Aliteracy :A Barrier of Human Resource Development Under Population Education

Title of the Topic: “Aliteracy”:A Barrier of Human Resource Development Under Population Education.

Dr. Chitrangad Upadhyay Maharaja College, Ujjain INTRODUCTION

A world-changing series of events – the fall of Communism, the rise of globalization, accelerating use of advanced technologies, and a worldwide demographic revolution – are combining to produce a potential 2010 workforce meltdown. A literacy time bomb is set to explode across the world’s workforce. The underlying cause: the great mismatch of too many low-skilled people unqualified to fill the great number of high-skill jobs. As more of the highly literate and specialty-skilled baby boomers, who are now running the world’s industrial economies retire (2010-2025), the number of highly literate entry- level replacement workers will continue to fall. The result: workers can’t find jobs and businesses can’t find workers because of Aliteracy. The new problem of aliteracy among young adolescents is growing. Educators need to spark and reinforce reading in all subject areas. Technology is tearing our young people away from the joy of their own imagination.

Aliteracy:

Alitracy is the paradox of being able to read, but choosing not to. In America, aliteracy is a growing phenomenon so in India caused by poor reading skills, time pressure, workplace, distractions and lack of concentration. Working under pressure or with significant distractions can turn every literate individual into high impatient alliterate user with minimal attention span and little tolerance for reading text. What Washinton post says that: “ Aliteracy…. Is like an invisible liquid seeping through our culture, nigh impossible to pinpoint or defend against. There may be untold collateral damage in a society that can read but doesn’t.”

Aliteeracy has significant cultural, personal and educational implications; in this paper we will consider Aliteracy only in context of education. This paper looks at the growing problem of “alliteracy” (the state of being able to read but being uninterested in doing so) in teenagers and what teachers and school librarians can do to fight the problem. This research establishes a clear connection between teacher expectations and recommendations and student independent reading performance. Using a combination of Gates-MacGinitie defined reading levels, Accelerated Reader diagnostic reports, and library circulation statistics, I am able to show that students can become literate adults.

The increasing numbers of children, youth and adults who learnt how to read and write but who do not make active or meaningful use of their literacy skills. Aliteracy has thus emerged as a new concept and concern, not only in highly literate societies but in those that are still struggling with large illiterate and functional illiterate populations. Aliteracy is no doubt a reflection of some of the critical contradictions of modern times: unprecedented flow of information and knowledge together with unprecedented levels of poverty, unemployment and struggle for survival that make leisure, studying or learning a luxury for a few; an era of haste, dominated by audiovisual culture and media, that leaves little room for interpersonal communication and expression DEFINITIONS: What is Aliteracy ? "An ability to read but an indifference and boredom with reading for academic and enrichment purposes

"Aliterate children can read, but they tend to avoid the activity. Aliteracy seems to reinforce itself. Children who do not read do not develop their reading skills. Children, like most of us, dislike doing things they do poorly, so they tend to read less and less. This reinforcement is especially true in the classroom, where the child who does not read sits with skilled readers and continues to feel more inept about reading." . "Aliteracy is potentially as alarming as illiteracy. Educators need to look at factors such as their attitude toward children, the way children learn, and the curriculum. These factors may have an enormous impact on creating lifelong positive attitudes about reading."

Hence the “Aliteracy is the paradox of being able to read but choosing not to.” The term was first coined in 1884 by Daniel Boorstin, Librarian of congress, in a publication tracking the decline of reading skills in the Unites States. Nearly 20 years after Boorstin’s first alert, observes of American culture continue to report that Aliteracy is widespread and growing.

FORMS OF ALITERAACY: As Initially coined and has it comes into wider use, the term aliteracy refers to paradox of being able to read but simply choosing not to . We’ll use the phrase” Functional alliterate” to describe a person who:  Has poor reading skills and finds reading cumbersome and inefficient.  Does little or no reading for entertainment  Usually avoids any reading if possible. The problem of poor reading comprehension caused by either form of Aliteracy is further compounded by:  Increasing technical job demands  Growing incidence of workers for whome English is not the native language.  Higher job stress related to workplace productivity pressures A Survey: A Survey conducted in USA “Reading at Risk” presents the results from the literature segment of a large-scale survey, the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002 at the request of the National Endowment for the Arts. The report establishes trends in the number of adults reading, listening to, and writing literature by demographic categories of age, race, region, income, and education. This report also compares participation in literary activities with other leisure activities, such as watching movies and exercising.

Key Findings

1. The percentage of adult reading literature has dropped dramatically over the past 20 years. 2. The decline in literary reading parallels a decline in total book reading. 3. The rate of decline in literary reading is accelerating. 4. Women read more literature than men do, but literary reading by both groups is declining at significant rates. 5. Literary reading is declining among all education levels.

