Literacy // Current TV

Rhyme about water shortage

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink/ soon to be, reality, we're... more

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Texas Law Tells Schools to Teach Bible

A new state law requires that Texas public schools incorporate Bible literacy into the... more

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Part of this week's NY Times Magazine special issue, Saving the World's Women. Discuss them all at current.com/feminism.

In the late 1970s, a Ph.D. student named Monica Das Gupta was conducting anthropological fieldwork in Haryana, a state in the north of India. She observed something striking about families there: parents had a fervent preference for male offspring. Women who had given birth to only daughters were desperate for sons and would keep having children until they had one or two. Midwives were even paid less when a girl was born. “It’s something you notice coming from outside,” says Das Gupta, who today studies population and public health in the World Bank’s development research group. “It just leaps out at you.”

Das Gupta saw that educated, independent-minded women shared this prejudice in Haryana, a state that was one of India’s richest and most developed. In fact, the bias against girls was far more pronounced there than in the poorer region in the east of India where Das Gupta was from. She decided to study the issue in Punjab, then India’s richest state, which had a high rate of female literacy and a high average age of marriage. There too the prejudice for sons flourished. Along with Haryana, Punjab had the country’s highest percentage of so-called missing girls — those aborted, killed as newborns or dead in their first few years from neglect.
Here was a puzzle: Development seemed to have not only failed to help many Indian girls but to have made things worse.

It is rarely good to be female anywhere in the developing world today, but in India and China the situation is dire: in those countries, more than 1.5 million fewer girls are born each year than demographics would predict, and more girls die before they turn 5 than would be expected. (In China in 2007, there were 1.73 million births — and a million missing girls.) Millions more grow up stunted, physically and intellectually, because they are denied the health care and the education that their brothers receive.

Among policymakers, the conventional wisdom is that such selective brutality toward girls can be mitigated by two factors. One is development: surely the wealthier the home, the more educated the parents, the more plugged in to the modern economy, the more a family will invest in its girls. The other is focusing aid on women. The idea is that a mother who has more money, knowledge and authority in the family will direct her resources toward all her children’s health and education. She will fight for her girls.Part of this week's NY Times Magazine special issue, Saving the World's... more

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Chris Hedges: The Empire of Illusion

How did such a sizeable portion of modern society develop into a post-literate,... more

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Books Every Library Must Have

These are the books, that try mens souls....

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More than 90% of blind don't read Braille

"at the height of its use in the 1950s, more than half the nation's blind... more

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MP says dyslexia is a 'fiction'

Graham Stringer, a Labour MP for Blackley, has come out with some pretty bold claims:... more

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Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! It’s The Comic Book Project!

There was a time when comic books and their characters were looked upon with a... more

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Salvation's Struggle

Description: What is salvation? Salvation is the act of saving or being saved, as... more

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Persistent parent, willing educator open doors for students in need of tutoring

SAN BERNARDINO - It started as a single-student arrangement for tutoring between a... more

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Yemen Ranks Last in Gender Equality

Among 130 countries, Yemen has come the last for the third consecutive year in gender... more

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Fighting the Taleban with literacy

It's dusty and lacks power and drinking water and the children share books.... more

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UK prisoners have reading age of 11-year-olds

Close to 40 per cent of prison inmates have a reading age lower than that of an... more

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Burros carry one man's library to Colombian villagers

LA GLORIA, Colombia: In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade... more

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Happy Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of... more

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Italian illitterate rate soars to 12%

Some recent researches revealed that six million Italians are not capable of writing... more

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Overcoming Illiteracy in Indonesia

Teaching literacy is Bahrul Ulumiyah Suheb’s driving passion. Though Indonesia has a high rate of literacy, in Bahrul’s town several thousand people cannot write, read or count. Sixty percent of those are women, she adds.

A teacher by profession, Bahrul makes her living by teaching elementary school students and also gives a great deal of her time and energy as a volunteer with Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia—a non-profit organization that focuses on women’s empowerment. The organization coordinates several different programs for women, but abolishing illiteracy is one of its main activities.

Bahrul says there are four literacy groups running with about 40 women participating this year. She particularly likes seeing older women learn to read, “even if it’s just one word.” She says that the grandchildren of these women often accompany them to class and may help them learn. “I like this program very much because, as a teacher, I have to implement my skills and it fits with my background. I like to teach them spelling one by one of the alphabet.”

