2.1 Introduction: Challenging the global domination of the primer
2.2 Introduction to Freire
2.3 Limitations and distortions of Freire
2.4 Introduction to participatory rural appraisal
2.5 Tensions between Freire and Chambers
2.6 New concepts of literacy: The ideological approach
2.7 Visual literacy
2.8 Numeracy
2.9 Gender
The one almost universal feature of adult literacy programmes world-wide is a "primer" in one shape or another (and most primers have very similar shapes and forms). Even radical literacy programmes often depend on a primer. If most literacy programmes have failed then perhaps abolishing the primer may be one of the keys to success.
Adult literacy primers are like basic textbooks. Most of them have 20 or 30 lessons and each lesson starts with a picture which is supposedly based on the local reality of the learners - addressing social and economic issues. The learners are supposed to discuss these pictures and then a key word (or phrase) is given to them that relates to the picture. That word is then often broken down into syllables and the learners practice writing them and make new words. There are some variations but this is the standard model.
Most people who design these primers claim they are using the so called "psycho social" method of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. They call their pictures "codifications" and the key words "generative words". They claim that there is discussion or dialogue in their literacy classes based on these pictures and that the learners go through a process of "conscientization" or awareness raising.
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire radicalised a whole generation of literacy workers in the 1960s and 1970s, linking literacy to social change. Freire criticised existing literacy teaching which was based on primers:
"There is an implicit concept of man in the primer's method and content, whether it is recognised by the authors or not... It is the teacher who chooses the words and proposes them to the learners...the students are to be "filled" with the words the teachers have chosen. It is the profile of a man whose consciousness... must be filled or fed in order to know". (Freire 1985)
Freire condemned this "banking" concept of education:
"As understood in this concept, man is a passive being, the object of the process of learning to read and write, and not its subject". (Freire 1972)
Freire recognised that the people who were normally the passive objects of literacy classes should be seen differently:
"Agronomists, agriculturalists, public health officials, cooperative administrators, literacy educators - we all have a lot to learn from peasants, and if we refuse to do so, we can't teach them anything." (Freire 1985)
However, for Freire most non-literate people were unable to assert themselves. As a result of oppression they were immersed in a "culture of silence":
"In the culture of silence, to exist is only to live. The body carries out orders from above. Thinking is difficult. Speaking is forbidden." (Freire 1972)
In this context there could be no such thing as neutral education:
"Illiteracy is one of the concrete expressions of an unjust social reality. It is political... it is a process of search and creation... [which must] develop students consciousness of their rights". (Freire 1985)
Through what Freire called "the pedagogy of the oppressed'' the students would "perceive the reality of oppression, not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform". (Freire 1972)
Freire called this "conscientization": the process of learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions and taking action against the oppressive elements of reality.
But how could adult literacy work be linked to conscientization? Freire recognised that learners needed to "gain a distance from" their everyday lives so that they could see their situation in a new way. The means for doing this was called a "codification".
"Codifications" are pictures or photographs produced after extensive research in a local area, which in their images capture essential problems or contradictions in the lives of the learners. The learners reflect upon these images, first of all describing them and then through "problematising", analyse their deep structure, until they come face to face with their own lives. The codification is thus an "instrument for this abstraction"- being able to see reality clearer by taking one step away from it. The process of analysing a codification is called "decodification" and involves "dialogue".
Freire saw dialogue as fundamental. He construed this as a coming together of the teacher and learners/students:
"We are advocating a synthesis between the educator's maximally systematised knowing and the learner's minimally systematised knowing - a synthesis achieved in dialogue." (Freire 1985)
"Dialogue" is sometimes mystified by Freire. Effectively it is a discussion, but not just any discussion: rather it is a discussion where people reach below everyday life, open up, and come face to face with new understanding and awareness.
But why link literacy to all of this? Freire was adamant about the need to learn to read and write the world at the same time as learning to read and write the word:
"Learners must see the need for writing one's life and reading one's reality." (Freire 1985)
Freire believed that literacy alone is of no use if there is no other process of change which can help to lift the culture of silence.
Having engaged in dialogue over a codification the next step for the literacy class is the introduction of the word. Not just any word is chosen, but a carefully selected "generative word" which is arrived at after "investigating the vocabulary universe" (or "minimal linguistic universe") of the learners. The word itself is the focus of further dialogue.
