Social Responsibilities Discussion Group Paper

Literacy in Libraries

Josephine Andersen
E-mail: joey@gem.co.za

The social responsibility of libraries is recently becoming a focus of attention. This focus is reflected in the formation of the new IFLA Social Responsibilities Discussion Group which has as part of its action plan to develop a concept paper addressing the gap between the library rich and poor. Libraries have traditionally been seen as depots for the acquiring and housing of collections which they make accessible to interested people. There are many library practitioners now who feel there is a growing need for libraries to be more involved with the needs of their communities.

Libraries are in a very good position to find out the needs of communities. Formal surveys can be conducted and informal information can be gathered through daily conversation and dialogue.

Literacy

Illiteracy amongst adults is a global problem and can no doubt take its place on a list of social responsibilities. Illiterate people do not necessarily see themselves as being disadvantaged. They have a lot of knowledge about life and have adjusted to many of the pitfalls of their situation. Sometimes many complex processes are put in place to assist them in circumventing the need for literacy.

For these reasons it is sometimes difficult to motivate adult learners and they need facilitators who have specialised skills. They need to have the right surroundings and conditions which contribute to the learning course. The individual home environment may not promote or produce the right climate for learning. Libraries can do this if the right elements are present. Although adults might have adjusted their lives to being illiterate, knowing how to read and write are generally pre-requisites for being employed. Literacy and education can be seen as vital to the social and economic welfare of a country.

Legislation

Education and literacy have been regarded in many periods of history as a threat to those who are in a position of power and legislation has played a major role in determining different levels of education in a society. In the United States of America for instance, before slavery was abolished, state laws were such that anyone teaching literacy skills to a slave could be severely punished and freed slaves often risked their lives to protect their schools against violent opposition (1). It was in 1865 in South Carolina in North America that a resolution was passed requiring universal education for all people.

In South Africa through not encouraging a culture of learning amongst the black population, the minority of the population remained in a position of power for forty years, the forty years of apartheid rule. H F Verwoerd, Prime Minister from 1958-1966, as Minister of Native Affairs said in 1953 that "when I have control over native education I will reform education so that natives will be taught from childhood that equality with Europeans is not for them." In 1955 he stated "there is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the levels of certain forms of labour." (2) This policy has resulted in serious problems where South Africa has a large sector of the adult population who have never had an equitable education. Recent legislation in South Africa has brought many changes to education. The new Schools Act, in effect from January 1997, has made school compulsory for the first time for all people between the ages of six and fifteen. The South African Qualifications Authority Act with the new National Qualifications Framework has designed new education standards. Learning will, in future, be assessed on competency-based rather than on contents-based outcomes. This legislation will benefit all learners, including adult learners whose prior knowledge will be recognised and who will be able to enter the system at a level appropriate to their needs.

Information Literacy

In South Africa there is at present an emphasis in the library and information field, on Information Literacy and Information Technology. Information Literacy is defined as one of the key intellectual skills required by the modern world. "It complements, extends and polishes other basic skills." (3) The honing of Internet skills and the use of the Web as a learning medium is constantly being examined(4)

These aspects of information are essential in the modern world and have to be developed but the enormous problem of illiteracy remains as yet unsolved. Illiteracy is a burning question in other countries as well as South Africa. There are thousands of immigrants in the United Kingdom who struggle to communicate in the language of their adopted country.

The United States of America is a nation of immigrants and literacy is a growing concern in recent years. The literacy problem in the States has led to new legislation. In 1990 Congress produced legislation affecting literacy programmes. The National Literacy Act was passed and Literacy for All Americans. (5)

Fellow librarians in the States have written about migrant fruit pickers in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The fruit pickers in this area are mainly Hispanic and Haitian. A query about locating teacher training materials for these migrant farmworkers received information on a teacher manual called "ESL for farm safety" which focuses on the safe use of pesticides.

Library collections have information on every aspect of human life and effective use of resources a library duty could include the development of teaching materials packages for adult learning. A library colleague wrote about co-ordinating a volunteer literacy programme in a small library in Nappanee. Susan Freymiller would like, as I would, to see libraries take a more pro-active approach with adult learners and is interested in the library being redefined as an educational institution.

In California, the California Literacy Campaign (CLC) is a partnership between the State of California and the local Public libraries. The CLC recruits and trains volunteers who teach one adult to read. Another component called Families for Literacy gets the pre-school children of the literacy students into the public library programmes.

In South Africa the fragmented nature of literacy projects has resulted in only some hundreds of potential adult learners making progress. In 1994 there were forty NGO'S (non-governmental organisations) listed in a Directory (6) and these organisations all had different motivations for their involvement. An estimated 36% of the population in South Africa is illiterate. There are 12-14 million people with inadequate or no water supply and 21 million have no safe sanitation systems. (7)

Many South Africans are unaware of the appalling conditions in which their fellow countrymen live.
A case in point is Canny Hlatshwayo a school teacher in the small village of Huntington South Africa. Canny sends his daughter at 7AM to collect water and she is likely to return home at 9PM. These conditions are not conducive to learning.
Libraries are in a prime position to be active in alleviating some of the problems of illiteracy. They have the conditions to be able to co-ordinate projects more effectively. They have an infrastructure. They have buildings for venues. They are in close contact with their communities. They have human and materials resources. They can create and offer a climate conducive to learning even in those rural areas where there is no electricity.

