How Do We Raise Global Literacy Levels?
“For the first time in human history, we are experiencing declining rates of literacy…”
In the past five years at Simbi Foundation, we’ve seen the power of literacy impact lives over and over again. We’ve seen how fundamental reading and writing skills are keys to locked doors, and how an ability to interact with official institutions can make a difference for those in danger of falling into the poverty cycle.
So how do those of us who have already benefited from a literacy education support more people in developing these important traits? Do we need to campaign for new types of leadership, or is there something that we can personally do on a daily basis? Maybe it’s all about gender equity, or fundraising, or the types of technology we allow into our lives?
We asked the literacy experts at Simbi foundation and our sister organization, Simbi. This is what they said—
Eli, Director of Research and Development
For me, one answer is to support the learning, preservation, and revitalization of local languages. This would mean a shift away from considering ‘global literacy’ as literacy in a globally-used language.
Centering a globally-used language — whether it’s English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, or something else — as the pathway to literacy creates additional barriers for the world’s most vulnerable. It’s not that students shouldn’t learn globally-used languages, but that they shouldn’t have to spend years becoming literate in another language so that they can access greater education, livelihood, or employment opportunities.
Instead, we should be working to promote local languages and to redistribute resources so that people can live full and complete lives in their own mother tongues.
Arienne, Head of Educator Community (Simbi)
“Whole truths cannot be found in a single story.“ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This question is charged with political and socioeconomic electricity. Just like Adichie suggests, there is no single way to increase global literacy, but I think she points us in the direction of one effective method.
Working backward, many young readers around the world do not have access to the resources that empower them to read fluently. Yet, even when they do, what is motivating them to continue reading? As a teacher, I understand that sometimes the opportunity to learn is not enough—but I’ve also seen the magic of stories, how they can light up a child’s face. When a child feels seen or known through the words of a story, the distance between the pages and their life falls away. It’s a magic that might seem obvious, but for so many children around the world, the characters and stories they encounter do not relate to them on a personal level.
“A child from an ethnic minority background is far more likely to encounter an animal protagonist when reading a book than a main character sharing their ethnicity” (The Guardian).
Of course, reading about people who are different from oneself is a vital way for learners to understand new perspectives and develop a sense of empathy. Yet, when the vast percentage of books reflect the same distant perspectives, Adichie’s point persists: one type of character, one type of story, and one point of view will not motivate young readers to pick up the next book.
The key to that simple magic, and thereby a key to one of the many locks on the door to global literacy, is showing children that they belong in a story, and that their story matters.
Ran, Founder & Director of Operations
For me, the single most effective thing we can do to increase global literacy is through community-specific empowerment. We need to identify the barriers existing within communities that prevent easier access to the equal distribution of literacy enhancement resources.
Showing people how to access digital resources, building online platforms, making communities aware of how raising a more literate generation can disrupt the poverty cycle. These are approaches that help engage parents and community leaders, so that they become literacy advocates and mobilize for a re-prioritization of resources. This will help to ensure that today’s important generation has a more equal footing in an increasingly globalized socio-economic climate, as well as the valuable opportunity to read at home as a priority.
Uday, Impact Researcher
I think the biggest way to increase global literacy is to move away from an English language-centered education. From an Indian experience, I think many people give way too much attention to education or literacy in English, and not to teaching in the mother tongues of learners. Often, this approach leads to a loss of interest for people who want to try to attain basic literacy, especially if they are among older populations. I know that the Indian government has been trying to address this problem, but I think it’s also one of the fields that we could focus more on.
Daniel, Lead Grant Writer
I think perhaps this is the wrong question—literacy doesn't need to be improved globally. Language is something that always finds a way, especially in children. Here’s a great example:
After the Sandinista revolution at the end of the 1970s, there was a push to educate deaf children in Nicaragua (although, the scheme was also arguably to warehouse deaf children, who since then have been almost completely excluded from society.) When these deaf children were gathered together, and finally had others like themselves to communicate with, they spontaneously developed a language, which grew from a shared rudimentary signing. When linguists investigated, they determined that this freely developed variant was a real and legitimate self-made language.
How can a fully formed language emerge spontaneously from crude hand signs? It’s because we are wired to learn languages. And in children, their brains are hyper-wired to do it.
So, globally, it isn’t much of a stretch to infer that, if we can create the time and space for literacy to develop, it almost certainly will. Global literacy will thrive, as it has in almost every civilization, when the barriers that prevent it from thriving are removed. Things like living in a refugee camp, or being a child soldier. Like not being connected to the internet or not being in school. Remove the barriers, keep children in school, build better refugee settlements, connect more people with the internet, then just watch the results.
Aaron, Founder & CEO
There are two important components to think about in global literacy. The first is a historic problem: communities around the world who don’t have access to important materials to help them read—communities like those we support in Uganda and India, and other lower-income countries that simply lack the basic resources to be literate, educated, thriving members of society.
At the same time, there’s a new and emerging global issue: for the first time in human history, we are experiencing declining rates of literacy. In higher-income countries like the United States, for example, one-third of grade four students are not reading to grade level. This is largely due to the fact that people are simply reading less. So when we think about global literacy, we have to consider this double-edged sword.
The first thing we can do to improve global literacy is to inspire people to read and reignite a passion for reading. Today, books are losing to Tik Tok and Instagram. It’s imperative that we find ways to motivate and excite the population to read more books more often. Perhaps it’s about developing more innovative children’s stories or finding ways to help older populations reignite a love of words.
Regardless of the approach, one thing is certain: books, in their most basic unit, are not competing with the onslaught of social media and instant gratification. So it’s imperative that we find ways to excite readers and change the act of reading. One of the ways I think we will win is by taking the same approach that’s been used to great success in social media platforms (something called the Hook Model) and applying it to our reading habits, to reshape and retool our brains to love reading.
We often feel that the approaches used by social media giants are non-productive and socially negative: I don’t think that’s fully the case. It’s not necessarily the tools themselves, but the behavior changes those tools have been used to encourage that are questionable. So, if we want to effect positive behaviors via the same approaches, we can think about things like fitness apps that get people excited to run or swim or bike more. Are these nonproductive or socially detrimental behavior changes? I don’t think so.
The same is true for reading. If we can use things like the Hook Model to encourage behaviors that motivate people to read more—to consume more accurate information and become better voters and better dreamers—if we’re able to motivate more kids to read books like Asimov’s Foundation Series (which is what Elon Musk read as a child and what inspired him to attempt to colonize Mars), that will be a net positive for society.
When we think about global literacy in the lower-income country context, we also have to be making more content accessible. And when we say more content, we don’t just mean any content, we mean content that celebrates local cultures, social norms, everyone’s stories—not just a dominant Western narrative that is too often neo-colonializing. Young children in rural Nigeria, for example, can be found reading books about princesses and Snow White, which, as Arienne says above, have little in common with their lives. So we have to create more content, we have to make more content available, and we have to ensure that this content celebrates and recognizes the different people you know.
Have your own ideas on how we can improve access to literacy and sustainable infrastructure around the world? Join the conversation!