6. Literary reading is declining among all age groups. 7. The steepest decline in literary reading is in the youngest age groups. 8. The decline in literary reading foreshadows an erosion in cultural and civic participation. 19. The decline in reading correlates with increased participation in a variety of electronic media, including the Internet, video games, and portable digital devices.

CONCLUSION

Literacy rates and levels have a significant impact on literature participation. More research into the leisure time habits of well-educated non-readers would be required in order to determine ways of raising literacy in India., although it is evident that people have more arts and entertainment options competing for their leisure time than ever before. Following are the perceptional barriers for aliteracy of this paper.

Perceptional barriers:

By the family and community:  Lack of basic needs devalues reading, because kids don’t feel like reading;  Illiterate parents do not understand the value of reading and do not promote reading;  Parents are rarely involved in their children’s education;  Rural communities do not see the relevance of reading to their lives;  Many adults who can read do not read – aliteracy;  Those adults who can read do not teach others in their community to read;  The lack of family literacy and community mentoring leads to squandered energy;  Reading is not fashionable and education is not cool;  Television, computers and sports are preferred forms of communication and pleasure;  The lack of a reading culture dampens the spirit and dulls the imagination;  Low literacy levels lead to underdeveloped cognitive skills.

By the educational system:  School teachers are poor role models as readers because they do not read;  Teachers are poorly trained, and this results in poor teaching;  Teachers do not promote reading in the classroom;  Teachers do not provide opportunities for reading during school time;  Teachers do not promote reading for pleasure;  Where reading materials do exist, they are not promoted or effectively mediated;  The new curriculum does not explicitly encourage reading;  Urban legends about the new curriculum lead to beliefs that schools don’t need textbooks;  A culture of photocopies has replaced the use of books;  Educational policies restrict proscriptive reading;  Government has not made reading a priority;  Schools do not have specific book budgets;  Schools do not have libraries.  Post of the librarian abolished by Govt.  There are no assessment criteria for pleasure reading;  Reading for pleasure is restricted by the perception that reading is only necessary for examinations.

Additional data and research are needed to explain why literary reading fell in these years and if indeed there is a pattern of decline over time. More research is needed to complete the portrait of the reader of literary works. Some questions for a research agenda and a national conversation on literature participation might include:

 How does literature, particularly serious literary work, compete with the Internet, popular entertainment, and other increased demands on leisure time? 1• How do parents, communities, schools, and the education system respond to 2 illiteracy and aliteracy? 3• Have changes in the ways publishers choose and market books had any effect 4 on literature participation? 5• If education levels are the surest predictor of literature participation, what can 6 be done to increase the reading level by less educated adults? 7• What factors are at work in the decline in reading literary works among 8 people ages 18 to 45? Are we losing a generation of readers?

RECOMMENDATIONS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

 Teachers need to identify students who can read but don’t, through tools such as the rutin assessment.  Teachers need to become more familiar with young adult literature and accept that adults and teenagers have different likes and values.  Teachers and librarians need to talk often about what is happening in the classroom and what is available in the library that would add to the curriculum.  Students need to spend time talking about books, using guided activities such as Book Pass and book clubs.

Perceptional barriers outcome: Advocacy and reading campaign

Programmes & pitfalls to avoid:  Draft a calendar of awareness events;  Develop ideas to sustain the campaign for a 10-year period;  Decade of Reading project must build on what organisations and individuals are already doing;  Target campaigns to specific groups to avoid dispersion of effort;  Continue lobbying: the powerful and the powerless;  Lobby government to re-insert extensive reading in the NQF and Curriculum 2005  Hire an advertising agency to promote reading;  Slogans:  “A book a day keeps unemployment away”;  “Reading for Fact and Fiction”;  “Reading for Life”;  “Read or perish”;  “Be a millionaire – learn to read” (using popular game shows).

Mechanisms and methods:

 Piggy-back on existing structures, like the Readathon;  Promote ‘Barefoot Teacher’ model: for youth, unemployed and rural sector;  Deepen partnerships with libraries; community radio, literacy programmes;  Promote story-telling, possibly on radio;  Literacy hour (at work and school);  Use craft fairs for literacy promotion;  Campaigns:  “Each one teach one” campaign to promote community mentoring;  Library Awareness campaign to broaden perceptions of libraries as places to obtain a wide range of information, including info on job opportunities;  Invest in Reading campaigns to challenge government and corporate sector to spend as much on reading as on rugby or cricket;  Campaign against VAT on books.  Prizes:  Book prizes and awards linked to Adult Literacy Week; also in magazines;  Prizes for teachers and learners who love reading – book vouchers;  Mass media - ongoing reading promotion campaign:  Motivate for special edition of The Teacher or the Mail & Guardian.  Regular weekly reading and related radio and TV programmes;  Lobby regional and community radio stations to sponsor talks by local librarians, well- known authors and celebrities,  Use community radio stations to help distribute books;  Get prominent people to promote reading;  Oprah Winfrey book club show on TV, community radio;  Make reading fashionable. Get people talking about reading.

