Some images of shame and pride around literacy and illiteracy

Illustration: Alia Sinha

“You ask yourself, have I got a name if I can’t write it? Am I a human being if I can’t read it? You turn to stone …” Stanley has just lost his job once again on account of being unable to read or write and here he is confiding in Iris, a feisty and fiercely independent working woman who later helps him to learn to read.  Stanley and Iris is a Hollywood adaptation (or re-scripting) of Pat Barker’s unsentimental book called Union Street which is about the resilient lives of working class women in the 1950s in England. The film has a very different tone and focus from the book by making the main plot about Stanley becoming literate. It reinforces certain stereotypes that are associated with illiteracy and the magical transformation that is apparently brought about by becoming literate.  In the film, quite unlike the book, the ‘magic’ becomes more potent because romance gives momentum to the plot.

Initially, Stanley is in a position of subservience but the roles are  reversed when shortly after he learns to read Stanley becomes wealthy enough to  propose to Iris and offers her the luxury of a large six bed roomed house!  It is unfortunate that the film oversimplifies issues round literacy  and suggests that  there is a sharp dividing line between the  literate person who is independent and articulate  and the non-literate person  who is child-like, dependent and inarticulate. Further, it re-enforces the idea that even acquiring the basics of literacy dramatically changes your fortunes and status in society.

How has literacy become invested with such power that it can render someone who is unable to read to feel less than human, voiceless and invisible?  Why should the inability to read be regarded as a failure in a way that having difficulties with singing or drawing, calculating or mapping don’t? Why has the ability to read and write been equated with virtue and the capacity to make rational and moral judgments and illiteracy equated with ignorance and inadequacy?

One of the most poignant descriptions of both shame and dignity around illiteracy is depicted in Bernhard Schlink’s novel, The Reader (1998)[1].  Literacy is just one of the themes that are explored in this complex novel. Hanna Schmitz, the rather ambivalent protagonist, prefers to be accused of heinous crimes and sentenced to a life in prison than acknowledge publicly that she is illiterate. A key part of evidence proving her seemingly unequivocal guilt rests on her own admission of the fact that it was she who, as a guard in the prison camp, wrote the lists of women to be transported and killed. In the course of the story her innocence in this regard becomes clear because she was actually unable to write and was thus being used a scapegoat to cover others’ crimes.

The narrator of the story is a young lawyer who, though he has been closely involved with her in the past, only gradually grasps in the course of the trial that she is illiterate and is intent on hiding that fact.  He thinks that he can mitigate her guilt and ‘save’ her from the harsh sentence by informing the judge of her inability to write. Without revealing any details he consults his father – a remote and dysfunctional parent but trained in philosophy   – and reluctantly accepts his advice to remain silent. His father says, “. . . with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves . . .  we’re talking about dignity and freedom.“ (pp. 141-2) The young lawyer intuits that Hanna has her own sense of what she needs and what she is ready to reveal. Much later in the book Hanna finds her own way of learning to both read and write in a way that does not compromise her own self-image or expose her to pity or scorn.

There are sharp differences between these two stories in the way both illiteracy and literacy are represented but there is also a common area where literacy is assumed to be a determining factor about how we perceive ourselves and how we imagine others see, judge and define us. Both narratives also explore the sense of shame that surrounds illiteracy.

In the present secular context the teaching of literacy is still often spoken of in terms of mission. Alternatively, it takes on the image of a health programme that can ‘eradicate’ illiteracy like one might speak of eradicating a disease.  The notion of identifying literacy as ‘a state of grace’ or ‘salvation’ (Scribner: 1984 [2]) has a long history particularly in the context where sacred texts across religious traditions meant that becoming literate (including the memorization of extended religious texts)   implied that you were holy and virtuous.

In addition to the missionary zeal of the different churches to promote basic literacy there was also a growing movement of radical social reform. A number of significant novelists played a part in sensitizing their readers to the misery and poverty of the working class. Charles Dickens (1812-1870), included in his novels many characters that were on the margins of society. In Bleak House (1858) Dickens muses on the state of mind of Jo, a homeless young, illiterate sweeper on the inhospitable and unsympathetic streets of London.

“It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to meaning, of those mysterious symbols so abundant over the shops, and at the corner of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to see people write. And to see postmen deliver letters and not to have the least idea of all that language – to be, to every scrap of it, stone-blind and dumb … To see the horses, dogs and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend.”[3]

Rowan Williams on the occasion of  Dickens  200^th Birth Anniversary in 2012  wrote,  “He loves the poor and the destitute, not from a sense of duty but from a sense of outrage that their lives are being made flat and dead. “Dickens was one of the first to articulate a deep empathy towards the mind and feelings of the poor and to help bring about a new sense of responsibility towards all.

