The Uncomprehending 40%

Literacy is not every man's dish. A teacher trying to persuade Arab men in North Africa to let their wives learn to read so that they can write letters was pointedly asked by one husband:

"To whom?" On the other hand, literacy has curious values. A Cameroon mother was satisfied with the copybook her son showed her after school hours each day as proof that he was learning --until told by a neighbor that the page had not changed for three months and the boy was playing hooky. The mother now wants to read.

On balance, humanity applauds her impulse--yet man has not been winning his worldwide war on illiteracy. International experts estimate there are some 35 million more "functional" il literates today than ten years ago, possibly a billion in all. Even in percentage of total population, illiteracy has dropped only about 2% since 1950, still stands at roughly 40%.

Last week the official most directly concerned told the U.N. General Assembly that massive drives against illiteracy have tended to spread money and effort too thinly, thus failing to concentrate on those people most eager to learn. Rene Maheu, an ever-optimistic former French philosophy professor and now Director General of UNESCO, reported on "a turning point in the struggle against illiteracy," whereby in 1966 UNESCO will organize at least eight pilot projects stressing selectivity. The United Nations Special Fund is expected to contribute $24 million to the program. The new African state of Mali, for example, wants to make 100,000 cotton and rice farmers literate to increase their productivity.

A prototype of the Maheu approach is a Mexican project in which 600 students, selected for high motivation, learn the fundamentals of reading and writing in 30 lessons of 50 minutes each, carried by closed-circuit television. By such tactics, Mexico has managed to cut its illiteracy rate from 58% in 1940 to 37% today. Tanzania is leading 500,000 students through 90-minute classes three times a week for five months to become literate in Swahili. Iran, with an 80% rate in rural areas, drafts high school graduates into an "army of knowledge" for 14 months to teach in villages. Some 15,000 such "sergeant-teachers" have taught 300,000 children and 35,000 adults to read.

If literacy projects are given priority, Maheu insists, illiteracy can be eradicated in "a relatively short time--perhaps in a generation."

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