IPS-English EDUCATION-NICARAGUA: Down, Down with Adult Illiteracy
 
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:37:01 -0700


ROMAIPS LA DV ED CS MD 
EDUCATION-NICARAGUA: Down, Down with Adult Illiteracy
José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Jul 25  (IPS)  - An adult education programme beginning 
this month in Nicaragua is part of one of the Sandinista 
government's most ambitious social projects: to declare this 
country free from illiteracy in 2009.

The plan is a new version of the historic National Literacy 
Crusade in 1980, when the then newly-installed Sandinista 
government (1979-1990) sent more than 100,000 young literacy 
workers all over the country, Education Minister Miguel de 
Castilla told IPS.

”At that time, 50 or 60 percent of the population (of three 
million people) couldn't read or write, and thanks to the 
Sandinista Revolution, illiteracy was brought down to 12.9 
percent,” said de Castilla, who is general director of the 
campaign.

According to the Nicaraguan Institute of Statistics and Censuses, 
24 percent of the present Nicaraguan population of 5.1 million is 
illiterate. The goal is to teach 100 percent of Nicaraguans over 
15 to read and write.

The plan will be carried out using the Cuban literacy teaching 
method ”Yes, I Can!”, with the support of the governments of 
Venezuela and Cuba, which are contributing educational materials, 
specialised instructors and financial resources to mobilise more 
than 65,000 trained literacy teachers.

Professor Orlando Pineda, head of the non-governmental Carlos 
Fonseca Amador Popular Education Association and a government 
adviser, said that the Cuban method ”identifies letters using 
numbers as the starting point: every letter has its own number, 
and they are used to make everyday household words.”

Pineda used the Cuban method for the first time in Nicaragua in 
2005, and was surprised at the results.

The system requires 65 half-hour lessons with a teacher, a 
television and video recorder, and a notebook and pencil. 
Students pass the course when they can write a letter to 
relatives or to their teacher.

”Before, people used to get bored with the traditional methods, 
which took between eight and 10 months. Now, with half an hour a 
day of lessons, they learn after attending for eight or 10 
weeks,” said Pineda. The literacy courses are given to groups of 
about 10 people, in a house chosen by the community, he said.

The literacy campaign is not part of the Millennium Development 
Goals (MDGs), to which Nicaragua has committed itself, but the 
government is pressing forward with other plans to fulfil the 
goal of universal primary education for all children between the 
ages of six and 12 by 2015.

This is the second of the eight MDGs, a set of commitments 
undertaken by the world's governments in 2000, aimed at slashing 
poverty worldwide by 2015.

Among other efforts in this direction, de Castilla mentioned free 
education, the Zero Hunger programme to reduce malnutrition among 
children and fight urban poverty, and plans to increase spending 
on education and schoolteachers' salaries.

President Daniel Ortega, of the leftwing Sandinista National 
Liberation Front (FSLN) began his second administration in 
January. He governed from 1979 to 1985 as head of the Junta of 
National Reconstruction set up after the fall of the Somoza 
dynasty, and from 1985 to 1990 as the democratically elected 
president.

In spite of the poverty which, according to the United Nations, 
affects 46.2 percent of the population, de Castilla says that the 
country will be able to achieve the educational MDG and universal 
literacy.

UN statistics show that poor people here have on average only 2.2 
years of schooling, whereas those who are not poor have on 
average 5.5 years of education.

Juan Bautista Arríen, a representative of the United Nations 
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), was 
more doubtful about the fulfilment of the universal primary 
education goal.

”The national literacy campaign will help boost the number of 
children attending primary school, but I have serious 
reservations about the fulfilment of the Millennium Goal,” Arríen 
told IPS.

”Because of poverty, there are more than 300,000 children working 
in the streets, and they're not in school,” he said.

According to the Education Ministry, there are 950,000 students 
registered in primary education (85.8 percent of the total), 
while 136,000 (14.2 percent) are not attending classes. 

”Furthermore, out of every 100 children who enter primary school, 
only 40 successfully complete sixth grade,” Arríen said. The 
education budget, 17 million dollars a year, would have to be 
doubled to ”achieve 80 percent fulfilment of the goal,” he said.

”We must conclude that unless the education system changes 
drastically, Nicaragua will have difficulty in meeting the target 
by 2015,” Arríen said.

Although the campaign officially began last week, since 2005 more 
than 125,000 people in 153 Nicaraguan municipalities have been 
taught to read and write using the ”Yes, I Can!” method, 
according to Pineda's figures.

María Teresa Olivas, a street vendor, is one of those people. At 
38, she wrote a letter for the first time in her life. ”I wrote 
it to my children. Now I'll be able to help them a bit with their 
homework, at least by listening to them read,” she said 
enthusiastically as she sold fruit on a crowded avenue in 
Managua.


***** + Q&A: Nicaragua Is Not Likely to Meet the MDGs 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38288) + NICARAGUA: 
Sandinistas Wage a New War - Against Hunger 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37147) + NICARAGUA: Plant 
Trees, Harvest Water (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38371)


(END/IPS/LA/ED DV MD CS/TRASP-VD-LD/JAS/DCL/07)


 
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