Abstract
The idea of a campaign to promote massive and rapid increases in rates of literacy is not unique to the twentieth century. We contend, and this work illustrates, that major and largely successful campaigns to raise levels of literacy have taken place over the past four hundred years from the time of the Protestant Reformations, and that they share common elements. Our belief is that contemporary literacy campaigns can be better understood in a historical and comparative perspective.
History has shown that, up to the present time, revolutionary regimes have been the only ones capable of organizing successful mass literacy campaigns. From the Soviet Union to China, from Vietnam to Cuba, all revolutionary governments have given high priority to the war on illiteracy.1
The magnitude of the problem in many countries calls for massive efforts. Only specific campaigns with clearly defined targets can create the sense of urgency, mobilize popular support and marshal all possible resources to sustain mass actions, continuity, and follow-up.2
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Notes
Lä Thành Khôi, “Literacy Training and Revolution: The Vietnamese Experience,” in A Turning Point for Literacy, ed. Leon Bataille (Oxford: Pergamon), 1976, pp. 125–26.
Udaipur Conference, “Campaigning for Literacy: Proceedings,” International Council for Adult Education, Unesco, Uadiapur, India, January 1982.
Harvey J. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Society and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
see also Randall Collins, “Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification,” Harvard Educational Review 47 (February 1977), pp. 1–27.
John Boli, Francisco O. Ramirez, and John W. Meyer, “Explaining the Origins and Expansion of Mass Education,” Comparative Education Review 29 (May 1985), pp. 145–70.
Yehudi Cohen, “Schools and Civilization States,” in The Social Sciences and the Comparative Study of Educational Systems, ed. J. Fischer (Scranton, PA: International Textbook, 1970).
G. Carron and Anil Bordia, Issues in Planning and Implementing National Literacy Programmes (Paris: Unesco and HEP, 1985), esp. p. 18.
H. S. Bhola, Campaigning for Literacy: A Critical Analysis of Some Selected Literacy Campaigns of the 20th Century, with a Memorandum to Decision Makers (Paris: Unesco/ICAE Study, 1982), p. 211.
H. S. Bhola, Campaigning for Literacy: A Critical Analysis of Some Selected Literacy Campaigns of the 20th Century, with a Memorandum to Decision Makers (Paris: Unesco/ICAE Study, 1982), p. 211.
Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: A Social and Cultural History, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); see also Chapter 6 below.
See Chapters 11 and 13 below. See also Graff, Legacies, Brian Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Jonathan Kozol, Illiteracy in America (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985).
Kenneth Levine, “Functional Literacy: Fond Illusions and False Economies,” Harvard Educational Review 52 (1982), p. 252.
Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 8.
Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 2.
see also Strauss, “Lutheranism and Literacy: A Reassessment,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 109–23.
Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 104 (1984), pp. 31–55.
Peter Kenez, “Liquidating Illiteracy in Revolutionary Russia,” Russian History 9 (1982), p. 175. quoted in Chapter 6 below.
Harvey J. Graff, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
See Rab Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
See also Kenneth Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England (New York: Norton, 1974).
Daniel P. Resnick and Lauren B. Resnick, “The Nature of Literacy: An Historical Explanation,” Harvard Educational Review 47 (1977): 370–85.
United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradication of Illiteracy, Final Report (Tehran, Iran, 1965).
13th Session of Unesco’s General Conference, quoted in The Expenmental World Literacy Program: A Critical Assessment (Paris: Unesco Press and UNDP, 1976), p. 9.
Yussaf Kassam and Bud Hall, “Tanzania’s National Literacy Campaign: A Journey of Imagination, Energy, and Commitment,” unpublished paper, International Council for Adult Education, Toronto, 1985, p. 7.
United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), “The Declaration of Persepolis,” Ideas and Action 10 (1975), p. 43; also see Bataille, Turning Point.
Egil Johansson, “The History of Literacy in Sweden,” in Literacy and Social Development in the West, ed. Harvey J. Graff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 151–83.
See Bhola, Campaigning, pp. 89-90; see also Chapter 7 below and Robert F. Arnove, “Education in China and India,” Comparative Education Review 28 (August 1984), pp. 378–401.
Johansson, The History of Literacy in Sweden (Umeå: School of Education, Umeå University, Sweden, 1977), p. 11.
See Max Weber’s essay on “The Rationalization of Education and Training” for a later view of the reasons for educational requirements in the German civil service, in From Max Weber, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).
On compulsion, see M. J. Maynes, Schooling for the People: Comparative Local Studies of Schooling History in France and Germany, 1750-1850 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985)
David Tyack, “Ways of Seeing: An Essay on the History of Compulsory Schooling,” Harvard Educational Review 46 (1976), pp, 355–389.
W. M. Landes and Lewis C. Soloman, “Compulsory Schooling Legislation,” Journal of Economic History 32 (1972), pp. 36–61.
Carl Kaestle and Maris Vinovskis, Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
and the two books by Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968) and Class, Bureaucracy and Schools, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1975).
On formal vs. informal and nonformal learning of literacy, see Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, The Psychology of Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
R. W. Scribner, “Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern German,” Past and Present 110 (1986), pp. 38–68.
R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); see also “History of Literacy” in Johannson, The History of Literacy in Sweden.
Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 56.
see also Jonathan Kozol, Children of the Revolution (New York: Delacorte, 1978 and Chapter 8 below.
Kassam and Hall, “Tanzania’s Campaign.” For historical situations, see Scribner, “Incombustible Luther,” Peter Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution (Hassocks: Harvester, 1977).
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1963).
Resnick and Resnick, “Nature,” Lockridge, Literacy; see also Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
For English comparisons, see David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Richard Altick, The English Common Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). In general, see Graff, Legacies.
See Chapter 7, this volume; see also Cohen, “Civilizational States,” Evelyn Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979)
Kathleen Gough, “Implications of Literacy in Traditional China and Indiana,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 69–84. Rawski and Gough, in particular, argue that the orthographic obstacle to literacy has been exaggerated.
See Chapter 13 this volume; see also Francois Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Lire et écnre: L’alphabètization des français de Calvin à Ferry (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977), esp. Vol 1 (translated into English as Reading and Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
See following discussions, John Bormuth, “Illiteracy in the Suburbs,” mimeograph. Department of Education, University of Chicago, October 1970. Robert F. Amove and Jairo Arboleda, “Literacy: Power or Mystification,” Literacy Discussion 4 (December 1973), pp. 389–414, Street, Literacy, and Kozol, Illiteracy.
On evaluation as a component of the EWLP, see Chapter 9 below; see also Jan L. Flora, John McFadden, and Ruth Warner, “The Growth of Class Struggle: The Impact of the Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade on the Political Consciousness of Young Literacy Workers,” Latin American Perspectives, 36 (Winter, 1983), pp. 49–53.
Kassam, Illiterate No More: The Voices of New Literates from Tanzania (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1979)
For earlier works on literacy, education, and modernization, see Alex Inkeles and David Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974)
Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958).
Amove, Education and Revolution in Nicaragua (New York: Praeger, 1986), esp. Chapter 3.
See Fernando Cardenal and Valerie Miller, “Nicaragua 1980: The Batde of the ABCs,” Harvard Educational Review 51 (1981): 1–26.
Henry M. Levin on “The Identity Crisis of Educational Planning,” Harvard Educational Review 51 (1981): 85–93.
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Arnove, R.F., Graff, H.J. (1987). Introduction. In: Arnove, R.F., Graff, H.J. (eds) National Literacy Campaigns. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0505-5_1
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