Once a generative word has been introduced, Freire advocated breaking the generative word into component syllables and syllabic families - but always asking questions of the learners, not doing it for them (only "having prepared the learners critically for the information" so it "is not a mere gift"). Having done this the educator should ask the learners something like: "do you think we can create something with these pieces?" For Freire (1985), "this is the decisive moment for learning" as the learners "discover the words of their language by putting them together in a variety of combinations". This ends the mystique of written language.
For Freire, the process outlined above would lead to conscientization, giving students a sense of purpose so that they would really be able to "know" the world:
"The act of knowing involves a dialectical movement that goes from action to reflection and from reflection upon action to a new action." (Freire 1972)
This was the struggle which could result in political change. The process is called "praxis" and Freire stressed that:
"Action of men without objectives is not praxis - it is action ignorant of its own process and of its aim" (Freire 1972)
In summary for Freire:
"If learning to read and write is to constitute an act of knowing the learners must assume from the beginning the role of creative subjects. It is not a matter of memorising and repeating given syllables, words and phrases but rather, reflecting critically on the process of reading and writing itself and on the profound significance of language." (Freire 1985)
Elements of Freirean rhetoric are now everywhere -even in literacy programmes which have no commitment to promoting social change. In many respects the Freirean approach has ironically become the traditional approach. Although there have been many new ideas and methodologies developed since Freire, it is Freire who is still most widely quoted and referred to. But in most cases this can best be described as "pseudo Freireanism", stripped of its radical potential. Why?
Although Freire criticised primers in fact most people who profess to use his methods use primers. To a certain extent this was his own fault -having criticised past primers he ended up re-inventing them. The new primers were no longer repeating bland phrases such as "Mary likes animals" or "Eva saw the grape" but they were still primers. They were no longer developed by authors in isolation but rather were produced following local socio-economic and linguistic research. Nevertheless the re-invented primers were very prescriptive:
"The first generative word should be trisyllabic.... Having chosen seventeen generative words the next step is to codify seventeen existential situations" (Freire 1985).
Those who now claim to use Freirean methods have simply replaced "mechanical primers" with more socially-based words, phrases and pictures -whilst retaining the same essential structure and vehicle - the primer. Although supposedly based on local research, increasingly literacy planners have argued that a detailed survey in one rural community reveals a reality typical of the region or even country - so large-scale, centrally printed primers are said to be justified (ignoring the fact that Freire himself observed about generative words that "variation in meaning can occur even within the same city").
The product is the same "mechanical practice of literacy" which Freire himself condemned - but this time done in his name. In practice, despite the declarations and rhetoric of literacy planners, in 95% of cases there is no dialogue in literacy classes. Time and time again, when it comes to the classroom situation, literacy teachers sidestep dialogue (or any effective discussion) and fall back on what they see as the "meat" of teaching literacy.
The cases where this is not true tend to be highly politicised literacy programmes with a tendency to impose a new consciousness on learners rather than generating a truly critical consciousness. There are two main reasons for this:
· in the (new) primers the "codification" is usually just a picture and the "generative word" is just a word. Sometimes almost magical powers are attributed to them but the magic rarely works.· the literacy teachers using primers around the world are not the highly skilled "educators" (or members of the enlightened intelligentsia), imagined (or sometimes implied) by Freire but are local people who have often only completed primary (sometimes secondary) education themselves, working as volunteers (or with low pay) and receiving very little training.
It is difficult to develop a dialogue. To expect largely untrained teachers to do so with just a picture and a word to structure the process is unrealistic. Teachers might have a list of questions in a guidebook (eg what do you see in the picture? what does it mean?) but the learners normally shift around awkwardly, look embarrassed, remain silent or give stock responses to the questions (trying to keep the teacher happy or give the "right" answer). Even if the codifications have been skillfully developed locally and the questions are poignant, developing a dialogue is still not easy. The primer appears in the class from "outside" and feels "external" to the lives of the learners.
The result of this lack of dialogue is that literacy becomes a technical process of teaching syllables (often with rote chanting) and other mechanical aspects of reading and writing. Lacking a viable alternative, teachers re-enact their own experiences of education in primary school and treat the adult learners like children. There is no link to local issues, local development or social change. Learners get bored. Many drop out and others struggle on but fail to learn because reading and writing is not meaningfully related to their lives.