References : Pampel, F.C. 2000. Logistic Regression: A Primer. Sage University Papers Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-132. Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, 84 pp.

Allison, P.D. 1991. Logistic Regression Using the SAS® System: Theory and Application. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC: pp 5-78.

Wright, R.E. 1995. Logistic Regression. In Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics, edited by L. G. Grimm and P.R. Yarnold, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 217-244.

Chabrow,E 2001. Uncomplicating It: Simpler Said Than Done. Information Week (April) 45-48.

Cole. D2001. Sad to Say. We Have a New Word for our Times: Aliteracy.

Week,L.2001 Aliteracy is like an Invisible Liquid. Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001 May 13.html

Friends of Libraries-USA. Aliteracy in America.

For the article, "Managing corporate aliteracy," by Bain McKay in the August 2001 issue of DominoPower, visit http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200108/alliteracy0801001.html. For the article, "Corporate IQ: Automating sustainable knowledge management," by Bain McKay in the July 2001 issue of DominoPower, visit http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200107/corporateiq001.html

IDENTIFIED BARRIERS

Perceptional barriers: By the family and community:  Lack of basic needs devalues reading, because kids don’t feel like reading;  Illiterate parents do not understand the value of reading and do not promote reading;  Parents are rarely involved in their children’s education;  Rural communities do not see the relevance of reading to their lives;  Many adults who can read do not read – aliteracy;  Those adults who can read do not teach others in their community to read;  The lack of family literacy and community mentoring leads to squandered energy;  Reading is not fashionable and education is not cool;  Television, computers and sports are preferred forms of communication and pleasure;  The lack of a reading culture dampens the spirit and dulls the imagination;  Low literacy levels lead to underdeveloped cognitive skills.

By the educational system:  School teachers are poor role models as readers because they do not read;  Teachers are poorly trained, and this results in poor teaching;  Teachers do not promote reading in the classroom;  Teachers do not provide opportunities for reading during school time;  Teachers do not promote reading for pleasure;  Where reading materials do exist, they are not promoted or effectively mediated;  The new curriculum does not explicitly encourage reading;  Urban legends about the new curriculum lead to beliefs that schools don’t need textbooks;  A culture of photocopies has replaced the use of books;  Educational policies restrict proscriptive reading;  Government has not made reading a priority;  Schools do not have specific book budgets;  Schools do not have libraries.  Post of the librarian abolished by Govt.  There are no assessment criteria for pleasure reading;  Reading for pleasure is restricted by the perception that reading is only necessary for examinations.

By default – reading stakeholders in government, civil society and industry:  Reading stakeholders have failed to create a culture of reading;  Stakeholders need to promote reading for pleasure;  Mass media stakeholders have failed to use their power to promote reading;  Stakeholders have failed to distinguish between illiteracy and aliteracy;  Civil society has failed to use local government to promote reading;  Many excellent services provided by NGOs are going down the tubes through funding crises and dispersed efforts;  There is no co-ordinated action plan among providers (NGO/ private sector/ government);  Reading promotion needs a national co-ordinated strategy similar to AIDS Council.

Materials barriers: Physical lack of materials and access points  People cannot read if they do not have reading material;  There are insufficient reading materials in many communities;  Schools lack books;  Newly-literate people need more than basic textbooks to read;  Publishers and retail outlets are inaccessible to rural communities and many urban areas;  There are not enough libraries, and many people do not have access to a library;  There are not enough ABET centres or reading clubs to offer alternative access;  Without regular access to a range of reading materials, there can be no reading culture.

Accessibility barriers: Lack of appropriate materials  Where reading materials do exist, they are often:  Too expensive;  Culturally irrelevant to the target readers;  Unattractive to the target readers;  Not available in the first language of the reader;  Not at the appropriate reading level;  Readers struggle to access available materials because of:  General illiteracy and the difficulty of learning to read;  Non-fluency in their own language or any language;  Lack of confidence in the importance of reading or their reading ability;  Lack of training/ facilitation/ mediation of reading;  Its easier to access the mass media (TV/radio) for communication/ escapism;  Providers fail to make materials accessible because:  Teachers and teacher educators lack proper training and teaching methods;  They have failed to engage with creative reading techniques; multi-media methods and the latest technology;  There are too few books of indigenous writing;  Local stories are not promoted (e.g. grannies’ stories to promote libraries);  Too much effort to control content and language;  Insufficient use of accessible formats (picture stories; comics; packages);

