Environment for Living Literacy

This article forms one of the chapters of the International Development Research Centre publication, The World of Literacy, Policy, Research and Action. Major contributors to the report include Margaret Gayfer, Budd L. Hall, J. Roby Kidd, and Virginia Shrivastava.

Abstract

The coming of age of the transistor radio has transcended the barriers of literacy and has at the same time lulled, to some extent, policy makers and planners into a comfortable complacency of looking at the transistor as an odd substitute to a world of eloquent literacy. Despite the massive doses of man and material made available toward creating an environment of literacy throughout the developing world, literacy rate has not climbed substantially and there are reports of ‘recession’ into illiteracy. Again, the communications media are given a tall order: could it build up and sustain literacy in the Third World?

Notes

This article forms one of the chapters of the International Development Research Centre publication, The World of Literacy, Policy, Research and Action. Major contributors to the report include Margaret Gayfer, Budd L. Hall, J. Roby Kidd, and Virginia Shrivastava.