Literacy Inequalities: Who cares?

1. Literacy Inequalities:Who cares? BALID Workshop on ‘Literacy, Marginalisation and Inequality’. 23rd April 2009, John Adams Hall, London Presented by Bryan Maddox <b.maddox@uea.ac.uk>

2. Part 1. Literacy Inequalities: Projects and Frameworks • ‘Those concerned with the ‘future of literacy’ must ask themselves what are the consequences for social groups and for whole societies of acquiring literacy’ (Street 1995: 28). • I will explore a social justice framework, aligned to what Darville (1999) described as: a ‘democratic project’, i.e. giving primacy to meeting human needs and developing human capacities (p273), also see Maddox (2008).

3. NLS and Literacy Inequalities • Representational politics – pluralism, dominant literacies, ideological projects, hidden literacies – whose literacies, and whose priorities? (e.g. Street 1995, 2008, Collins and Blot 2003, Robinson-Pant 2004). • Multiple social uses (and functions) of dominant and vernacular literacy.eg. Barton and Hamilton 1998, Maddox 2007. • Textual Power and Social Marginalisation – the state, globalised and vernacular literacies, the power of literacy regimes (e.g. Barton and Hamilton 1998, Blommaert 2008). • ‘We would be foolhardy to deny the benefits of literacy and education in a social order in which literacy and education increasingly seem as essential..’ (Collins and Blot 2003, p98).

4. Literacy Inequalities and Social Justice • ‘illiteracy and innumeracy are forms of insecurity in themselves. Not to be able to read or write or count of communicate is itself a terrible deprivation. And if a person is thus reduced by illiteracy and innumeracy, we can not only see that the person is insecure to whom something terrible could happen, but more immediately, that to him or her, something terrible has actually happened’ (Sen 2003:22). • Illiteracy, insufficient literacy or wrong type of literacy produce disadvantage, even if literacy alone will not produce wellbeing(Maddox 2008). There are 774 million adults globally who are not literate (UNESCO 2008).

5. Part 2. Who cares? • Assumption: A socially just society should provide educational opportunities (including literacy) for all. Not just the fortunate. • Moral principle: Social institutions should enable people to become literate, and learn new forms of literacy that they choose to value. (note the democratic commitment to choice) • The Social Policy Question: What kinds of institutional arrangement will best help this (above) to come about?

6. The dominant policy: Universal Primary Education • Utilitarian argument 1 – primary schooling is the most efficient route to universal literacy. • Utilitarian argument 2 – literacy acquired in childhood will last through life and produce individual and social benefits.

7. The dominant policy: Universal Primary Education (cont..) • Moral argument 1 – social arrangements should produce equity in childhood (levelling effect within broader inequalities). • Moral argument 2 – with limited resources, priority should be given to children (i.e. before adults), they are dependent and vulnerable.

8. Priority and Primary Schooling: A critique (Rawls 1971) • ‘..the primary subject of [social] justice is ..the way in which major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties..’ • ‘..justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.’ (p3). • ‘..to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer assets and to those born into less favourable positions’ (p100).

9. Priority and Primary Schooling: A critique (Scanlon 1998) • Critique of utilitarianism: ‘high costs on a few could always be justified by the fact that this brought benefits to others, no matter how small these benefits may be as long as the recipients are sufficiently numerous’ (p230). • ‘Rescue Principle’ (p225): the obligation from preventing something very bad from happening to someone ‘at only slight or moderate cost to oneself (as a morally demanding principle). [severity / potential harm matters, it implies ‘priority for the worse off’, even if we can help less badly off more p226]

10. The logic of Priority: a critique • Nussbaum (2007) – achievement of minimal thresholds (for flourishing) for all ‘each and every citizen’. • Rawls (1971) Priority as ‘lexical order’ ‘a principle does not come into play until those previous to it are either fully met or do not apply’ (p42). • Arneson (2000) priority for the worst off (as the most needing support). Who are the worst off?

11. Conclusions • The NLS does not stop us from challenging literacy inequalities, but makes important demands. • We can make distinctions between moral (social justice) and instrumental rationales in policy analysis. • Utilitarianism is a weak framework for promoting social justice in adult literacy. • Social policies that prioritise primary schooling and therefore neglect adult literacy are socially unjust.

12. References • Arneson, R. (2000) ‘Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism’. Ethics. (110) pp 339-349. • Blommaert, J. (2008) Grassroots Literacy • Collins, J. and Blot, R (2003) Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity. • Darville (1999). • Jones, P. (1997) ‘The World Bank and the Literacy Question’. International Review of Education 43 (4). • Maddox, B (2008) ‘What Good is Literacy?’ Journal of Human Development. No. 2. 185-206. • Nussbaum, M (2007) Frontiers of Justice. • Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. • Scanlon, T. (1998) What we owe to each other. • Sen, A. (2003) ‘Reflections on Literacy’ in Literacy as Freedom, UNESCO. • Street, B. V. (1995) Social Literacies. • Street, B. V. (2008) ‘Literacy Inequalities: The Power to Name and Define’. UEA Seminar paper, 1 0ctober. • UNESCO (2008) The Global Literacy Challenge