Each 8 September is celebrated as United Nations (UN) International Literacy Day.
As the UN website explains,
International Literacy Day, celebrated annually on 8 September, is an opportunity for Governments, civil society and stakeholders to highlight improvements in world literacy rates, and reflect on the world’s remaining literacy challenges. The issue of literacy is a key component of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UN’s SDGs, adopted by world leaders in September 2015, promotes, as part of its agenda, universal access to quality education and learning opportunities throughout people’s lives. SDG 4 has as one of its targets ensuring all young people achieve literacy and numeracy and that adults who lack these skills are given the opportunity to acquire them.
The Thammasat University Library owns several books on the subject of world literacy and on literacy in Thailand.
International Literacy Day (ILD) 2020 will focus on Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond with a focus on the role of educators and changing instructional methods. The theme will highlight literacy learning in a lifelong learning perspective and therefore mainly focus on youth and adults.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) website observes that around the world,
The recent Covid-19 crisis has been a stark reminder of the existing gap between policy discourse and reality: a gap that already existed in the pre-Covid-19 era and is negatively affecting the learning of youth and adults who have no or low literacy skills and therefore tend to face multiple disadvantages. During Covid-19, in many countries, adult literacy programmes were absent in the initial education response plans, so the majority of adult literacy programmes that did exist were suspended with just a few courses continuing virtually, through TV and radio, or in open air spaces. What is the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on youth and adult literacy educators and teaching and learning? What are the lessons learnt? How can we effectively position youth and adult literacy learning in global and national responses and in strategies for the recovery and resilience-building phase?
By exploring these questions, International Literacy Day 2020 will provide an opportunity to reflect on and discuss how innovative and effective pedagogies and teaching methodologies can be used in youth and adult literacy programmes to face the pandemic and beyond. The Day will also give an opportunity to analyse the role of educators, as well as effective policies, systems, governance and measures that can support educators and learning. Through a virtual conference, UNESCO will initiate a collective global discussion to reimagine the literacy teaching and learning of youth and adults in the post-Covid-19 era towards the achievement of the SDG 4.
A concept note for ILD 2020 explains,
The world has made steady progress in literacy in the past decades. Yet, globally, 773 million adults and young people lack basic literacy skills, and more than 617 million children and adolescents are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. The recent COVID-19 crisis has been a magnifier of existing literacy challenges, deeply affecting schooling and lifelong learning opportunities including for youth and adults with no or low literacy skills. During the initial phase of the pandemic, schools were closed down in more than 190 countries, disrupting the education of 62.3 per cent of the world’s student population of 1.09 billion in 123 countries. The COVID19 pandemic also affected around 63 million primary and secondary teachers in 165 countries. Governments have been rapidly deploying distance-learning solutions on an unprecedented scale, particularly in formal education for children and young people. A range of solutions, such as virtual lessons, dissemination of materials, and learning provision through TV, radio or in open air spaces, have been adopted. At the same time, in many places, the COVID-19 crisis has shed light on the unpreparedness of infrastructure, education systems, programmes, and people, including policy-makers, educators and professionals, families, and leaners themselves, for ensuring the continuity of teaching and learning in such a situation. It has considerably affected some specific sub-sectors, including youth and adult literacy and education. In many countries, adult literacy and education were absent in initial education response plans, and numerous adult literacy programmes that did exist in the pre-COVID-19 crisis era have been suspended. This means that many youth and adults with no or low literacy skills, who tend to face multiple disadvantages, have had limited access to life-saving information and remote learning opportunities and/or are at higher risk of losing livelihoods…
Moving towards the recovery and resilience-building phase, it is important that literacy, including youth and adult literacy, be integrated into global and national COVID-19 response and recovery plans to ensure the continuity of learning, improved provision, and more inclusive national lifelong learning systems and capacities. In this context, there is the emerging need to revisit literacy teaching and learning for youth and adults, as well as the role of educators. How have literacy teaching and learning, as well as educators, been affected by the COVID-19 crisis? What are some effective teaching approaches that should be maintained or expanded? How can teaching and learning for youth and adult literacy be reimagined in times of COVID-19 and beyond? These are some of the questions that need to be answered to guide our collective reflection and action. Against this backdrop, the celebrations of International Literacy Day (ILD) on 8 September 2020 will be devoted to the theme of ‘Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond’ with a particular focus on the role of educators and changing pedagogies. Main issues to be addressed Educators are at the heart of promoting quality lifelong learning. If educators are motivated, trained adequately and consistently, guaranteed decent working conditions, satisfactorily remunerated, and provided career prospects, youth and adult literacy programmes can be more successful and lead to better learning and development outcomes.
Thailand and Literacy
As TU students know, Thailand has a successful record in promoting literacy.
In 2018, adult literacy rate for Thailand was 93.8 %. Adult literacy rate of Thailand increased from 88 % in 1980 to 93.8 % in 2018 growing at an average annual rate of 1.10%.
Adult (15+) literacy rate (%). Total is the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.
According to a recent study, in 2015 in Thailand, the youth literacy rate was 98.1 %. Though Thailand youth literacy rate fluctuated substantially in recent years, it tended to increase from 2000 to 2015.
Youth (15-24) literacy rate (%). Total is the number of people age 15 to 24 years who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement on their everyday life, divided by the population in that age group. Generally, ‘literacy’ also encompasses ‘numeracy’, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations.
Progress still remains to be made, according to the Save the Children Fund, a United Kingdom-based organization that works to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts. In 2016, Save the Children stated that Thailand faces a reading crisis, as nearly a third of Thai 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate.
To be functionally illiterate means to lack the literacy necessary for coping with most jobs and many everyday situations.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)