THE literacy rate for people aged above seven years that the national statistical office has come up with every year for 19 years, from 2023 backward to 2005, shows a consistent increase, by small leaps though. Literacy rate is reported to have been 52.1 per cent in 2005 and it has increased to 77.9 per cent in 2023, keeping to official documents. The Awami League government, which was toppled on August 5 amidst a student-mass uprising born out of weeks of protests seeking reforms in civil service job reservations, however, had plans to eliminate illiteracy by 2030 keeping to the UN Sustainable Development Goals after it had missed an earlier deadline of 2014. Bangladesh, against this backdrop, observed International Literacy Day, which the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation declared in 1965, on September 8 with the theme of 鈥楶romoting Multilingual Education: Literacy for Mutual Understanding and Peace.鈥� The purpose of the day was to highlight the importance of literacy as a matter of dignity and human rights and to promote global literacy as a critical factor in improving people鈥檚 lives and creating more equitable society. What however, remains disparaging is that the national definition of literary has failed to catch up the international definition over the years.
Whilst the literacy data that the Bureau of Statistics have come up with over the years came to be questioned by well-meaning experts because the statistical office is said to have manipulated data to the advantage of the government of the day, the validity of the literacy data have also been questioned as the focus has always been on the quantity, which has increased largely because of an increased enrolment and a reduced dropout in primary education. Successive governments have failed to successfully narrow the gap between the quantity and the quality of literacy because of flawed, or inadequate, policy definition and focus. Bangladesh鈥檚 definition of literacy is the three Rs 鈥� reading, writing and arithmetic 鈥� in which people could read words but may not be able to grasp the argument or the analogy. And, it has never focused on literacy sustainability, putting the literate people at risks of being illiterate again. UNESCO has moved away from this definition to functional literacy, which refers to practical skills set needed to read, write and do arithmetic for real-life purposes. It enables people to function effectively in the community. With individuals having no reading and writing skills, mathematical knowledge and analytical ability, it is difficult to have functioning community or society. A functional society needs functional literacy, which can be of various kinds such as media literacy, religious literacy, financial literacy, computer literacy, legal literacy, scientific literacy, health literacy, civil literacy, etc.
The government must, therefore, update the national definition of literacy for a shift to functional literacy so that literacy can be sustainable and society can be functional. The government must act to update literacy projects the Bureau of Non-Formal Education now runs, without creating disruption in the ongoing programmes meant for the adult population.
