India: Literate, but cannot read

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

Indeed -- very interesting report. 

This is not just an issue for India, but for everywhere. The official
literacy rate in the UK is 99%, but studies that look at 'functional
literacy' consider degrees of literacy. The Moser report (1999)
suggested that 20% of adults in England were functionally illiterate "a
bigger proportion than in any other western country apart from Poland
and Ireland". The criterion was being able to find the page for
'Plumbers' in the Yellow Pages (commercial listings) of the telephone
directory (not a very stringent test).

For more on this, and the response to it, see:
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/socialinclusion/adults/moser.html

'Literacy' is certainly not a yes/no skill, but a more/less skill. I
wonder if we can assume that the overstating of literacy is a constant
across the world?

Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
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