Perceptional barriers outcome: Advocacy and reading campaign

Programmes & pitfalls to avoid:  Draft a calendar of awareness events;  Develop ideas to sustain the campaign for a 10-year period;  Decade of Reading project must build on what organisations and individuals are already doing;  Target campaigns to specific groups to avoid dispersion of effort;  Continue lobbying: the powerful and the powerless;  Lobby government to re-insert extensive reading in the NQF and Curriculum 2005  Hire an advertising agency to promote reading;  Slogans:  “A book a day keeps unemployment away”;  “Reading for Fact and Fiction”;  “Reading for Life”;  “Read or perish”;  “Be a millionaire – learn to read” (using popular game shows). Mechanisms and methods:  Piggy-back on existing structures, like the Readathon;  Promote ‘Barefoot Teacher’ model: for youth, unemployed and rural sector;  Deepen partnerships with libraries; community radio, literacy programmes;  Promote story-telling, possibly on radio;  Literacy hour (at work and school);  Use craft fairs for literacy promotion;  Campaigns:  “Each one teach one” campaign to promote community mentoring;  Library Awareness campaign to broaden perceptions of libraries as places to obtain a wide range of information, including info on job opportunities;  Invest in Reading campaigns to challenge government and corporate sector to spend as much on reading as on rugby or cricket;  Campaign against VAT on books.  Prizes:  Book prizes and awards linked to Adult Literacy Week; also in magazines;  Prizes for teachers and learners who love reading – book vouchers;  Mass media - ongoing reading promotion campaign:  Motivate for special edition of The Teacher or the Mail & Guardian.  Regular weekly reading and related radio and TV programmes;  Lobby regional and community radio stations to sponsor talks by local librarians, well- known authors and celebrities,  Use community radio stations to help distribute books;  Get prominent people to promote reading;  Oprah Winfrey book club show on TV, community radio;  Make reading fashionable. Get people talking about reading.

Material barriers outcome: Book-fairs and alternative distribution  Aim: To have books and stories in each house;  Target babies and illiterate pregnant women:  Replicate Swedish programme where government gives mothers a book when the baby is born and uses clinics to improve the literacy of pregnant women;  Link up with grassroots initiatives like Gauteng’s “Born to Read” programme;  Collect books from people who have them:  “Donate a Book” campaign to local libraries, schools and centres;  Book pick-ups and donation centres like child welfare old clothes programme;  Lobby publishers to sell excess books to vendors cheaply instead of pulping;  Promote second-hand bookshops as an entrepreneurial venture. Campaign: “Second-hand books for first-hand reading”;  Exploit existing distribution channels for reading materials:  Bakery vans that travel everywhere;  Clinics that go to rural areas;  Events like World Book Day and Library Week;  At queues and taxis, using schoolchildren;  Libraries for story-telling; reading and book reviews;  UNESCO’s traveling book;  Lobby to change distribution obstacles and create new access points:  Bookmaking projects and displays where resources are limited;  Lobby for cost-effective materials;  Distribute research findings and information about materials;  Tackle the problems with the education department procurement units;  Hold educational materials fairs in each province to attract major purchasers and the general public – perhaps link to existing events like the Rand Show

Accessibility barriers outcome: Materials conference  Teacher development projects:  Train teachers and trainers in reading promotion/ mediation;  Use teachers journals to promote reading;  Promote the provision of accessible materials:  Use soap operas to get people reading – develop materials like comic strips to go along with popular soaps like “Generations”;  Target materials to existing social formations like stokvels and small groups of families;  Promote increased adaptation of SA literature into accessible medium like comic strips;  Promote mother tongue reading:  Specific focus on a core of reading material available for each reading level in local languages;  Find indigenous translators for children’s books;  Promote book exhibitions of African literature in libraries;  Organize a conference on the provision of learning materials.

Coordination mechanism:  Set up steering committee with sectoral reps to lead umbrella body;  Maintain links forged at conference through regular newsletter;  Continue dialogue with national and State governments;  Participate in the International Reading Association;  Compile and house a database of research;  Review good books to impact on procurement;  Action research in classroom reading for presentation to SARA;  Seek overseas donations of second-hand books

Funding strategy  Lobby for cheap books; tax-free children’s books;  Lobby for government subsidy on books for a limited period;  Motivate for literacy and reading to get a piece of the National Lottery pie;  Organise a television phone-in campaign (AIDS campaign raised R3-million);  Save distribution costs by using existing infrastructure;  Lobby corporate sector to promote reading by using picture books for advertising;  Lobby major retail groups to promote children’s materials;  Lobby manufacturers to print competition forms on product packaging. .