There are exceptions to this bleak scenario: occasions when a literacy programme appears in the right time at the right place with the right people. But even here there can be problems. In some places literacy programmes have raised considerable awareness of injustice and oppression but have failed to channel that awareness into effective change. Learners have ended up either disillusioned (when the government and the international capitalist system fail to collapse) or repressed (as they mobilise without a sufficient focus on achievable change built from below).
Many people have criticised Freire. For example, Street questions how well the Freirean approach "really takes account of local meanings and of cultural and ethnic variations within a nation state and how far teachers can and do give up their position and adopt an equal facilitating role with students". Reading Freire one fluctuates between a feeling that non-literate people are being respected and regarded as knowledgeable, and a feeling that they are being portrayed as powerless and ignorant, submerged in a "culture of silence" and suffering from a "fatalistic consciousness". Feminists have also condemned Freire for his persistent references to "Man" when he is referring to "people" or "humanity" (and although this is more a matter of linguistic convention than sexism, Freire certainly fails to address gender issues in his earlier work).
Despite these shortcomings the philosophy of Freire has a lot to offer. The most serious problems lie with Freire's failure to formulate an effective literacy methodology.
Participatory Rural Appraisal has roots in a reaction to the Western model or the "modernisation" approach to development. It is an approach to use against those who believe that there are simple or pre-packaged technological solutions to development which can be imposed by external professionals. PRA practitioners have a desire to start from the lives of communities themselves. But what tools are there to find out about the priorities of the poor themselves? Questionnaires are clumsy, structured from outside, and take a long time to process (often collecting a lot of irrelevant information). Participant observation from the school of anthropology is often too long and drawn out - and is still extractive - often being used for academic papers rather than feeding into action.
PRA practitioners start from the recognition that poor communities have a wealth of technical and social indigenous knowledge. They have survived often through centuries in difficult environments with limited resources. What we need are techniques to enable non-literates to articulate their knowledge - as building on this knowledge and the reality of the poor must be the starting point of any effective development programme.
PRA practitioners have developed a wide range of techniques based on the idea that visualisation can help participation. The starting point is thus the collective construction of maps, matrices, calendars and diagrams on the ground using whatever materials are locally available.
However, as a set of techniques, PRA is not enough. If those who practice it do not have a real respect for, and a real commitment to, the priorities of the poor then it is often still extractive. Some PRA facilitators make copies of the maps constructed by the community and simply take them away for their own planning purposes. In such circumstances there is often a big gulf between what the community articulates and what the external agency subsequently designs. Some agencies nominally use these methods to say they have consulted with communities - but then proceed with their own priorities. Moreover, PRA is often, or even usually, done only on a short-term basis, for example over just two or three weeks -and is usually done only in selected communities.
PRA techniques have been applied to broad appraisals, to detailed diagnoses of health needs or local agriculture but they have not been applied in the past in literacy programmes. The three pilot projects outlined in this report are the first attempts to use PRA techniques systematically for adult literacy.
This may seem surprising because the link between PRA and education would appear to be strong. As Barton (1994) says, "Learning is the active construction of knowledge." PRA has developed a range of techniques which facilitate this construction. Why not place these techniques within an extended learning process? Perhaps the links have not been made because we have come to see education as something different. Barton (1994) observes that with the coming of the printing press, "The pursuit of truth... became the discovery of new knowledge rather than the constant effort to recover and preserve traditional knowledge". If education encompasses the latter (as well as the former), then PRA can play a useful role. Fuglesang (1982) is helpful on this point:
"Western educationalists have been blind to the oldest and truest pedagogical rule: start with what the students know, not with what you know."
Chambers (1983, 1993) is the key figure behind PRA, having written and trained extensively. He has often spoken of the origins of PRA and refers to Paulo Freire's work on dialogue and conscientization as one of the central influences:
"Participatory Rural Appraisal belongs to, draws on, and overlaps with other members of a family of approaches that have been or are participatory in various ways. These include the community development of the 1950s and 1960s, the dialogics and conscientization of Paulo Freire, participatory action research, and the work of activist NGOs." (Chambers 1991)
Brown (1994) however, argues that there are some serious contradictions between the work of Chambers and Freire. For Chambers "culture" is "a positive social force exemplifying valid beliefs and attitudes already possessed by the peasantry, though blocked by external political controls". Chambers believes in "the capacity of the underclasses to initiate valid social actions on the basis of their existing knowledge and beliefs".