Bahrul is also clearly excited about her work with women’s clubs. Since 2006, her volunteer organization has established four such clubs (with about 200 women participating) and there are plans to have three additional ones for those women now involved in the literacy program. These clubs provide a vehicle to help women access information, which Bahrul believes is central to giving women more of a voice in Indonesia.
Bahrul Suheb, CEDPA GWIM graduate
Barhrul empowers the women in her community by teaching them how to read.

The women’s club members, who often meet in local homes, may participate in microcredit initiatives and also receive “hot news,” skills training, and small door prizes. She cited, for example, the information they disseminated for an upcoming governor’s election, such as “how to choose the best candidate with the best vision.”

Bahrul herself gained from the information sharing and interactions with others at CEDPA’s Summer 2008 Global Women in Management training program, which was supported through the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls Initiative. She says she has valued “know[ing] leaders from other countries, shar[ing] experience, and adapt[ing] experience for my organization.” Bahrul hopes to transfer the knowledge she gained at CEDPA’s training to the capacity building she is doing in local communities. “I have to transform my new knowledge to my members and to beneficiaries in some villages,” she says.

Most of Bahrul’s work as a volunteer is done on evenings and weekends. She often leaves home early and returns late, and is happy to report that her family supports her activities. In a family of seven siblings and with parents who are farmers, Bahrul is largely self-sufficient and had to pay her own way through college.

Bahrul says that most of the people in her village—about 20 km away from Tuban where the local office of Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia is based—are open-minded about what she does. But she says that being a single, working woman in Indonesia isn’t always easy, both because the culture there remains very male-dominated and women who have education are sometimes looked down upon.

It can be an ongoing challenge. Bahrul mentioned that “in villager’s meetings in Tuban, for example, almost all the participants are men. Women in the village are not represented in decision making.” So, she tries “to change the monopoly of men in public.” Bahrul teaches members of the women’s clubs in the villages to become as informed as the men so they can contribute ideas. She also says that “gender training can help change minds,” and mentioned annual gender trainings that her organization holds for college students, housewives and farmers “to increase awareness of women’s skills and equality.”
*continuesTeaching literacy is Bahrul Ulumiyah Suheb’s driving passion. Though Indonesia... more

goldenways
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New Program Brings Books to 10,000 Children

In honor of September 11 victim Brooke Jackman, over 10,000 disadvantaged children throughout New York will receive the gift of a new book.

On Aug. 28th, what would have been Brookes’s 30th birthday, the Brooke Jackman Foundation launched their new “Book in Hand” program at P.S. 250 in Brooklyn. Wrapped with care in colorful paper, each child received a free book. The program, which will continue through Sept. 11, will become an annual tradition for the foundation.

“The basic premise is that every child in every one of our programs gets a present for Brooke’s birthday,” said Brooke’s sister, Erin Jackman. “The present being a brand new book”

During the day-long program, children also enjoyed a book reading by author, Jill Santopolo, a lunch, and a slide show presentation about how the Brooke Jackman Foundation was formed.

Having just graduated from Columbia University at the age of 23, Brooke was working at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North tower when the terrorist attack hit in 2001. According to Erin, Brooke had a passion for reading and, just prior to the fateful day, had announced to her family that she wanted to go back to school so that she could work with children.

Combining Brooke’s dreams to help children and her passion to read, her family started the Brooke Jackman Foundation in her memory shortly after her memorial service was held. “Since she was a little girl she loved to read and was never without her books,” said Booke’s sister, Erin. Since then we decided to combine her desire to help children and her love of reading and we started the foundation.”

Since its inception, the foundation has grown and flourished, reaching out to thousands of underprivileged children throughout New York. Among the numerous programs it now hosts are its intensive Family Literacy Workshops in Washington Heights and Brooklyn, as well as its “Brooke Packs” program which gives backpacks filled with books, audio books, Walkmans, and school supplies to children living in temporary housing. The foundation has also established two libraries with plans to open a third later this year.

Recalling one of the families reached through the Family Literacy Workshops, Erin mentioned that one mother and child had come to attend week after week. She later approached Erin to thank her, mentioning that after the program, both she and her daughter read every chance they get. “She handed me these flowers and said, ‘thank you for helping my daughter and me to blossom,’” said Erin.

Erin mentioned that, with their new “Book in Hand,” initiative, the foundation hopes to touch the lives of even more children. “I’d like to see my sister’s love of reading spread to all of the kids in all of our programs,” Erin said.In honor of September 11 victim Brooke Jackman, over 10,000 disadvantaged children... more

goldenways
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New website to help deaf children

A new website is being launched which is aimed at helping deaf children improve their... more

goldenways
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Inara George - Interview

Inara sits down with identitytheory.com, a (sort of) literary website

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