Literacy programmes generally focus on rural areas. It is often forgotten that a large proportion of the world’s 800 million non-literate people live in urban areas. Relatively few programmes are designed to meet the needs of poor residents of slum neighbourhoods, many of whom require literacy skills in a second language.

A book from UNESCO’s Institute for Education presents findings from a two-year international research project which explored linkages between urbanisation and literacy and the ways in which literacy is sought and employed in individual lives and livelihoods. Contributors from nine countries show it is easy to claim to make urban residents literate, but much more challenging to create and sustain literate communities.

The city itself is a message about literacy – with advertisements, newspapers, bills to pay, forms to fill in, printed materials on sale, car and bus number plates and shop signs. There are many more focal points for literacy – government offices, post offices, health centres and places of worship – than in villages.

Because literacy tasks and activities play a large part in the life of cities, so literacy plays a large part in the construction and reconstruction of identities. In cities it is the non-literates who stand out. They are more likely to develop a sense of failure, of exclusion, of dysfunctionality than in rural areas where there may be some sense of solidarity among the illiterate.

Most countries now generate statistics on the number of literates and illiterates in urban and rural areas but they are generally unreliable. Some censuses simply ask people if they feel ‘literate’ while others assume that a certain number of years of school necessarily makes somebody sustainably literate. It is often forgotten that in multi-lingual cities some newly-arrived people judged to be ‘literate’ are effectively ‘illiterate’ in their new context.

The editor of the collection shows that:

• As urban illiteracy is fragmented and found in settlements which are often ‘illegal’, it is difficult to carry out thorough city-wide programmes.
• Many literacy specialists appear to feel negatively about urban environments, wrongly equating ‘urban’ with slums, illegal residence and absence of enterprise and community consciousness.
• The determination of policy elites to remove embarrassing pockets of ‘residual illiteracy’ often results in one-size-fits-all interventions using inappropriate learning materials, often originally devised for rural learners.

Over-generalised bureaucratic approaches to literacy learning must be abandoned. Governments and aid agencies should not launch special generic programmes for urban dwellers. That would be as foolish as the current policy in many countries of providing a single adult literacy learning programme. It is important to:

• recognise that needs within urban communities are multiple and changing
• develop locally-specific programmes tailored to people’s specific and immediate needs and aspirations
• use a learning group, rather than a classroom-based approach: learners should be encouraged to identify, collect or develop their own reading and writing materials
• identify workplace learning opportunities
• set up drop-in centres to offer advice and immediate help with practical literacy tasks
• remember that adults learn according to their own motivations, not those imposed by others.

Source(s):
‘Urban literacy: communication, identity and learning in development contexts’, UNESCO Institute for Education, edited by Alan Rogers, 2005

Funded by: Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK Department for International Development and UNESCO

id21 Research Highlight: 26 September 2005

Further Information:
Alan Rogers
Centre for Applied Research in Education
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1603 591451
Fax: +44 (0)1603 593446
Contact the contributor: alan.rogers@uea.ac.uk

School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, UK

UNESCO Institute for Education
Feldbrunnenstraße 58
20148 Hamburg
Germany

Tel: +49 40 44804123
Fax: +49 40 4107723
Contact the contributor: uie-pub@unesco.org

UNESCO Institute for Education

Other related links:
Literacy Exchange: World Resources on Literacy

'Mexican literacy project reveals new ways of teaching and learning'

'Universal literacy: essential for development?'

id21 education highlights 'literacy'

'Literacy skills – proven pathway out of poverty'