)
• A study carried out under the aegis of the CILSS
  and the Club du Sahel (OECD).
• Devoted to examining the issue of literacy-usage
  articulations from the other end identify sites
  where local actors have taken over direction of
  development activities and then determine how
  they acquired the necessary knowledge, skills and
  aptitudes.
• Evaluating and reforming adult education policy
  at the World Bank
• Initially undertaken under the aegis of the
  Banks Human Development Network.
• Resistance to envisaging the intersectoral
  linkages required for effective local capacity
  building leads to termination of activity.

18
Concluding reflections on a literate environment

• Many important components but two critical axes
  (a) continuing education and (b) local
  socio-economic development
• Educators feel most at home with A yet arguably
  B is the most fundamental, for it is what durably
  creates written material and new training
  opportunities.
• B is partly dependent in turn on
  socio-political and economic policy, nationally
  and internationally You cant manage nothing.
• But not entirely Pedagogies of empowerment and
  conscientization can lead people to create
  collective capital where there was none before
  and to establish or take over some of their
  own fields of application.
• However, to count on this and perhaps even to
  preach it would be hypocritical for those, like
  ourselves, close enough to the seats of power to
  lobby for new alliances between literacy and its
  fields of application and to work at hammering
  out policies that capitalize on literacy.

19
A central policy recommendation

• Connect literacy with its socio-economic
  applications
• both pedagogically and structurally
• Experiment, perfect, evaluate and then publicize
  much more broadly a variety of inter-sectoral
  alliances between literacy programs and other
  development sectors devoted to --
• local capacity building,
• the assumption of new managerial powers by local
  actors,
• the transfer and accumulation of new resources at
  the field level and,
• as possible, the reinforcement of related and
  democratically constituted -- civil society
  institutions.

20
A parting thought

• Sàls làgm koabgà ti kùri ké bake.
• A hundred slips will not prevent the turtle from
  getting to the waters edge.
• Proverb Mooré / Burkina Faso
• For further information
• Peter B. Easton
• 114H STB, College of Education
• Florida State University
• Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA
• Tel. (1) [phone] Email peaston_at_fsu,edu