Frederick Noronha (FN) on Tue, 19 Aug 2003 06:15:29 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> The 300-million question -- how to spread literacy in India... andfast |
THE 300-MILLION QUESTION: HOW TO SPREAD LITERACY IN INDIA... AND FAST >From Frederick Noronha fred at bytesforall.org WHAT DO you do with a population of close to 300 million iliterates, who can speak their native languages, but cannot read or write in them? Do we see them merely as empty stomachs, and a burden on the nation? Or, is this an untapped potential, which can be converted into 600 million useful hands? If a project by premier Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) can find the right partners, and hit critical mass, then this large section could be converted into productive individuals who can read signboards. Maybe even the simple text of a newspaper in under 40 hours of learning-time. Retired Major General B G Shively's recent mission to the Goa port town of Vasco da Gama saw him take on an unusual enemy -- illiteracy. It also took to India's smallest state an innovative campaign that brings enticingly near the dream of making India literate. Says Pune-based Shively: "Every adult has inborn qualities (and intelligence). You only have to activate it." This military-man now consulting advisor to the Tata Consultancy Services' literacy plan suggests that the computer can turn into a magic wand of sorts, to spread reading skills without the need for a huge army of teachers. Quite some work has already been done by TCS in Andhra Pradesh, with Telugu. Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Bengali are the other languages worked on. Gujarati is shaping up. What's more, there's an added bonus: India could become functionally literate in just three to four years time, if -- and this is a big if -- this method is vigorously implemented. How does it work? Simple. The software giant TCS is using low-end computers to take out the monotony from teaching, piggy-backing on the initiatives already undertaken by the National Literacy Mission, and treating adults very differently from children when it comes to teaching them. Some rules: don't make an adult sit for tests. Don't get caught up with writing, as the difficulties involved acts as a major disincentive. Reading skills are most important. Adults can't be made to study alphabets the same way children unquestioningly take to it. "One-third of our population -- old, young and adults -- are illiterate. Some 150-200 million are adult illiterates between 15-50 years. Illiteracy is a major social concern," says Shively. Growing at 1.3% per annum roughly, literacy is creeping in just too slowly to make a difference for India's efficiency. That's where, says TCS, computers come in. Software generated by TCS, which is given to volunteer groups free-of-cost, tries to teach adults to learn to read a language by words, rather than the traditional method of learning by alphabets. In the Goa Shipyard Limited, one of India's military-run building centres, the concept recently drew interest. Sixty workers signed-up to learn the most important of the 3 Rs. Andhra is however the state where this project has made the most progress. "There's almost nothing the teacher has to speak. Everything is in the software. So teachers can run 5-6 classes (one-hour) classes in a day, without getting tired. You don't need a trained teacher (because of the software)," says Shively. In 40-hours flat, an illiterate could be turned into a 'functional literate', claims the major-general. This would enable one to read simple newspaper headlines, check out bus directions, read signboards and the like. Hopefully, such skills could be deepened over time. Their ideas are put out on the site www.tataliteracy.com, and the TCS is claiming a good response even from a few industrial groups wanting to gift their workers with literacy. To avoid reinventing the wheel, the TCS -- which sees this venture as part of its philanthropic endeavours -- is working in tandem with the government-run National Literacy Mission primers. So what happens if literacy comes in 40 hours, instead of 200? Drop-out rates are low. It wouldn't take India another 20-25 years to touch 90% literacy (three to four years are enough, says TCS), and the 'demotivating factors' are knocked off. Trained teachers are no longer the bottleneck. EFFECTIVE LINKAGES This project has been talked about for some time now. This writer recalls first reading about it sometime in mid-2000. Perhaps it has not been able to spread far and wide, because of a lack of effective linkages with other individuals who could take it ahead. Particularly non-profit organisations, and corporates who share this vision. Also, having the software under the GPL (General Public License) could perhaps make it easily sharable, improvable, and yet make clear the major contribution put in by the TCS. It perhaps makes good sense to take on computers as an ally in fighting iliiteracy. We have a huge problem: Nearly 350 million Indians cannot read or write. Of these, about 200 million are adult illiterates... Even five-and-half decades after Independence we have not been able to tackle this problem. Comparing China with India, TCS argues that "apart from other factors that build the economy, it would appear that the level of literacy affects the economy in many dimensions". Between 1990 and 2000, India's literacy crept up from 52.5 per cent to just 65.5 per cent. In this time, China's grew from 73 to 92 per cent. Malaysia's literacy touches 87$, Thailand's is 95%, and that of South Korea, 99%. In ten years, over the nineties, India's literacy rate showed only a ten per cent increase. "At this rate, it will take at least another 30 years to reach a literacy