The Big Read: Global Action Week 2009 Puts Spotlight on Literacy
Source: http://portal.unesco.org/

            Global Action Week 2009 (April 20 to 26) focuses on youth and adult literacy and life-long learning to raise awareness about the global literacy challenge.

            Worldwide, some 776 million adults lack literacy skills, 75 million children are out of school and millions more leave school early without acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills. Literacy is a basic right. It is a fundamental condition for being part of today’s knowledge societies. Literacy is a key to reduce poverty, increase economic opportunities, improve child and maternal health, prevent HIV and AIDS and encourage political participation.

* © GCE

Illiteracy: impossible to hide
Source: UNESCO

According to the latest UNESCO global report on education, more and more people know how to read and write, but 776 million adults are still illiterate. This phenomenon affects industrialized countries, where a minority of the population faces daily difficulties.

Someone in the street, on public transport or in a shopping centre, asks for directions, although everything is clearly indicated on signs. He or she seems absent-minded, very tired, or exasperated by contradictory information. Sometimes those asked for information think nothing of it. Other times, they understand: this person does not know how to read, and is making an incredible effort to hide it.

Each language is a uniquely structured world of thought

Australian linguist Christopher Moseley explains the crucial importance of preserving languages and presents the main innovations of the just-released third edition of the “UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger”.

Interview by Lucia Iglesias (UNESCO)

Why should we care about language preservation?

We as human beings should care about this in the same way we should care about the loss of the world’s variety of plants and animals, its biodiversity. What is unique about present-day language revival movements, which didn’t exist before, is that linguists are for the first time aware of just how many languages there are in the world, and are coming to a better understanding of the forces that are attacking them and exterminating them, and of ways to control those forces. It’s very difficult and complex, and it would be naïve and oversimplifying to say that the big ex-colonial languages, English or French or Spanish, are the killers, and all smaller languages are the victims. It is not like that; there is a subtle interplay of forces, and this Atlas will help ordinary people to understand those forces better.

© UNESCO/Michel Ravassard - Christopher Moseley, Editor in Chief of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

UNESCO, Library of Congress and partners launch World Digital Library

 


UNESCO and 32 partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library, a Web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at UNESCO Headquarters on 21 April. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

© UNESCO