International Literacy Day

 Literacy is popularly comprehended as a proficiency to read, write and use numeracy in at least one method of writing, and interpretation evaluated by mainstream dictionary and handbook connotations. Starting in the 1980s, however, literacy researchers have strengthened that distinguishing literacy as a proficiency apart from any fundamental event of reading and writing ignores the arduous paths reading and writing always happen in a distinctive context and in tandem with the values correlated with that context. The impression that literacy always entangles jovial and cultural entities is reflected in UNESCO's stipulation that literacy is an "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." Modern notoriety to literacy as a "context-dependent proliferation of social practices" reflects the familiarity that individuals' reading and writing about practices develop and change over the lifespan as their cultural, political, and historical contexts change. For example, in Scotland, literacy has been characterized as: "The ability to read, write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners." Such intensified connotations have altered long-standing "rule of thumb" measures of literacy, e.g., the ability to skim the newspaper, in part because the increasing involvement of computers and other digital technologies in communication necessitates additional skills. By extension, the proliferation of these indispensable skill-sets became inferred, variously, as computer literacy, information literacy, and technological literacy. Elsewhere definitions of literacy extend the original notion of "acquired ability" into concepts like "art literacy," visual literacy, statistical literacy, critical literacy, media literacy, ecological literacy, disaster literacy, and health literacy.

8th September was proclaimed International literacy day by UNESCO. 0n 26 October 1966 at 14th session of UNESCO's General Conference. It was commemorated for the prime time in 1967. Its objective is to accentuate the prominence of literacy to individuals, congregations and societies. Escapades take place in several countries. Some 775 million lack minimum literacy skills; one in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of them are women; 60.7 million children are out-of-school and myriad additional attend irregularly or drop out. According to UNESCO’s "Global Monitoring Report on Education for All". South Asia has the meagrest regional adult literacy rate, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali. The report shows a clear connection between illiteracy and countries in severe poverty, and between illiteracy and prepossession against women.

Here are some quotes on literacy to inspire you.

"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope." ~Kofi Annan

"Education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world." ~Nelson Mandela

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." ~Gandhi

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." ~Aristotle