Literacy Is Freedom
The sixth principle of Unitarian
Univeralism’s vision of the Beloved Community – known among us as our
“Principles and Purposes” – states that we “affirm and promote the goal of
world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” I am old enough to remember hearing as a youth,
that such a declaration could have made you suspect in some political and
religious circles – as a sympathizer of a one world movement, a movement that
sought to tear down the suspicions and hostilities that separated people of the
earth and do what could be done to find ways to unite us. Of course, this is exactly what the creation
of United Nations was all about. Since
1946, the UN has been the only international forum of such a size and scope to
address world issues and challenges through cooperative means with the hope of
sustaining justice and peace. It was to
this end that our nation and this faith – Unitarian Univeralism – have been supportive
participants from the UN’s beginning, though interest and investment have
always seemed to be tied to the state of world affairs, the perceived
effectiveness of the organization, and depending on the political and religious
mood of the country. In 1947, the
Starting
this year, and for the next decade, the United Nations has identified global
literacy as an issue and challenge needing to be addressed. The UN recognizes that illiteracy deepens
poverty, widens inequality and slows economic growth. When this church’s Global Justice Committee,
which also is our link to the UN, told me that literacy was this year’s theme I
was excited because knowledge, education, and communication have been
fundamental essentials to our religious tradition. And when I received some of the material
about this decade-long initiative, I could see right away that it was something
this faith community would value because, as one source puts it, “Literacy is
crucial in creating a world free of poverty and discrimination. Literacy is fundamental for meaningful
participation [in a person’s national setting],” which is to say that literacy
helps to make real many of the principles that under gird our faith.
It’s estimated that over 861 million people
are illiterate. One in five people over
the age of 15 cannot communicate by using basic literacy skills, making it
virtually impossible for them to meaningfully participate in their community’s
social and civic life, and certainly that of their nation. I know that’s hard to imagine,
the numbers are staggering – so try this:
What if right now I assigned everyone in this room 15 and older to a
team of ten. I told you that we were
going to adjourn into the parking lot for a race. Everyone on your team has to
participate. And then, just before the
race begins, two of your team’s runners lose the use of one of their legs –
it’s there, they just can’t use it. It might
be you, which would be horrible because you might have something unique to
offer. But then, it might be someone
else from your team – and that would be horrible too because their inability to
participate would effect you and the team dramatically. Either way, the results would be devastating.
“It’s
not fair,” you and your team members might complain, “the use of my leg is a
right.” And so is literacy a human
right. Over 50 years ago, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights named literacy so basic to living that now it is a
scandal that illiteracy is in such large numbers.
But
the scandal is worse than you might expect because 2/3 of illiterate adults are
women and what the UN has learned is that if you are intent on changing a
society for the better, then change the conditions of
women. This is how they say it: “[We]
recognize that education for all – in particular for girls – is not only a
fundamental right, but an effective way of achieving higher economic growth and
an improved standard of living. Educated
girls marry later, have fewer children, and feed and look after themselves and
their family better. Their survival rate
is higher, and their daughters are themselves more likely to go to school.”
There
is just no question about it, world literacy is a significant challenge; the
World Declaration on Education For All, the goals that you heard in the
reading, is a significant undertaking; we all will be better off with a higher
level of literacy. Yet, I know that
there will be some who will wonder why our nation has to be involved; is it
really something that the United States needs to champion; we’ve already got a
very full international agenda, why do we need this too? Yes we will do it, and we will support this
program for at least three reasons:
First, because the
But
there’s more. We know that many of the
nations that have high illiteracy rates are ones where there is intense civil
war going on – civil fights are significant reasons for a lack of literacy
opportunities and in this, whether we want to see it this way or not, the
industrial nations of the world – the G8 countries and our country in
particular – have played a contributing role.
Here’s a disturbing note: “80% of the export of armaments in the world
come from G8 countries. [The]
Finally,
we are a rich and powerful nation. We
are an empire. With this comes an
understanding and view of the world that very few others can have. With this vision, comes responsibility. Listen to how this Burmese folktale helps us
to frame the issue:
The king and his chief minister were
in a merry mood as they stood by the palace window, eating roasted rice and
honey. They laughed so much that they
spilled some honey on the windowsill.
“We have spilled honey, Your
Majesty,” said the chief minister. “Let
me wipe it off.”
“My dear Lord,” laughed the king,
“it is beneath your dignity to do it, and if we call a servant to wipe it away,
he will disturb our pleasant conversation.
So let the spilt honey alone.”
They went on eating and laughing
while a drop of honey trickled down the windowsill onto the street below.
“Chief Minister,” said the king,
leaning forward, “a drop of the honey has fallen on the street and a fly is now
feasting on it.”
The chief minister looked and saw a
spider pouncing on the fly. The king
looked down again and saw the spider caught and swallowed by a house
lizard. Amused, the king continued to
eat and laugh with the minister and soon they saw the lizard eat up by a cat.
When a dog appeared on the scene and
began to attack the cat, they went on laughing and eating and they did not
pause even when they saw the owner of the cat and the owner of the dog
quarreling and fighting.
