We explain what illiteracy is, what types exist and their causes. In addition, we tell you what the illiteracy statistics are.
What is illiteracy?
Illiteracy is the lack of basic knowledge of reading and writing, that is, not knowing how to read or write. It is a social and cultural problem linked to poverty, marginality and educational delay, and which normally has very harmful consequences for the individual and for society. The opposite of illiteracy is literacy.
the word illiteracy has Greek roots: it is made up of the voices an- (“without”), alpha (Greek name for the letter “A”) and beta (Greek name for the letter “B”). In a strict sense, an illiterate person is someone who does not know letters, and therefore cannot read or write.
Reading and writing is a technique like any other, which must be learned and mastered through exercise. This is why it is usually taught at an early age, as part of the basic educational system, and the rest of one's life is spent practicing it. Its domain is fundamental in education, commerce and civic exercise
Despite the massification of basic education during the 20th century, There is still a percentage of the world's population that is illiterate. This figure, however, It is the lowest in history, and is estimated to be around 16% globally (670 million adults), although distributed very unevenly among the five continents: in most first world countries over 90% of the population is literate.
The consequences of illiteracy are severe, as they often lead to poverty and exclusion of individuals. A person who cannot read or write cannot sign contracts, or must do so without knowing their content, nor use most communications technologies (email, text messaging), nor subscribe to basic services provided by the State, nor study to acquire a profession; Therefore, their employment and human development possibilities are noticeably lower.
Types of illiteracy
There are, in principle, two types of illiteracy, depending on how much you can understand of a read text:
- Absolute illiteracy when the person cannot read or write to any degree, so a text is totally foreign and incomprehensible to them.
- Functional illiteracy when the person can read and write in a very rudimentary way, with a low rate of comprehension of what has been read and notable difficulty in elaborating ideas in writing.
However, in recent times a third type of illiteracy has been coined:
- Technological illiteracy when the person is unaware of the basic operation of contemporary technological devices, such as computers and cell phones, and therefore lacks the tools to adapt to technological change.
Causes of illiteracy
The causes of illiteracy can be varied, but in general they have to do with the lack of opportunities for personal and educational development. This in turn may be due to:
- Poverty and marginalization. Some people, whose lives are spent in a constant struggle for survival and the satisfaction of their immediate basic needs, lack the time and resources to sustain a minimal educational process.
- Difficulty in school access. It may happen that individuals find themselves disconnected from the educational and cultural circuits of the State: for example, because they live very far from the nearest school, or live a life of uprooting and continuous displacement, or because they are subjected to long and exhausting work hours. Thus, the effort necessary to go to school makes them give up.
- Religious and cultural reasons. In many countries, basic education is reserved for some types of people, usually boys. The rest, on the other hand, remain outside the educational system or only enter it up to certain elementary levels.
Illiteracy in Mexico
Illiteracy in Mexico It is a persistent social trait, especially in rural populations and especially in the states of Chiapas (around 13%), Oaxaca (10%) and Guerrero (around 9.8%). On the contrary, the states with the lowest margin of illiteracy are Mexico City (around 1.4%), Nuevo León (1.5%) and Baja California (1.8%).
The 2019 estimates from the National Institute for Adult Education (INEA) showed that of the almost 94 million people over 15 years of age in Mexico, 3.59 million were illiterate, that is, 3.8% of the total adult population. This figure represents, however, an improvement compared to that perceived by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in 2015, which recorded 5% illiteracy in this sector of the population.
On the other hand, illiteracy is higher in women than in men (5.5% versus 3.9%), and is much higher among people aged 60 to 75 (12.1%) or older (26%), which in the youngest segments of the population (5.1% between 45 and 59 years old, and 2.5% between 30 and 44 years old).
Illiteracy in the world
On a global scale, illiteracy It is distributed unequally between high-, middle- and low-income countries, and is much more abundant in the latter. The total number of illiterates in the world is approximately 670 million people, a percentage that is around 16 points of the total population. This calculation is complicated, since we only have the figures provided by each country's own statistics, whose measurements can be very distant from each other in time.
However, the trends discriminate immensely between the cultural regions of the planet. The regions with the lowest literacy rate, according to UNESCO (2018), are the Middle East (58.6% of literate people) and sub-Saharan Africa (59.7% of literate people). The nations with the highest margin of illiteracy in the world are Niger, Chad and South Sudan, whose figures range between 19 and 27% of the literate population.
Instead, In the first world powers the literacy rate is around 100%. China has the worst record (96.4% of literate citizens) and Russia has the best performance (99.7% of literate citizens). Regarding the Hispanic world, Spain is the most literate nation, while in Latin America the figure ranges between 81.5% and 99.8%, as follows:
| Latin American country | Percentage of literate citizens (who know how to read and write) |
|---|---|
| Cuba | 99.8% |
| Uruguay | 98.8% |
| Colombia | 98.7% |
| Argentina | 98.4% |
| Chili | 97.5% |
| Venezuela | 97.1% |
| Costa Rica | 97% |
| Bolivia | 96.5% |
| Panama | 95.4% |
| Dominican Republic | 95.1% |
| Paraguay | 94.2% |
| Mexico | 93.8% |
| Brazil | 92.5% |
| Puerto Rico | 92.3% |
| El Salvador | 89.1% |
| Honduras | 87.2% |
| Peru | 85.6% |
| Nicaragua | 82.8% |
| Guatemala | 81.5% |
Continue with: Social inequality
References
- Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary. (sf). Establishment of the word Illiteracy. https://etimologias.dechile.net/
- Jiménez del Castillo, J. (2005). “Redefining illiteracy: functional illiteracy.” education magazineno. 338. pp. 274-294.
- Navarro Robles, J and Navarro, D. (2012). “Illiteracy in Mexico: a social debt.” International Journal of Statistics and Geographyvol. 3. no. 3. pp. 5-17.
- Royal Spanish Academy. (2022). “Illiteracy”. Dictionary of the Spanish language. Espasa.
- UNHCR-UNHCR. (2017). “Illiteracy in the world.” https://eacnur.org/
