جمعية المهندسين الصحراوية من أجل التنمية
Association of Saharawi Engineers for
Development (ASED)
TICLES AND STADIES
Illiteracy in the Saharawi society
Alphabet Illiteracy constitutes an incurable disease in many countries, it's the illness that devastates peoples, hinders their development, leads them to backwardness and causes total destruction of the infrastructure of their societies. Hence, fighting illiteracy has become both a right and a duty, a right of the illiterate on the educated, and a national, religious, literary and ethical duty of everyone.
If illiteracy was
somehow tolerable in the past, it is no more acceptable in the era of
science, the age of technology and information, because illiteracy, in its
contemporary concept, means nothing other than the incompetence in dealing
with the computer, using the Internet and mastering more than a universal
language.
Many countries so far have managed to eliminate it definitely, for in some
developed countries, illiteracy rate doesn’t excede1% and many developing
countries were able to abate it significantly and see themselves out of the
rate of risk. For instance, a .country like Cuba has waged a relentless war
against illiteracy and reduced it to 3% in a very short period of time
If the whole world needs to fight against illiteracy and for science, technology and the boom of knowledge, the Saharawi People´s need for them is much greater, especially as it is subjected to a fierce attack by Moroccan occupation authorities aimed at its history, its present and its future and seeking to strip it from all factors of strength and steadfastness including its Saharawi distinct identity, by depriving a lot of saharawi youth from continuing their studies, by chasing and displacing the intellectuals and bearers of high diplomas abroad and inside Morocco in order to tighten the grip on the occupied territories and empty them from their its living energy.
Undoubtedly, the Saharawi revolution, and since its beginning, has invested great efforts in the field of literacy and adult education, and regarded illiteracy as an aspect of backwardness that should be fought against in order to prepare the right citizen who is capable of taking up his responsibilities and pushing forward the wheel of his society’s development with full awareness and useful knowledge.
The literacy campaigns, organized especially from the early eighties under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and UJSARIO (Union of the Youth of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro), have made it possible to educate hundreds of thousands of Saharawi citizens in the camps, national institutions, in military barracks, in rural communities and in the diaspora, to arm them with knowledge, and to prepare them to play an active role in the march of the revolution. Considerable efforts were also done, despite the conditions in the refugee camps marked by scarcity in materials and harshness of nature, to build schools, provide free education for all children of school age and send student missions to brotherly and friendly countries.
Thus, the Saharawi society was transformed in a very short period of time from a nomadic society in which the rate of illiteracy exceeds 90%, and the diploma bearers are counted on the fingers of one hand, to a society racing to acquire knowledge and reach the highest scholar degrees, with hundreds of graduated doctors, engineers and technicians in various disciplines and where illiteracy has become as low as 20%.
However, unfortunately, efforts to fight illiteracy have declined in recent years. Moreover, a lot of people have regressed to illiteracy especially from the stage of elementary education, and the graduate from any level of education who doesn’t make additional efforts of self-education will soon be considered an illiterate.
And this situation is unacceptable because the eradication of illiteracy requires a lot of efforts, continuity, public mobilization, confrontation and spending.
So we have to react quickly, continue and develop the practice of literacy campaigns undertaken in the last twenty years and to put an end, as soon as possible, to alphabetic illiteracy first and then to eradicate technical and information illiteracy. This doesn’t mean waiting for a complete eradication of illiteracy, but to work at the same time on reducing technical and information illiteracy to a minimum while endeavoring to eradicate alphabetic illiteracy.
All this can not be achieved without a specific, practical and well timed plan, for a problem can only aggravate, if not solved on time.
And among the proposed ways to help eradicate alphabetic illiteracy are the following:
1- The formation of a directorate or a national secretariat for literacy.
2- The specification of measurable targets, that can be achieved and evaluated in a specified period of time.
3- The preparation of literacy programs that focus on professions and take into account the special needs of each target group.
4- The preparation of projects of literacy and adult education and the search for funding and the follow –up of their implementation.
5- Good coordination between the Directorate in charge of literacy programs, the Ministry of Education and various national organizations and associations.
6- The facilitation of the participation of the private sector in literacy education in coordination with the concerned Directorate.
7- Selecting the cadres qualified to fight illiteracy.
8- Working to avoid regressive illiteracy.
9- Preparation of radio and TV sessions of literacy education in order to motivate and raise awareness of the beneficiaries.
10- The preparation and conduct of test to measure the knowledge and the achievements of the beneficiaries.
11- The periodical preparation of reliable statistics with respect to literacy.
12- The organization of forums and seminars on literacy.
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