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The
Present Central Govt. has taken up the task of organizing an Adult Education Programme
for approximately 100 million illiterate persons in the age-group 15-35 with a
view to providing them skills for self-directed learning to self reliant and active
role in their own development and in the development of their environment.
It is not just teaching a person of 3 Rs that is involved in a literacy programme.
It means a great deal more than just enabling a person to read a few words from
the printed page or be able to sign his name. It may mean the writing and reading
skills and handling of figures with such an ease that the person may be able to
write a letter, read a newspaper or a government pamphlet containing information
of his profession or be able to deal with banks, post-offices and other government
agencies. The specialists call it 'functional literacy' i.e., literacy that works.
Such a literate parents realize the importance of children's education and are
not a hindrance to Universal Primary Education.
'Illiteracy' may mean differently indifferen nations. The U.K.Ministry of Education
has defined 'illiterate' as those with reading ages below seven years and 'Semilteerate'
as those with reading ages between seven and nine years.3 The U. S. census defines
literate as one who is equivalent to a six grade student.4 The Indian census defines
a 'literate' as one who can both read and write. The test for reading is ability
to read any simple letter either in print or in manuscript. The test for writing
is the ability to write a simple letter. Out of the four language skills-listening
and speaking, reading and writing a person internalises the listening and speaking
abilities by being a member of that particular speech-community. One need not
go to a school or undertake a formal training to achieve these two language skills.
But the other two skills reading and writing can be acquired either by self learning
or through coaching. These are the two skills of a language involved in making
a person 'literate'. It would necessarily mean that such a programme be in a language
which is the person's first language. If a literacy programme is administered
in a second-langauge, he has also to learn the speaking and listening skills of
the language of the operation, thus involving a new burden. In India, where there
are countless variations of languages the real problem is to decide in which language
these 'illiterates' be taught to read and write. The answer can not be two. It
should be the learner's first language. However, 'primitive' a language may be,
it is capable of expressing the cultural and social needs of that particular speech-community.
It is a system that works in that particular social setting. In the Soviet Union
in 1920 when their national programme for eradication of illiteracy started, it
was found that Russian was not spoken by half the population who spoke some sixty
and odd languages. Many of those languages at that time had no written forms.
Others have such complicated scripts that illiterate adults could not posibly
acquire them within the specified time. The Cyrillic was accepted as the common
transcription system and the task was taken with such a zeal that their 1959 census
showed a literacy rate of 98.5 percent.
The problem in India is in a way, different. Many languages have not even been
reduced to writing. Providing a script to an unwritten language is not as simple
as adopting any script. Any transcription should presuppose, the phonemic system.
It is worth while to have a practical orthography for hitherto unwritten language
based on the phonemic orthography for hitherto unwritten language based on the
phonemic analysis. But it should also be socially acceptable.5 Pike6 has mentioned
the following characterstics of practical alphabets.
(i)
a phonemic alphabet should have a separate symbol for each distinctive sound.
(ii) there should be
no more symbols than there are phonemes.
(iii)
Allophones of phonemes should rarely receive distinct symbolization when there
is a great social pressure due to the fact that such allophones are separate phonemes
in the prestige language.
(iv)
Freely fluctuating varieties of a phoneme should not receive separate symbolization
(v)
abbreviated forms should be written as they are articulated and not according
to the constituent parts recognized as per morphological analysis.
(vi)
extremely rapid speech should be avoided in symbolization because people do not
tend to read with that same rapidity.
(vii)
such supra-segmental features which are phonemic, should be symbolized at each
occurance of the unit.
(viii)
in case of such speech-sounds in loan-words which are not completely assimilated
to the speech-sounds of the language, extra symbols may be added to represent
these extra sounds.
In
the Indian context, prescribing a uniform orthography for hitherto unwritten
Languages
for preparing 'Literacy Primer' seems rather difficult. Problem like aspirated
vs unaspirated, short vs long, nasalised vs non-nasalised etc. may be found in
many Indian languages. If diacritical marks are added, these are difficult to
teach. Moreover, reading materials are to be produced on normal printing presses,
Queer and unsual symbols may be deterrent to rapidly producing literacy materials.
In places where the minority group has some social pressure towards learning the
language of the larger group, the orthography of the language of the larger-group,
can be adopted without much difficulty. Many of the language of the North Eastern
states like Nagaland and arunachal Pradesh and the islands of India, have no orthographies
of their own. Steps are to be taken to provide orthographies to these languages
so that literacy materials can be prepared to augment the National Literacy Programme.
The ideal would be unification of alphabets. But this may not be possible because
major languages of India have their own writing systems. Therefore, a strategy
has to be evolved in choosing from existing scripts for providing a writing system
to hitherto unwritten languages. Apart from the linguistic point of view, socio-cultural
factors are also to be taken into account. The proposed writing system should
be socially acceptable to the people. We have also to see that facilities of machine
type setting are locally available so that literacy materials can be quickly produced.
To secure the maximum results in the minimum time an immediate assessment of the
comparative merits and defects of the existing orthographies be made in each case
of hitherto unwritten languages both from linguistic as well as social point of
view.