To Freire, in contrast, "culture" is "fundamentally problematic". Underlying Freire's writing are many references to cognitive barriers (in his descriptions of naive/ magical consciousness). Although he blames these on external forces of oppression (rather than blaming people themselves) and regularly refers to the importance of "love" for the people, Freire appears not to trust their existing knowledge and beliefs - seeing them as needing to be transcended. Freire implicitly elevates "rational knowledge" and implies a hierarchy of knowledge systems. This (according to Brown 1994) can "only reinforce whatever ideological biases exist within both the extension agency and the wider society, cutting the intervention off from any capacity to draw upon the positive elements in the claimed dual consciousness of the oppressed."
It is not then just a question of "regenerating Freire" as there may be flaws in his theoretical analysis. REFLECT is rooted in a faith in people's existing knowledge and beliefs as a starting point - and this comes more from Chambers than from Freire.
In the introduction we have referred to some of the present debates about literacy. Literacy is no longer seen as a simple skill or competency but as a process. It is more than just the technology in which it is manifest. Street argues that it is a social process in which particular socially constructed technologies are used within particular institutional frameworks for specific social purposes. This is the "ideological view" of literacy. Literacy cannot be so clearly seen as "an externally introduced force for change". Instead the individual must be "an active actor in literacy learning - not just a passive recipient of an externally defined and introduced technique" (Caxton Report 1994).
This ideological approach has certain implications for literacy methodologies. The primer as a prefixed "external" text would appear to limit literacy practices and be consistent with the traditional or autonomous approach, seeing the need for a fixed body of knowledge to be transferred. To be consistent with the ideological approach a methodology would have to, for example:
· emphasise writing rather than passive reading of fixed texts;
· emphasise creative and active involvement of participants;
· build on existing knowledge of participants, respecting oral traditions and other "literacies";
· focus on learner generated materials (not prepackaged texts)
· ensure that the process is responsive and relevant to the local context.
Over the last two years of experimentation, REFLECT has attempted to build on these elements in order to develop a methodology which is consistent with the ideological approach.
Much work has been done by Fuglesang (1982), UNICEF Nepal and others (see Murray Bradley 1994) - exploring people's abilities to read and interpret pictures. In development work we take a lot for granted. We assume that people can understand the posters and leaflets we produce if we use lots of pictures instead of words. The images we use seem obvious to us. However they are often not clear to people with little exposure to seeing two dimensional visual images and who are unfamiliar with their conventions. Photos are often too cluttered. Line drawings and cartoons are full of conventions (bubbles/ arrows etc) - even perspective (which did not appear in the West until Renaissance art).
As a result of these analyses some work has been done on how to deliver development communications most effectively - how to make pictures easily recognisable or "readable" to people with little exposure to two-dimensional visual images. However, no concerted attempt has been made to develop a programme which will in the process help to make people visually literate.
The link between visual and alphabetic literacy is much more eloquently argued by Fuglesang (1982) in the following quotes:
"At the basis of all writing stands the picture".
"What medium may enable the community to evaluate its own reality in a way that will precipitate new judgments or formulations about it? What medium will trigger in the community a dialogue about its reality that will possibly lead to decisions and actions to alter that reality? In my experience the issue of literacy and social transformation must start with the picture - the imitative reproduction of reality".
"[The picture] is the link between the oral and the written lifestyle and the first step on the way to written abstraction. The picture is the bridge from a basically imitative to a digital mode of communication"... "When you live in reality sometimes you are not able to see it. The picture lifts the mind out of reality. The picture makes the event into an object. The next step is to link the first written concept, the word, to the picture. The picture is the visual environment of the word."
"People learn to read pictures just as they learn to read the pages in a book. This is not recognised because education in reading pictures is an informal process. It goes on automatically in societies where a variety of pictures are presented daily through a variety of media. In social environments with no pictorial tradition or very few pictorial representations - the situation in remote African villages - the informal process of learning to read pictures simply does not occur. It is important to understand that perspective is nothing more than a pictorial or artistic convention which appeared in European painting as late as the Renaissance."