Soon friends of both parties joined
in the fight. Still the king and his
minister continued to make merry. The
fighting now spread to other streets and only then did the king and the chief
minister shout out orders to the palace guards to quell the fighting. However, by that time, the palace guards
themselves had joined the fray, as some of them supported the owner of the dog
while others supported the owner of the cat.
Within the next few hours, civil war
had broken out, the city burned and the palace destroyed together with the king
and the chief minister.
A group of judges went to the
Princess Learned-in-the-Law and asked for her advice and counsel. She gave thought to what they asked and she
said: “My Lord Justices, take note that there is no such thing as a minor
incident, and judges must not delay but deal with each swiftly and promptly, no
matter how trivial it may appear to be.
Remember always, my Lords, the case of the kingdom which was lost
because of a mere drop of honey.” (A Kingdom Lost For a Drop of Honey and other
Burmese Folktales, 28)
Illiteracy,
in the
Perhaps
one way to get a better appreciation and understanding of literacy is to look
at our own circumstances. Very early on
in the history of our nation, literacy education was important: an educated
public was crucial for the survival of democracy. And it is now more than ever. Yet the growing disparity in educational
experiences is very alarming. Many have
simply given up caring about the general population; people have turned their
backs on public education; when the going got tough, some parents said “Not
with my children.” Consequently, we have
created a small elite of the cared for and educated
and a growing mass of the under-educated and disenfranchised. And it appears that there’s no end in sight.
In
a couple of more generations, I fear for our nation. What is shocking is that there is a growing
group of parents who are hostile to and unsupportive of the level of education
we have grown to expect, that a democracy needs: these are adults who have failed
in our current unsupported system. And they will not be there when their
children reach school age; they will not be able to support them with
commitment, advice, or help. The UN has found the same thing: the biggest
obstacle to increased literacy education is not always poverty, but parents who
don’t understand why their children need to be educated.
The
thing that I have read over and over in preparing for this morning is that
education is a transforming experience.
Education can change nearly everything about a person: how they see
themselves, their family and friends, how they see the world. Literacy education is transformative. And the facts are overwhelming. For example, here in the
The transformative
power of literacy is irrefutable. Yet
the more I thought about literacy and its impact on me, the more uncomfortable
I grew because I know that while literacy as I’ve been speaking about it, as
the UN initiative describes it, as the Education For All declaration proclaims
it, is vital to the well-being of all people, especially for those in developing
nations. While these are all very
important there are other kinds of literacy that can be excelled at, literacies that we of the overdeveloped world are missing,
profoundly lacking. I’m not suggesting
that the western, traditional idea of educational literacy is wrong or in need
of abandonment or even fixing – the facts and projections are too powerful and
convincing. What I’m suggesting is that
literacy is education, and more; education is one of several literacies that together compose a complete human
being. And so, I began to wonder if
there was some way to think about and convey this idea that in order to be a
complete, whole person – to be a fully literate human being – how might that look, how might we know.
So, I came up with
this idea of a literacy quotient. And
you have in your bulletin my effort to engage you with this notion. You see, given the value that I know we all
have for education, how might we go about recognizing that education is just
one important part of life. I saw this over
and over while working with our sisters and brothers in the
Literacy is
transforming; understanding your literacy quotient can be liberating. With both, literacy can be understood as
freedom, and with freedom comes understanding that there are others who must eat
from the tree knowledge. When we share
this responsibility we all take one step closer to living lives of wholeness and
completeness, of being what every person has the potential to be.
United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan
says it this way: “Literacy is the key to unlocking the cage of human misery;
the key to delivering the potential of every human being; the key to opening up
the future of freedom and hope.”
This sermon was given on
the Unitarian Universalist
the Rev. Fredric J. Muir
Determining
Your Literacy Quotient
Literacy
is more than the ability to read and write.
Literacy is competence or knowledge.
Your
literacy quotient is determined by the level of meaning, purpose and
satisfaction – your “health” – in those areas of living that provide depth to
life. When taken as a whole, you can
determine your literacy quotient – how competent and whole you feel as a human
being.
One
a scale of 1(lowest) to 25 (highest), rank your level of meaning, purpose and
satisfaction in the following areas of literacy:
education 1(lowest) …………………….25
(highest) _____
How
satisfied are you – how meaningful do you find – with your level of education?
relationships 1 ……………………………….25 _____
How
satisfying/meaning filled are your relationships?
physical 1………………………………..25 _____
How
satisfied/meaningful … with the condition of your physical health?
emotional 1………………………………. 25 _____
How
satisfied/meaning filled is your mental/emotional health?
spiritual 1………………………………. 25 _____
How
satisfied/meaningful is your spiritual/inner/depth life?
Total _____ A
Add
together your age and last two digits of your birth year _____
B
Subtract
B from A _____ C
Divide
C by 5 _____ D
“D”
is our literacy quotient. The closer
your quotient is to “0,” the more well-rounded and
complete you feel.
©
Fredric John Muir
2003