In some communities, literacy was reserved only for a privileged elite and this meant that once you were literate you were no longer expected to engage in manual work.  Levi-Strauss (1955) traces the beginning of hierarchical societies “consisting of masters and slaves” to the divide between those who can and cannot write.

In order to maintain economic and social power there were those who opposed promoting literacy for fear that reading would lead to a disruption of the social order, revolution, subversion and resistance. Particularly in the 19^th century in Europe there was a deep-seated fear that literacy would make working people “fractious and refractory … it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets and vicious books.” (Cipolla C. in Cook-Gumperz, 2006.  pp.29-30 [4]) Caste, class, race and gender have each, in different contexts, played a role in the exclusion of some from the possibility of reading.

Women in some parts of the world continue to have limited access to the tools of literacy because it might lead to greater freedom of thought and movement. The Malayali writer, B.M. Zuhara in her short story, “Literacy” describes the violent rage of a husband who discovers that his wife is attending literacy classes or as she puts it the “Ritelacy Drive” while he is out fishing. His anger is conflated by the suspicion that his wife must be motivated only to flirt with the young student who acts as her instructor. In blind anger he beats her saying, “You … B*****! Now I know why you are so keen to go to these classes. You let those boys hold your hands when the menfolk are away and no one is around, will you, you wretch? I’ll stop all the lessons today, right now!!!” Learning to read here is shown as threatening because it undermines not only the husband’s pride in his superior knowledge but his sexual prowess.

In the face of growing urbanization and rising industrialization there has been a new impetus to promote universal literacy though not necessarily only for humanitarian reasons. ‘Schooled literacy’ and institutionalized learning were seen as a means to discipline, monitor and inculcate deference, nationalism and morality. This was a mixed agenda of genuine human concern and a calculated strategy to create a passive workforce. It has been argued that compulsory education is an effective way to strengthen a government’s authority (Levi-Strauss, 1955, p.300 [5] ) and more recently that it fosters an appetite for consumption in the ever expanding market place.

There was a healthy resistance to this kind of enforced instruction and this was reflected in a book like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published in 1884. Huck Finn is a free spirit who learns through his sharp wit, keen observation and awareness of injustice. He finds his own unconventional teachers such as Jim, a runaway slave. He rejects formal schooling but learns just enough to meet his immediate needs and ironically has a sense of justice and ethical responsibility that is missing in conventional society.

There have been counter-cultural stories that mock the power of the written word or at least see it in perspective of wider values as literacy became a symbol of power and domination. From the times of the Pancatantra there has been a cautioning against a false pride in scholarship and an appreciation of unlettered common sense. The writer of the story ‘The Scholars who brought a dead lion to life’ opens the tale with a moral:

‘Better common sense than erudition:

Good sense is superior to book-learning;

absence of sense invites destruction;

as with scholars who made a dead lion living.’ (p.409) [6]

More recently Somerset Maugham wrote an amusing short story called “The Verger” [7] in which a man is dismissed from his job for no other reason than the fact that he can neither read nor write. Albert Foreman has worked conscientiously and efficiently for sixteen years and suddenly finds himself unemployed.  Initially, he is dismayed but through a keen sense of business acumen, optimism and hard work he successfully builds up a chain of tobacconist shops and prospers. The story concludes with a twist when the bank manager by chance realizes that his wealthy client can write nothing more than his own name.

“The manager stared at him as though he were a prehistoric monster.

‘And do you mean to say that you’ve built up this important business and amassed a fortune of thirty thousand pounds without being able to read or write? Good God, man, what would you be now if you had been able to?’

Albert informs him with a wry smile that if he had been able to read and write he would, no doubt, have remained in the same place with the same low-paying job that he had lost!

The struggle for recognition for someone who has not studied formally is well captured in the popular Kannada novel, Sandhya Raaga by A.N. Krishnarao which was made into a film starring Raj Kumar in 1966. It tells the story of Lakshman, a poor and uneducated musician who finally receives acclaim for his remarkable gifts as a classical singer. The story is indicative of the way that literacy tends to eclipse all other forms of expression and communication.

There are innumerable  novels  dating from Daniel Defoe’s  Robinson Crusoe (1719)  to the present day  where  there is a reversal of roles and  the so-called  educated person becomes dependent  for survival  and enlightenment on  the resourcefulness, wisdom and knowledge of the  unlettered person  who is often portrayed as racially different or apparently inferior in terms of age or formal  learning.

