essay on illiteracy a curse

At the age of 26, when I returned to New York after an inglorious stab at graduate work in medieval history on the frozen steppes of Chicago, I had a horrifying realization: I was illiterate. At least, I was as close to illiterate as a person with over 20 years of education could possibly be. In my stunted career as a scholar, I’d read promissory notes, papal bulls and guidelines for Inquisitorial interrogation. Dante, too. Boccaccio.. But after 1400? Nihil. I felt very, very stupid among my new sophisticated New York friends. I seemed very, very stupid, too. Actually, let’s face it, I was stupid, and it was deeply mortifying, as so many things were in those days. But I have since come to realize that my abject ignorance was really a gift: to be a literarily inclined illiterate at age 26 is one of the most glorious fates that can befall mortal girl. Of course I could not know that then, and in a panicky attempt to rectify the situation, I slunk in shame to the Strand and stood, paralyzed by the yawning vastness of the store and of my ignorance. I have a very distinct memory of coming home, sitting on the mattress on the floor of my tiny apartment, and staring hopelessly at the forlorn little collection of books on my window sill. A fat Latin dictionary. A fat dictionary of Christian saints. To which I added the skinny gray novel I had just bought. Out of every book in the Strand’s famous miles of volumes, I had desperately, randomly, impulsively grabbed a beat-up Modern Library edition of Anatole France’s “Penguin Island.” Oy. Anatole France? Not Balzac. Not Flaubert. I’d never heard of them. I didn’t know them from Maupassant. Or Anatole France, for that matter. As for English or American literature, I had never read Austen or Eliot or Dickens or Melville or James or Wharton or..I blame Dostoyevsky.When I was a child, I was always allowed to stay home from.
Illiteracy a curse and literacy a boon.: Illiteracy a curse and literacy a boon. English project work By: Ananya Singh Class: X ‘a’ 23-Dec-12 by: Ananya Singh 1Illiteracy as curse: Illiteracy as curse According to the guidelines laid down by the UN, Illiteracy is defined as “The inability to read and write a simple message in any language.” Let’s first analyze this definition closely. An illiterate person is like a handicapped person who is unfamiliar with the happenings in his surroundings, cannot even do basic day to day things like driving because of his lack of ability to understand the basic symbols and traffic signs, cannot read the menus at restaurants. The illiteracy rates vary from region to region depending on the factors like wealth and urbanization. One common thing to be pointed out in the countries with high illiteracy rates is the social custom which curbs the education of females. The main reason behind the progress of developed countries can be attributed to their high literacy rates. This is because high literacy rates means more knowledgeable and skilled people in the country (what we call human capital). Literate people can understand and learn the things more easily, so they enjoy a higher socio-economic status as well as catalyze the development of the country as a whole. Even if we look into the history, we will find that literacy is the pre requisite for development of the country. The countries like Afghanistan, Niger, Guinea, Benin, Somalia, which have low literacy rates also have lower developing rates in comparison to countries with high literacy rates. 23-Dec-12 by: Ananya Singh 2PowerPoint Presentation: Its hard to figure out whether the issues like child labor, population growth etc are consequences of high illiteracy rate or whether the situation is other way round Whatever may be the answer, one thing is for sure that there is a cycle.
Every issue that our society faces is like a link of a chain. Each issue is connected to another, either directly or indirectly. The chain of issues in this society that we live in, the strongest link of that chain is illiteracy. Illiteracy is the mother of all issues as it gives birth to many other issues like poverty, unemployment, child labour, female foeticide, population burst and many more.It is very hard to digest that the land of the Vedas is one of the countries with the highest illiteracy levels and shows the inability of our government to utilize programs like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Literacy Mission. Even countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and the like have achieved, in lesser time, a much better percentage of literacy. Literacy is a reasonably good indicator of development in a society.Spread and diffusion of literacy is generally associated with essential trait of today’s civilization such as modernization, urbanization, industrialization, communication and commerce. This fact can be clarified as all the developed countries like America and Canada have very low illiteracy rates, whereas countries like India, Turkey and Iran have a very high rate of illiteracy. World Bank studies have established the direct and functional relationship between literacy and productivity on the one hand and literacy and the overall quality of human life on the other.A person aged seven and above, who can both read and write with any understanding in any language, is treated as literate. As per 2001 Census, the overall literacy rate of India is 65.38%. The difference between the highest and the lowest literacy rate in India is very high. Kerala has the highest literacy rate which is 90.92 %, while Bihar has the lowest with 47.53 %.Illiteracy in India is characterized by wide gaps between the urban and rural populations. The rural population.
Sign in with Facebook Quotes tagged as illiteracy (showing 1-30 of 31) “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” ― Joseph Brodsky “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas Jefferson “The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.” ― Benjamin Franklin “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.” ― Bertolt Brecht “Beware the man of a single book.” ― Thomas Aquinas “Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.” ― Peter S. Jennison “School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.” ― Ambeth R. Ocampo “This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.” ― Elbert Hubbard “-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength, to resist our weaknesses, -We need more inspiration, to lighten up our innermind. -We need more learning, to erase our ignorance, -We need more wisdom, to live longer and happier, -We need more truths, to suppress deceptions, -We need more health, to enjoy our.
Illiteracy in India Illiteracy refers to the state of being unable to read or write. Illiteracy is a great hurdle for the economic development India. It entangles a man or a nation and eats into the vital of life. Illiteracy is a scar in our national life. Millions of people in our country are still in the darkness of illiteracy and ignorance. They are deceived in every walk of life. Lack of literacy is a hurdle for overall development and well-being of this country. It weakens the backbone of our country. It is not only baffling our democracy slowly but steadily also leading the vast democratic set up of this country to jeopardy. Solutions: Illiteracy is a burning question to-day in India. It should be eradicated root and branch to make our life happy and prosperous. To eradicate this problem and to bring about her social, economical and political improvements all educated persons and students should join hands together in all possible ways. The U.N.O. has been trying its best to remove this problem of illiteracy from the under-developed countries like India. The year 1990 has been regarded as the International Literacy year. Postal stamps and calendars have been released for this purpose by the central government but these are not sufficient steps for promotion of literacy in a large country like India. More schools can be set up all over the country. There should be ample provisions in the Central and State budgets to fight illiteracy. Government should try to bring every child to school. Effective measures should be taken to stop child labor. It is this illiteracy that seizes this land of our like an Octopus and throttles her to death. Philanthropic organizations and both formal and non-formal educational institutions should help these poor people to read and write. They can play a vital role to make the illiterate literate. Conclusion: Government alone cannot.