Paulo Freire, the founder of the Language Experience method for adult literacy writes that, to say the true word is to transform the world and saying the true word is the right of every man. His method is for education through problem posing and dialogue, rather than education through the depositing of knowledge by the teacher to the learner which he calls the banking method of education (2:46).

Paulo Freire's proposal was revolutionary in the Brazilian context but his method of teaching has inspired people across the globe (9). With the language experience method dialogue is the word (2:56). Problem posing education through dialogue and continuous inquiry result in critical thinking and creativity where the teacher /student relationship is one of co-investigation (2:54). His methodology was thought to be so revolutionary that he was jailed for seventy days in 1964. The Language Experience method, originally devised by Paulo Freire, advocates dialogue between educator and learner where themes are introduced and developed into discussion sessions to generate vocabulary which is then used to teach reading and writing skills(4). Pictures introduce the theme and the words ensuing from the discussion or dialogue are written up on a board or on flash cards. The students learn to read the words and then sentences are constructed from the words, without resource to phonics.
Written sentences can be cut up, to construct new sentences which may be written into the learners' individual dictionaries or story books. A structured Language Experience method was developed by the Molteno Project in South Africa where the Breakthrough to Literacy method was adopted from the United Kingdom (4) This method uses pictures, initially to invite discussion and a core vocabulary is used in conjunction with the writing of sentences. Many literacy teaching methods recognize that there are certain letters of the alphabet, and words, that appear more frequently than any others, such as:

an     to      from    the     and     went 
over   under   here    there   what    they 
we     she     he      you     our     come 
go     like    do      where   has     by

More than half of what we read are words like these, which are interestingly enough eliminated from full text indexing on computer data bases. A structured language approach can begin with a story illustrated by a picture. The teachers and learners each have a set of words from the core vocabulary which are used to make sentences in conjunction with other words which arise from discussion of a picture or a story.

Phonics

Phonics can be incorporated with both the above methods. The Laubach method used phonics with adult teaching and has been used by Operation Upgrade in South Africa. Learners are taught the sounds of individual alphabet letters in association with a picture(4). Adults might not enjoy the repetition involved in this method and it is therefore found to be more useful when used with other methods such as the Language Experience method and the Structured Language Experience method. Many programmes employ all three methods of teaching and thus avoid undermining the motivation of the adult learner through repetitive exercises. Illustrations and images are employed with all methods.

In a speech presented to the public in the new German Library in Frankfurt on 14 May 1997, the German Chancellor Dr Helmut Kohl speaks about the power of the written word. He quotes Goethe as saying " a collection of books is equivalent to a huge stock of capital which silently provides us with incalculable interest." How can people who are unable to read and write, tap into this capital? Kohl states that books open our minds to worlds beyond our ken, to read them we do not need anything but the light of a candle flame.

Libraries have as one of their goals, the promotion of lifelong learning but how can they achieve this in an illiterate community? In his speech in Frankfurt, Dr Kohl comments that books have their own intrinsic value and in them you find more than information, "you find emotion and atmosphere too".

Libraries have traditionally been seen as storehouses for the knowledge of humankind, collecting and preserving various kinds of materials or media units.
Traditionally they have catered for an elite minority who can read, a few privileged members of the community.
How can libraries break the bonds of their traditional image as a storehouse? Literacy projects have been investigated in the past but the result has been that libraries have in general promoted reading skills only through the provision of easy reading material or in offering their premises for a venue. Literacy should be everyone's problem and there are ways in which libraries can participate to a much greater degree.
In one exceptional public library close to the Cape Town urban centre, the librarian conducts adult literacy classes outside her own working hours. There are 11 learners all in domestic service who until two years ago could not write their own names. The librarian who is dedicated to the cause, holds two, two hour sessions every week. Would it not be practical for the library services to incorporate this kind of endeavour during library hours?

Conclusion

It is plain that libraries can become active with literacy programmes without necessarily jeopardising their traditional functions. They have nearly all the correct ingredients, buildings resources, collections. By extending these resources even in a small way, more progress would be made with adult learning.
There is one more ingredient needed for success and that is for library staff to acquire the specialised skills to teach, train and make materials packages for adult literacy. It is only legislation that will make this happen. If library schools were obliged through legislation to include a module on Adult Basic Education and Training, then all library graduates would go out into the field equipped to lift the burden of illiteracy which divides the information rich from the poor.

References

Lunsford, Andrea A. ed. The right to literacy. - New York : The Modern Language Association of America, 1990.
Christie, P. and Butler, D. ed. The right to learn: the struggle for education in South Africa. - Braamfontein : Sached Trust, Ravan Press, 1985.
Infolit. Annual Report August 1996.
Underwood, P. CALICO News. Vol.2(4), December 1997.
Schamber, Linda. The role of libraries in literacy education. ERIC Digest, 1990.
Learn and Teach. September 1994.
Koch, Eddie. Limiting those liquid assets. Leading Edge No 6, April 1996 p.2

Latest Revision: September 9, 1998