World Literacy Day is celebrated worldwide every year on 8th September. This year UNESCO declared the theme of this day as "Literacy and Sustainable Societies." Literacy is a key driver for sustainable development. To create a sustainable society, learning of a broader set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values are required.
Again progress in areas of sustainable development, such as health and agriculture, serves as an enabling factor in the promotion of literacy and literate environments.
Generally the term literacy means the ability of a person to read and write a simple statement on everyday life in the mother tongue. UNESCO describes literacy as "...A person is functionally literate who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his own and the community's development" (UNESCO, 1979). But in today's world where we read not only words in a written text, but also a wide variety of other symbolic codes for transforming reality, literacy can be defined as, "The ability of a person to code and decode, smoothly and effortlessly, and with understanding, a living and growing system of symbolic transformations of reality, including words, numbers, notations, schemata, diagrammatic representations and other marks, inscribed on paper or other two-dimensional surfaces (cloth, celluloid or the screen of a computer terminal),…………" (Harbans S Bhola).
In the discussion mentioned above we find a viable term 'Education for Sustainable Development' being used with the term 'literacy'. According to UNESCO all sustainable development programmes, including education for sustainable development (ESD), must consider the local environmental, economic, social and cultural conditions. ESD deals with the well-being of all four realms of sustainability - environment, society, culture and economy. The ideals and principles that underlie sustainability are intergenerational equity, gender equity, social tolerance, poverty alleviation, environmental preservation and restoration, natural resource conservation, peaceable societies etc.
A background of Sustainable Development: after the Second World War, Development was seen as economic growth only. Development was measured in terms of increases in the Gross National Product (GNP). Later GNP was substituted by GDP (the Gross Domestic Product). According to the Western economic model of development, growth of GNP/GDP was to be obtained by accumulating capital - by increasing domestic savings and obtaining loans and grants. This economic concept still prevails in the third world countries. It was hoped that the production of national wealth through economic growth would automatically filter down to the poor. But this idea was proved wrong later on. This model could not build an equitable society or a welfare state but sought to create communities of people competing with each other and with the outsiders for higher and higher productivity and personal consumption. This model gave its preference for the modern urban sector over agriculture. This model neglected the education of the masses. Rather it gave emphasis on formal education for the professionalisation of labour for the formal economy. Thus it placed the people in the rural areas at a grave disadvantage.
But at the acceleration of globalisation the model of economic development introduced some major changes. Economic development was joined with social development, even with cultural development.
Some steps taken by UNESCO played a vital role in developing the concept of Sustainable Development. In 1972, UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm led to creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In the meeting a group of world's scientists and political leader expressed deep concern about the changes taking place in the global environment, caused by exploding human populations, exponentially increasing levels of consumption in the West, and the damage done to the ecology of the planet by industrial production to produce the goods and services needed by human communities. These ideas of the world's scientists and political leaders attracted considerable attention. Claims were made that the existing monolithic world economic system could not be sustained and would indeed collapse by around 2050 unless economic growth as we know it now could be stopped. They also asserted that humankind was at a turning point and could usher in an integrated world system that would be able to launch a coordinated global plan that enables controlled and organic growth instead of stumbling from crisis to crisis.
In order to give continued attention to these issues The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also called the "Earth Summit", held in Rio de Janeiro June 3-4, 1992, would make issues of 'Sustainable Development' part of the global discourse forever. The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro adopted a set of principles to guide future developments and a concrete plan of action that has come to be called Agenda 21.
There are 21 principles of sustainability as per Rio Declaration. For example:
1. People are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.
2. Eradicating poverty and reducing disparities in living standards in different parts of the world are essential to sustainable development.
3. The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.
So we get some characteristics are:
1. ESD promotes life-long learning.
2. ESD is locally relevant and culturally appropriate.
3. ESD is based on local needs, perceptions, and conditions, but acknowledges that fulfilling local needs often has international effects and consequences.
4. ESD engages formal, non-formal, and informal education.
5. ESD builds civil capacity for community-based decision-making, social tolerance environmental stewardship, adaptable workforce, and quality of life.
Ten years after the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg on September 4, 2002. The essence of the Summit was to seek ways of protecting nature while boosting living standards for the world's poorest people. Poverty reduction became central to sustainable development, when 15 per cent of the world's population controls 80 per cent of the income. There is much to be done to narrow the gap between the rich and poor nations.
The overall goal now is poverty eradication, with affirmative action on behalf of women, using all the four paths of cultural development, social development, economic development and ecological development. The vision of Johannesburg Conference of 2002 has since been expanded by The United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) (2003-2012) and the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) - particularly with regard to the educational needs of our modern-day agenda for sustainable development.
This year in a message UNESCO DirectorGeneral Irina Bokova also gave emphasis on literacy for sustainable development. She added, "Every year, on September 8th, we raise the flag for literacy as a human right, as a force for dignity, and as a foundation for cohesive societies and sustainable development. This message is especially vital this year, when States will adopt a new agenda for education and development to guide the next 15 years. Promoting literacy must stand at the heart of this new agenda. By empowering individual women and men, literacy helps to advance sustainable development across the board - from better healthcare and food security to eradicating poverty and promoting decent work. There has been progress across the world since 2000, but steep challenges remain. Today, 757 million adults still lack basic literacy skills - two-thirds are women. The number of out-of-school children and adolescents is on the rise, standing at 124 million worldwide - while some 250 million children of primary school age are failing to master basic literacy skills even in schooling. We cannot allow this to continue. Literacy is essential to reach the proposed sustainable development goal to promote inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all."
The role of literacy in increasing life chances in general, and in improving chances for better livelihoods is now unquestioned. We know that in today's world we need literacy more than ever, not only to understand media messages better but also to enable us to cope with the technical aspects of the new information and communication technologies which require a minimum level of literacy (UNDP, 2001).
Again the new information and communication technologies can also play a vital role in enhancing the literacy programmes. UNESCO has given emphasis on the use of modern technologies. It launched mobile phone literacy project on May 26, 2011. Mobile phones are an attractive and affordable means to maintain literacy skills and to obtain information, and hold great potential for reaching marginalised girls and women and providing them with access to further learning and development.
In Bangladesh the government is set to miss the Millennium Development Goal of hundred per cent literacy of the population aged above 15 by this year. Around 39 per cent people of the age group are illiterate. Sustainable development cannot be achieved keeping this vast population behind literacy. Experts and educationists blame the failure on poor planning and lack of initiatives. They pointed out that lack of long-term and sustainable planning in non-formal education and constraints of resources for adult education programmes were behind the government's failure in reaching the goal.
According to Rasheda K Choudhury, former primary education adviser to caretaker government, programmes should be taken up considering socio-economic realities unlike those that are project-based. "There should be a social movement engaging communities and local governments against illiteracy," Rasheda said. So, to achieve sustainable development the non-formal education must be institutionalised to achieve the MDG.
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