Portugal: winning silver in illiteracy
The significance of literacy
Good performance is what people strive for. Everyone wants to give their best when it matters the most, and this also applies to their home countries. We all want our country to succeed and perform well, whether by cheering our national team at sports events or by appreciating the efforts of our government to further develop our country. More important than sports however, are essential abilities, needed to bring progress, development and stability to the country; a factor capable of excluding someone from political and social participation. I’m talking about literacy.
Having a high literacy rate in a country is very important as it has the potential to progress or hinder the development of that country or of oneself. Naturally, as a Portuguese student and researcher it is in my interest to look into why my country has the second lowest rate of such a critical ability, especially when compared to other Mediterranean countries and its neighbour Spain.
Portugal’s literacy rate
Portugal’s literacy rate was at 96,14% in 2018 while Spain registered 98,44%. How can these two neighbouring countries with a long, shared history have such a big difference in rates ?
There are many deciding factors influencing the literacy rate of a population, such as the socio-economic status of a person. However, as with many societal problems, the government’s response to them is arguably one of the most impactful factors. In this case, I’m referring to the policies the Portuguese government has or has not adopted to combat the low literacy rates.
Portugal’s policies
Portugal did not have very effective measures against low literacy rates for a considerable amount of time, as they tried to protect their rural way of life. During a period of 20 years, from 1900 to 1920, the literacy rate went up by only 7.6% and had very poor schooling rates comparable to Spain’s in the 1850’s. Until 1974 there was no interest in forming effective policies to reduce illiteracy. The extension of obligatory schooling introduced in 1974 was the first and arguably only effective policy the government put in place. This resulted in a drastic drop of children’s illiteracy in the following years. However, besides a few minor attempts to help the illiterate adults, the government ignored them, silencing the problem by simply not addressing it. The lack of policies is especially visible for the older generation, as the unofficial policy regarding them is to let that old, illiterate generation die out. It is therefore not surprising how this lack of policies and bizarre approach hinder the decrease of illiteracy.
Image credits:
1st image by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash ; 2nd image by Jeff Sundstrom on Unsplash
Hi, this topic is very interesting! In fact, as you wrote about Portugal’s policies, I was wondering if you know about some current policies that have been implemented to increase literacy in Portugal? If not, what do you think could be done? Thank you 🙂
Hi Florine, I appreciate it thanks. I’m not aware of new policies, however there have been programs offered during the Corona lockdown. But, they are still useless when it comes to reducing illiteracy since it only involves already literate students and adults. Regarding your other question, honestly I don’t think you can force literacy through policies, or at least not that much more. Children have low illiteracy rates because of mandatory schooling. Increasing them would not help in my opinion. If some adolescents already have the mentality of dropping out of school early, then I see no reason why extending school would help them. Support programs and motivational help seems to be more appropriate. When it comes to adults and the older generation, I think raising awareness of illiteracy problems and offering better courses and programs is the best choice.
I hope that answers your questions.
Really interesting, I enjoyed reading it! I was wondering if you found any information on what the literacy rate is for generations born after 1974? And you mention that the literacy rate rose by 7.6% in the early 20th Century. How much has it risen in the total population since the introduction of obligatory schooling that year?
Thank you Heidi. I would consider the extension of obligatory schooling the single most effective (perhaps even the only effective one) measure the government took. It shows in the graphs depicting illiteracy rates per generation. For example, in 2018 (the latest date we have) there were nearly 400.000 illiterate Portuguese at the age of 65+, which is the generation before the introduction of this measure. The next generation, people between 60 and 64, only had around 18.000. This number decreases to around 2000 for the youngest group between 10 and 14 years.
If you want the exact numbers you can follow this link for the source I used, though it’s in Portuguese.
https://www.revistas.uneb.br/index.php/rieja/article/view/6156
Hi Dario, a very interesting topic you have here! After reading, I am left with a question: what would you say Portugal could do in order to salvage the situation of having no policies?
I think new policies don’t have a good success rate. For me the best way of dealing with it is to offer more professional and effective help and courses for the illiterate Portuguese.