FORUM: ''Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies.'' International Literacy Day 2023.
EVENTS: UNESCO will celebrate International Literacy Day (ILD) on 8 September 2023 under the theme ‘Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies’.
This year marks the mid-point towards the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to which the international community committed eight years ago. By resolving to achieve this agenda, countries and partners envisioned a future world that is peaceful, just, inclusive, and free from poverty, hunger, and inequalities. As highlighted in the recent report by the UN Secretary-General, however, ‘the SDGs are in deep trouble’. Despite the progress in many areas, ‘a preliminary assessment of the roughly 140 targets with data show only about 12 per cent are on track; close to half, though showing progress, are moderately or severely off track and some 30 per cent have either seen no movement or regressed below the 2015 baseline’. The repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic along with other challenges such as climate change, digitalization, widening inequalities, polarization of societies and conflicts, are increasingly felt in different spheres of human life and the planet.
The SDG4 on education and lifelong learning is not an exception. It confronts persistent and interrelated challenges related to equity, inclusion, and equality, as well as the quality and relevance . In 2020, at least one out of seven youth and adults aged 15 years and over worldwide (763 million) lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills . In addition, a significant number of children, including those who are enrolled in school, are not acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills, while 244 million children and young people between the ages of 6 and 18 are not enrolled in school. The COVID-19 crisis, along with other global challenges, has exacerbated the educational and literacy challenges faced by millions of children, young people and adults, predominantly those who were already marginalized before the pandemic. In low- and middle-income countries, the estimated proportion of ten-year old children who cannot read a simple text has risen from about 57 per cent in 2019 to 70 per cent in 2022. Global learning losses from the COVID-19 crisis could cost this generation of students close to US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings.
Fulfilling the commitment to the SDG4, including the SDG target 4.6 on youth and adult literacy and numeracy, and shaping a greener, better, and safer future requires not only intensified efforts but also radical changes in our thinking, approaches, and action. In its 2021 report entitled ‘Reimagining ourfutures: A new social contract for education‘, the UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education addressed the necessity to transform education to shape a peaceful, just, and sustainable futures. While the Seventh International Conference on Adult Education (Marrakech, 15-17 June 2022) shed light on the importance of a lifelong learning perspective, the Transforming Education Summit(TES) convened by the United Nations Secretary-General (New York, 16-19 September 2022) generated a global movement with more than 130 countries and partners committing to transforming education towards the Summit of the Future (New York, 22-23 September 2024) and beyond.
Thematic focus of International Literacy Day 2023
Literacy is central to equipping individuals with the relevant knowledge, skills, and competencies, transforming education, and shaping more sustainable and peaceful societies. At this critical juncture of the SDG journey, therefore, International Literacy Day 2023 (ILD2023) will focus on ‘Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies’. Locating literacy in the entire SDG spectrum centered around the five pillars of sustainable development, namely ‘People (social development)’, ‘Planet (environmental protection)’, ‘Prosperity (economic prosperity)’, as well as ‘Peace’, and ‘Partnership’, it will provide an opportunity for reinforcing and adjusting our paths, embracing the reciprocal relations between development in ‘literacy and numeracy’ and ‘different areas of sustainable development and peace’. Literacy, on the one hand, empowers people and improves their self-esteem, creativity, and critical thinking. It enables them to acquire knowledge, skills, attitude, and values required to thrive in our rapidly changing society and economy. As such, literacy contributes not only to generating personal benefits, such as better well-being and economic conditions, but also social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental ones.
Evidence shows, for instance, that literacy programmes help enhance democratic values, peaceful coexistence, and community solidarity. By empowering people, especially through a critical and emancipatory approach, literacy can help them ‘to engage and assume active role both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges’ and to become an agent for transformation for more sustainable and peaceful societies. On the other hand, progress in other areas of development, such as health, agriculture, water, energy, transport, and peace, can improve the conditions and environments in which people live, work, and learn. More reading materials, libraries, and learning opportunities in multiple forms that become available due to socio-economic development can help literacy learning. At the same time, new environments generated by such development, including increased employment opportunities, could generate people’s demands for acquiring, applying, and advancing literacy and numeracy skills’. In looking at these reciprocal relations, ILD2023 will also note that not all new developments create necessarily the favorable conditions for fulfilling everyone’s right to education, of which literacy is a part. For instance, the advancement of digital technology can be a double-edged sword. While its potential for expanding teaching and learning has been demonstrated most recently during the COVID19 crisis, multiple issues have been pointed out, including the digital divide that has disproportionately affected marginalized people in terms of access to the quality learning and their misrepresentation within AI-driven learning. New services devised for convenience, such as voice recognition, automatic dictation and interpretation services may disincentivize people to make efforts to be literate.
Exploring human-centered solutions at system, programme, content and practice levels. Promoting the mutually-benefitting ‘two-way process’ of development in ‘literacy and numeracy’ and ‘different areas of development and peace’, calls for lifelong learning and intersectoral approaches, underpinned by the notion of literacy as a continuum of proficiency that alters throughout life. Also required is attention to evolving contexts. In addition to basic literacy and numeracy skills, higher-level skills as well as skills for communication, using digital text, are increasing. ILD2023 will explore how the ‘lifelong literacy and numeracy’ approaches can be translated into concrete solutions and actions at the system, programme, and practice levels. In doing so, it will pay attention to the learning content that connects literacy with acquisition of other knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and competencies. It will also reflect on the appropriate governance and partnerships based on whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches through democratic conversations and interactions, across and within education authorities at different levels, different ministries, development partners, disciplines, and people from diverse background and age groups. More broadly, there is a need for fostering a culture of lifelong learning, which facilitates intensified interactions between individuals, communities and social institutions.
In doing so, ILD2023 will remind the centrality of people - their needs, aspirations, and capabilities, as well as the conditions and environments in which they live - to making all action meaningful. It is demand-driven, human-centered policies, programmes, and practices that can harness the transformative power of literacy.
Celebrations of International Literacy Day 2023.
Objectives and formats International Literacy Day 2023 will be celebrated on September 8 worldwide to acknowledge advancements in literacy and foster a more literate society. The day will bring together policymakers, practitioners, development partners, youth, and individuals. At the global level, a Conference on ‘Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies’ will be held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France on 8 September, immediately after the Digital Learning Week (Paris, 4-7 September 2023) and prior to International Day to Protect Education from Attack (9 September 2023). The Global Conference will also feature the Award Ceremony of the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes. Additionally, the ILD2023 webpage will showcase a number of events planned at the country level, while virtual celebrations will take place in other formats, including social media.
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