In contemporary fiction the Australian writer, David Malouf in his novel, The Imaginary Life (1978) [8] presents an allegory through the relationship of the exiled Roman poet, Ovid and a wild, uneducated child.  The cultured and sophisticated poet learns a new language and a wholly new way of being in nature. The Child leads him to discover fresh meaning in his creative powers and to understand life and death as a unified process.

There are stories of resistance to conform to other people’s notion of what is good for you and amusing stories about the folly of false scholarship but there are also stories – fictional and nonfictional – of heroes who struggle to overcome the injustice of exclusion where literacy is perceived as empowerment and growth.

Gogu Shyamala from Telangana wrote a short story entitled “Raw Wound” [9]. It tells of how a family resists the demands of the Patel.  and the elders of the village that their daughter should discontinue her schooling in order to comply with tradition and become a jogini (devadasi).  The family endures verbal abuse, physical violence, eviction from their home and finally, they are forced to leave the village with nothing but the clothes they are wearing. The story ends as the family declare, “We’ve suffered this fate because we decided to send you to study. We’ll support you through our labour as long as our limbs are able. Don’t worry daughter. Study well and become a big officer.” (p.158)

Slaves, particularly in the Southern States of North America, were whipped, maimed and killed for attempting to learn to read. Even ’white’ teachers who encouraged slaves to learn could face heavy fines and imprisonment.  Despite the terrible risks slaves continued to learn by night and in secret, and use their learning to spread ideas of abolition and freedom.

Nightjohn, (1993) [10] written by Gary Paulsen is a powerful and disturbing fictionalized account of events that happened in the 1850s. The story tells of a 12 year old slave girl being taught to read and write by a slave called John and the fearful consequences they endured. Nightjohn, as he was called, had earlier escaped and become free but chose to return to the South and risk his life to teach slaves to read. Even after he has been caught and punished by having his toes cut off and escapes a second time he continues to return under the cover of night to teach others to read. He is questioned by an old woman who says that reading will only bring grief but he responds, “They have to read and write. We all have to read and write so we can write about this – what they doing to us. It has to be written.”(p.36.)  It is as though the written word will hold both the memory and the hope for a different kind of future.

Most of the writers and filmmakers mentioned so far are writing vicariously about another’s experience as a sympathetic outsider. There are so many untold stories and silenced voices that remain unheard and unwritten but recent autobiographies and poetry have proved powerful media to share direct and sometimes ambiguous experiences about literacy.  In Siddalingaiah’s Ooru Keri he vividly describes the plight of a friend who has to pretend to read to an admiring family to satisfy their aspirations and that in the process he perpetuates the mystique surrounding reading. “ A man would make his school-going son sit in front of a kerosene lamp, place  a book before him and tell him to read … He was already in the fourth standard but had not learnt the alphabet properly … He didn’t like the idea of disappointing his parents who yearned to hear him read the lessons. He would read out all sorts of things. If there was one thing in the book, he would read another. Pretending to read, he would speak whatever came into his mind. His father and mother were delighted, and his brother felt proud. [11]“

(Siddalingaiah, 2006, p. 32.)

Writers and film makers who have imagined literate and non-literate heroes, victims, fools and scholars and explored some of the multiple metaphors round literacy such as power, shame, salvation, social mobility and progress challenge us to a more nuanced understanding of what literacy can and cannot do.  These images might prompt us to sift through our assumptions, illusions, projections and aspirations to see how literacy can truly support freedom and dignity. Further, it may help us to see literacy in perspective where other forms of expression and communication have validity.

References

• [1] Schlink, B. (1998) The Reader. New York: Vintage Books.

• [2] Scribner, S. (1984) ” Literacy in Three Metaphors “ University of Chicago Press

• [3] Quoted in Allan Quigley B., 1967. Rethinking Literacy Education, p.52 San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers

• [4]Cook-Gumperz,J. 2006. The Social Construction of Literacy. Cambridge University Press.

• [5] Levi-Strauss, C.(2011) Tristes Tropiques. London:  Penguin Modern Classics.

• [6] Visnu Sarma, (1993) The Pancatantra. Gurgaon, Haryana: Penguin Random House India.

• [7] https://www.sfu.ca › ~allen › THE VERGER

• [8]  https://epdf.pub/an-imaginary-life.html

• [9] Gogu Shyamala, (2012) Father may be an elephant and mother only a basket, but… New Delhi: Navayana Publishing.

• [10] Paulsen, G. (1993) Nightjohn. London: Macmillan Children’s Books.

• [11] Siddalingaiah, 2006. Ooru Keri : New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. English translation from the Kannada, S.R. Ramakrishna.