In today’s world, the basic elements we need in our life is literacy. The international literacy day was introduced on 26th October 1966 but it was celebrated annually on Sep 8 to make people aware of the significance of literacy and also to learn more about the literacy agenda to make a more literate and sustainable society.
Apart from the progress of literacy, the literacy challenges endure across the globe lacking basic literacy skills today.
This year, UNESCO has come up with a theme on international literacy day 2020, which focuses on the ‘Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond’.
It highlights mainly the lifelong learning method, which is centered on the youth and adults. The consequences of the COVID -19 crisis among the youth and adults have been huge. According to save the children.net report, the level of education has come down due to the Covid 19 crisis which affected 1.54 billion children including 743 million girls. This has become a challenge in the revolution of learning. The recent crisis has created a wide gap between policy discourse and reality, it was already existed in the pre-COVIS era and has negatively affected the learning of youths and adults who have low literacy skills. During this pandemic, few adult literacy programs are conducted virtually through tv and radio but most of them were interrupted.
According to the UNESCO survey, conducted in August stated that more than 90% of 49 adult literacy programs were interrupted during this crisis and also 70% of participating surveys have to reduce the salary of the teachers but they may seek other jobs. This predicament has made to build a sturdy educational system and digital skills for the learners. The covid impact on literacy raises the issues on the youth and adult literacy educators and teaching and learning and also what all the strategies to be taken to recover from this pandemic. These issues are taken into consideration by the International Literacy Day 2020 program by providing an opportunity to discuss what all are the measures to be taken to tackle these crises. It also gives awareness of the importance of the role of educators, effective policies, governance, and measures that support educators and learning. Due to the pandemic, more than 190 countries closed their schools, which affected the education of 1.27 billion children and youth. However the online classes are going on, the future of education is in a confused state. As part of International literacy day 2020, the UN has organized online seminars and also two meetings regarding ‘Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond: the role of educators and changing pedagogies’ and another on ‘The Laureates of the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes 2020’. So, however, by taking each step we can increase the percentage of literate people.
Source: education world
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