With the REFLECT pilots we have aimed to develop a method which builds on these ideas in a practical way, bridging the gulf that has developed between visual and alphabetic literacy.
Most literacy programmes either overlook numeracy or treat it as being of secondary importance to reading and writing words. Even the more radical and progressive literacy programmes rarely adapt the teaching of numeracy to adults and most fall back on traditional methods - treating adults like children.
This is a serious problem because most adults already have considerable numeracy skills. Most adult learners know oral counting and some mathematical structures and have an art of mental arithmetic more or less adequate for their daily life, Some non-literate people (especially those involved in trade) may be better at mental arithmetic than "educated" people.
You do not have to teach people to speak before you teach them to read and write. Likewise you do not need to teach people to count or add up before you teach them written numeracy.
So what is the value of written numeracy? It is necessary primarily because people are aware of the limitations of memory for keeping numbers in mind and for memorising daily events involving numbers. With complex calculations people lose track of the sub-totals in their heads. Being able to write down numbers in such situations is a huge help - but it is not a matter of knowing how to write 1 or 6 or 10 - rather, the need is usually to be able to write down larger numbers. A numeracy programme must reach this level of teaching useful skills at an early stage. It should also focus on numeracy encountered in written form in people's daily lives and in helping people with different types of record keeping that might be of practical use to them (household accounts/ small scale business accounts/ projections etc).
To develop a numeracy programme suitable for adults, the starting point should be people's daily experience (the actual situations and types of calculation they have to do). This requires a socio-mathematical survey prior to starting the numeracy programme - but this is very rarely done. Efforts should be made to reinforce (rather than undermine or replace) mental arithmetic skills, so that there is a substantial improvement in the way that people carry out existing required calculations at the necessary point in everyday life. A well-targeted numeracy programme drawing on such approaches may be just as empowering or more empowering than literacy - as it can give people very practical skills for their everyday life. The REFLECT approach seeks to build in such elements, respecting adults as adults, and focusing on practical numeracy.
Until recently women's literacy was not given particular priority - despite the fact that levels of illiteracy amongst women are much higher than those amongst men worldwide. Between 1960 and 1985 the overall number of illiterates in the world rose by 154 million and of those, 133 million were women.
Along with other factors, illiteracy increases women's marginalisation from power. Yet, in the past most literacy campaigns have had male themes and male issues as dominant.
This is despite the fact that more and more research suggests the critical importance of women's literacy (see Bown's work "Women, Literacy and Development" ACTIONAID 1990). In a rural area, women are more likely to retain skills in the community for the good of the community (and pass them on to children) whereas men's literacy particularly in rural areas often causes migration (as they see literacy as an urban skill enabling them to get work).
When literacy programmes have focussed on women, particularly in recent years, they have often placed an emphasis on issues affecting the domestic role of women - whether nutrition, child-care or hygiene - ignoring and even undermining the productive and community roles of women. Existing roles are thus usually reinforced. Where there is a conscious attempt to challenge existing roles the result is often a very didactic approach with outsiders lecturing women about their oppression. It is very rare to find a programme which will provide women with space to reflect upon their roles and come to their own conclusions through their own analysis.
This shift towards recognising the importance of women's literacy may however impact negatively on men. Recent evaluations of the government literacy programmes in Uganda and Namibia note a growing trend for literacy to be seen as a "women's thing" which directly or indirectly excludes men. It is important to avoid this and to see the literacy process as something relevant to both men and women - ensuring that all themes are handled in a gender sensitive way. In some contexts there is a strong case for women's only groups. If these are supported, parallel access to separate classes for men should also be considered.
The importance of literacy within the wider process of women's empowerment has become increasingly apparent in recent years. In the Cairo Conference on Population women's literacy was agreed as one of the most effective (and least controversial) means to reduce population growth. The Beijing Conference reiterated this and placed women's literacy at the centre of the empowerment process.
However, all this support in theory has rarely been translated into practical support - because large question marks remain over the effectiveness of adult literacy programmes. Whilst most adult literacy programmes are failing (as highlighted by Abadzi), the rhetoric delivered at international conferences will be of limited value as it is unlikely that any new resources invested in women's literacy will have a significant impact. The mould of past literacy practice needs to be broken if some of these recent commitments to women's literacy are going to be translated into effective programmes on the ground.
