Illiteracy and Power
- First Online: 27 November 2022
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- Martyn Lyons 2
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Literacy is not merely a technical skill; it also has political implications, as in the examples of indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand, where it was an instrument of colonial power, and the English medieval state analysed by Clanchy. Analysis of the politics of literacy then focusses on how elites have denied subordinate classes the right to literacy, as in the examples of black slaves in the USA, nineteenth-century French peasants and nineteenth-century Finland. Parents, too, have acted as a literacy deterrent, especially for girls, as in various examples from nineteenth-century Britain and France. In some circumstances illiteracy may be a deliberate choice, to avoid incorporation into the state, as argued by James C. Scott and illustrated by the Roma.
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Ibid., Chap. 3.
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Ibid., for example, Chap. 3.
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Ibid., 122–4.
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Ibid., 188.
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Lorain, Tableau de l’instruction , 188.
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Jean Macé, Morale en Action, mouvement de propagande intellectuelle en Alsace , Paris (Hetzel) 1865; Martyn Lyons, Readers and Society in Nineteenth Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants , Basingstoke UK (Palgrave), 2001, 35–40; Marcel Boivin, ‘Les Origines de la Ligue de l’Enseignement en Seine-Inférieure, 1866–1871’, Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 46: 2 (1968): 203–31; on the republican dimension, see Katherine Auspitz, The Radical Bourgeoisie: the Ligue de l’Enseignement and the origins of the Third Republic, 1866–1885 , Cambridge UK (Cambridge University Press), 1982.
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Ibid., 60–1.
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Ibid., 165.
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Paola Toninato, ‘The Rise of Written Literature among the Roma: A Study of the Role of Writing in the Current Re-Definition of Romani Identity with Specific Reference to the Italian Case’, D.Phil Thesis, University of Warwick, 2004, for all this section; and by the same author, Romani Writing: Literacy, Literature and Identity Politics , New York (Routledge), 2013.
Today, the possibility of access to social media platforms offers an incentive to read and write to the younger generation.
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven CT (Yale University Press), 2009, 220–37.
Martyn Lyons, The Pyrenees in the Modern Era: Reinventions of a Landscape, 1775–2012 , London (Bloomsbury), 2018, 140–2.
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Lyons, M. (2022). Illiteracy and Power. In: The History of Illiteracy in the Modern World Since 1750. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09261-9_3
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Published : 27 November 2022
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Home / Essay Samples / Education / Illiteracy / Illiteracy As A Social Problem
Illiteracy As A Social Problem
- Category: Education , Social Issues
- Topic: Illiteracy , Social Problems
Pages: 3 (1347 words)
Views: 4033
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Illiteracy leads to:
- lack of understanding,
- unemployment,
- degraded jobs,
- lower income,
- low self-esteem,
- health problems,
- increased crime rates,
- drug abuse,
- lack of technological advancements
- slow national development.
- Meaning of illiteracy, Illiteracy is a social problem. It is an extreme form of educational failure which can be defined as the state in which one lacks the ability to read and write
- Causes of illiteracy, poverty, corruption, an inadequate number of schools, lack of trained teachers, weak economic condition of families, lack of resources, social and cultural thinking
- Illiteracy between parents, numerous unskilled guardians don't put much accentuation on the significance of training.
- Unwaged of the education, A few people trust that the main reason somebody ought to go to class is so he or she can land a decent position and make a decent life.
- Social hurdles, limitations on young ladies' training in a few social orders prompt absence of education among the influenced fragment of the populace.
- Thwarts financial and social advancement, lack of education incredibly restrains the financial and social advancement of a person and additionally that of the nation.
- Lack of education prompts destitution, Instruction outfits one with the correct aptitudes and ability for beneficial business.
- Tough life, the powerlessness to discover productive work can subject one to an existence of neediness with poor living conditions.
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