level fo 90-95%", argues TCS. To come out with an innovative solution, a team lead by F.C.Kohli -- along with Prof P N Murthy and Prof K V Nori -- has been studying the how to make a low-cost, technology-based effective solution to India's literacy problems. This method's goals are to give a 300-500 word vocabulary to learners in their own languages. (As noted above, five major Indian languages are currently covered. Many more are waiting to be done.) This skill could enable them to read a simple newspaper. The idea is to help adult learns build an association between sounds and their graphic presentation. Familiar words -- and their written forms -- are broken down into syllables and the written form, finally ending in the alphabet and their sounds. The focus is on learning words rather than alphabets. Explains TCS: "This method focuses on reading, the most important of the 3 Rs in literacy. Once this is achieved, a person can accelerate learning to the other Rs through the use of the reading skill. In other words, the reading ability is expected to act as a trigger to develop the full measure of literacy." CBFL, or Computer-Based Functional Literacy as the TCS calls it, an interesting but not-adequately noticed project from the Tata Group, claims it can make "90% of India functionally literate in three to five years". It uses animated graphics and a voice-over to explain how individual alphabets combine to give structure and meaning to various words. It is designed from education material developed by the National Literacy. The CBFL method employs puppets or lively images as the motif in the teaching process. Lessons are tailored to fit different languages. They focus on reading, and are based on the theories of cognition, language and communication. "With the emphasis on learning words rather than alphabets, the project addresses thought processes with the objective of teaching these words in as short a time span as possible. The settings for the lessons are visually stimulating and crafted in a manner that learners can easily relate to (the puppet-show idiom)," say the project promoters. Voiceovers reinforce the learner's ability to grasp the lessons easily, and repetition adds to the strengthening of what is learned. The method is implemented by using computers and 'flashcards' (small cards, with the alphabets written on them). The computer delivers the lessons ('shows') in multimedia form to the learners. The flashcards, which have letters printed on them, support the process by fortifying what has been absorbed and by helping beneficiaries memorise what they have learnt. Claimed advantages of this approach include: * Acceleration in the pace of 'learning to read' (it takes about one-third of the time that writing-oriented methods require). * Flexibility in adjusting to individual learning speeds. * Lower dropout rates in comparison with other adult literacy programmes. * Does not require trained teachers or large-scale infrastructure. * Can be conducted on computers with configurations as low as 486 (these are the kind of machines that many organisations can afford to give away). * Can effectively enhance existing adult-literacy programmes. * The multimedia format ensures that the pronounication of the words/letters is taught accurately through the system, rather than being left to individual teachers. This is particularly useful for languages like Tamil, where the same letter can be pronounced differently (based on the context). See http://www.tataliteracy.com/how_it_works.htm Other initiatives to battle the huge problem of illiteracy are also underway. Some time back, Atanu Dey <atanu@are.berkeley.edu> was involved with raising funds for a few primary schools run in rural Andhra Pradesh (see www.indiarural.org). "For the cost of training one student in IIT (India's prestigious centres of engineering higher education) for one year, we can provide basic literacy skills and a midday meal for 200 students for a year," says Dey who was at the University of California in Berkeley (http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu) Then, there has also been CALP -- which uses puzzles, games and things which would interest the young mind while in the background teaching the language. It has been made by Pratham, for CRY (http://www.pratham.org/nwprogs.htm) For a lot more information, check out the National Literacy Mission's site nlm.nic.in which also offers a link to various technical software on which language solutions can be built (tdil.mit.gov.in) This ties up with with the initiative of educationists like Brij Kothari, of IIM-Ahmedabad. Kothari's emphasis is on strengthening the skills of neo-literates, by using same-language subtitling for the lyrics of popular television filmi songs so popular across the country. This software runs even on earlier-generation higher-end 486 PCs with 16 MB RAM and free hard-disk space of half a GB or more. Multimedia support is needed for the speakers. Their goal? Accelerating adult literacy in Idia through the effective use of IT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOME LINKS: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maj Gen B G Shively, AVSM (Retd) Consulting Advisor, Tata Consultancy Services, Pune bshively at pune.tcs.co.in Anthony Lobo, TCS, Air India Bldg, 10th Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021 Tel 56689378 anthonyl atmumbai.tcs.co.in National Literacy Mission (India) site http://nlm.nic.in http://www.tataliteracy.com Site explaining the TCS idea of promoting functional literacy through low-end computers. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- T: 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 M: 0 9822 122436 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net