Promoting Peace and Justice
T  h  r  o  u  g  h     L  i  t  e  r  a  c  y

 

A Global Strategy by World Literacy Initiative, Inc.

 

	Promoting the development of non-industrialized nations through improved literacy – especially female literacy – is a just act.  Not only because of the gender equality that it fosters and the poverty that it lessens, but also because the illiteracy that  it supplants would otherwise make more probable many forms of oppression including tyrannical forms of government and the subordination, discrimination and mistreatment of discrete groups of a nation’s people.
	Renowned educator E. D. Hirsch, Jr. has called failing to prepare a child to know what they must in order to succeed in the subsequent grade in school, the greatest form of preventable injustice in education (Hirsch, 1996; 1999).  World Literacy Initiative heartily agrees with this and adds that, in a developing country particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, this form of injustice is almost certainly worse; not only robbing a generation of learners of the realization of their innate potential, but tightening the shackles of poverty, securing a dangerously lower standard of living, and increasing the burden for succeeding generations to overcome as well.	Next in importance to freedom and justice is education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881) July 12, 1880
	World Literacy Initiative thus views bringing the most effective teaching methods to the people of developing nations, necessary to achieving their literacy, as a highly just act too; one that not only promotes the development of a nation while endorsing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but which stakes a claim to a higher standard of living  realizable only through literacy and education and the justice that is thereby nourished for a developing nation’s citizenry.

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A Dozen Reasons Why
Literacy, Basic Education and Effective Teaching
are Essential and Just Acts

 

I)    Achieving Human Rights.  Education and Literacy are fundamental Human Rights (see The Universal
      Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 - Education[1] where literacy is strongly implied by [2] and that
      parents have a right to choose effective methods of teaching over others for their children [3]).

 

2)   Promoting Equality. Literacy and education promotes gender equality (a Millennium Development
      Goal [MDG] and a goal of the Education for All initiative).

 

3)   Reducing Poverty.  Literacy and education are essential first steps of nearly all initiatives to reduce and
      eliminate global poverty.

 

4)   Reducing Preventable Deaths.  Female literacy and education – reduce child and maternal mortality.

 

5)   Promotes Good Governance and Individual Freedoms.  Literacy and education makes tyrannical
      forms of government less likely and good governance and the expression of individual freedoms more
      achievable.

 

6)   Fights the Oppression of Certain Peoples.  Literacy and education makes the oppression of certain
      peoples less possible and less enduring while promoting the expression of individual freedoms more robust and
      definitive.

 

7)   Promotes Childhood Health.  Female literacy and education – improve child nutrition and health.

 

8)   Fosters the Management of Parenthood.  Female literacy and education – lower fertility rates.

 

9)   Protects Girls from Abuse, Exploitation and Sexually Transmitted Disease.  Female literacy
      and education – protect girls from abuse, exploitation, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

 

10)  Reduces Inhumane Injustices in School.  The greatest form of preventable injustice in education is the
       failure to prepare adequately a child for the subsequent grade and effective teaching technology removes this
       barrier to a young child’s achieving their potential.

 

11) Promotes the Achievement of Millennium Development Goals.  Universal Primary Education
     (UPE) is a Millennium Development Goal.

 

12) Supports Higher Participation Rates in School.  Female literacy and education – promotes higher
      participation rates in their children’s schooling.