Anna Robinson-Pant. The author, a British scholar from the University of Sussex, was awarded the 1999 UNESCO International Award for Literacy Research
In the Nepalese village of Arutar, Alina holds a literacy class for mothers accompanied by their children.
‘What can I do–eat or study? How can I cut paddy, dry it all day and then come to study?’
In Arutar, low-caste women who learn to read and write are often more strongly motivated by a desire to improve self-esteem than the need to keep accounts.
Sansara, the treasurer of the Arutar women’s group, with two of her 7 children.
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A low-caste life In the following story from Sangalo, a collection
published by Save the Children (USA) for neo-literates, Sushila Uparkoti from Arutar
explains her position as a low-caste woman. 1. This saying is attributed to King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who unified Nepal in the 18th century. |
By sharing
the day-to-day village life of Nepalese women who made the move to attend literacy
classes, an inquisitive researcher takes a critical look at what is being taught,
and why
As we
slipped along the muddy paths, Laxmi took her sandals off and said she was such a
green cucumber she should not be going to all this trouble –I blame my parents, she
said.1 Laxmi was on her way to an adult literacy
class, held at night in Arutar, her village in Western Nepal. Like almost all the
local middle-aged women, she had not been allowed to attend school as a youngster–though
her brothers had–but she now saw a chance to catch up on reading and writing. By
calling herself “green cucumber”, she referred to the common Nepalese saying, “Why
eat green cucumber at the time of dying?” Becoming literate–like eating cucumber
in this area–is both a luxury and a challenge at this late stage of life. I had been
chatting to Laxmi as a friend, but also as part of my research into the links between
literacy and development. For eight months, I lived in Arutar to try to find out
why women like Laxmi go to such trouble to learn to read and write, and what they
feel they have gained from the classes. This period was very much a two-way learning
process, since Laxmi and her friends were equally intrigued as to why a Western woman
with her four-year-old son should want to live in a village eight hours’ walk from
a road!
Rejecting
the functional approach
In many developing
countries, including Nepal, where only 14 per cent of adult women are literate, literacy
is often heralded as the entry point for involving women in income-generating activities
and improving their health practices. Planners and policy-makers in aid agencies
repeatedly underline that better educated mothers have fewer, healthier and better
educated children, and are more “productive”. However, I had also begun to realize
over the years that women attending and running literacy classes don’t always share
these views. The aid agencies intent on finding linkages between women’s literacy
rates and development indicators such as child mortality, fertility and nutrition
tended to use the words “education” and “literacy” interchangeably. On a micro level,
they often evaluated literacy programmes through calculating the percentage of women
who went on to join savings and credit groups or the number of families who built
latrines.
My own impression was that these women attending classes (as well as their teachers)
were less convinced about the development outcomes associated with literacy and made
more distinction between “literacy”and “education”. Whereas the latter took place
in schools and enabled their children to gain good jobs and status, the women regarded
“the adult class” as a poor substitute. I heard them say that the certificate given
at the end of the course was no use in getting a job–“it’s just for ourselves”. Observing
classes, I was aware of this tension between what the women wanted and the programme’s
contents. Often this resulted in many dropping out but it was also clear that some
were directly challenging what the aid agencies had on offer. In particular, they
rejected the “functional literacy” approach to convey messages and skills directly
relevant to development activities. To me, the picture was very different from the
passive stereotype often presented of the poor third world woman grateful to learn
to read information about improving her family life. These women already knew about
family planning and nutrition and if they did not use this knowlege, it was because
either they had no physical access to health facilities or they disagreed with the
new ideas. They had not joined the literacy class to discuss health, forestry or
credit facilities, but to learn to read and write–sometimes for practical purposes
such as account keeping or writing letters, but often just to feel educated like
their husbands and children.
Ironic
joking
It was the desire to
reflect these women’s perspectives that led me to conduct more in-depth research.
I chose to focus on two contrasting programmes in differing areas of Nepal. The classes
in Western Nepal (Arutar) were run by an international aid agency which used the
literacy class as a way of forming women’s micro-credit groups. The programme near
Kathmandu (in Lalitpur district) was organized by a small local NGO which developed
its own lesson sheets linking literacy skills to health awareness.
In both courses, which were run by local staff, the lessons were designed to give
health messages through stories about village women who did or did not follow recommended
practices. Several of the older women challenged the messages and ironically countered
the images of ignorant village women portrayed in the stories: Nani [literacy
trainer] was explaining that a certain type of worm was on “sag” (a kind of spinach)
and that if one eats it raw, one gets infected. The women laughed “What can you do
if you’re in the fields all day cutting paddy and you see some nice sag growing.
No time to cook it–just eat it and get worm”. Then Nani talked about hook worms and
said you catch this worm if you go to the toilet with no shoes on. The woman laughed
and joked, “We don’t have to worry about that one–we don’t have any toilets to go
to anyway! We just go in the stream.” The group of older women cackled away and then
the joker turned her attention to me: “What can I do–eat or study? How can I cut
paddy, dry it all day and then come to study? My arms are aching, I’m tired out.”
As Nani was an older experienced facilitator, she could handle the women’s sarcasm,
sympathizing with those who were too tired to study. But the younger girls who ran
classes found the discussion style daunting and resorted to chanting of alphabet
letters instead. A further issue was around language: the course was written in Nepali,
partly in response to the younger women who saw fluency in the latter as opening
more doors to them than their local tongue, Newari. However the older women insisted
that the facilitators conduct the class in Newari, so in practice there was a mixture
of both.
Hierarchical
relationships
In Arutar, the literacy
course was a direct entry point into women’s group activities around savings, credit
and income generation. The women were expected to use the literacy skills to keep
accounts, minutes of meetings and write reports. Although the women recognized that
the development agency presented a rare opportunity for securing a loan, they disputed
many of its ideas indirectly–even the assumed link between literacy and income generation.
When I interviewed Sansara, the treasurer of the Arutar women’s group (also mother
of seven), she explained that her role was to look after the record books: I asked
her what was in them and she said she had no idea. Other people write in it and she
just has to carry them to the meetings. Her daughter said, you won’t have to carry
them up the hill for the big meeting of six women’s groups will you? They explained
that each group had to appoint a leader and that person had to attend a meeting of
all the local women’s groups.... Sansara wanted to send her daughter in her place
as she could read and write, but this was not allowed. I later discovered that
Sansara had a good mental record of all the loans taken by group members, repayment
schedules and interest owed, but that these details were not written down. The group
members preferred their traditional oral practices or to rely on younger family members,
but the agency was keen that they should adopt new practices of written account keeping
and agenda setting, even if in reality these were less accurate.
In both, the Arutar and Lalitpur classes, the women encouraged the teachers to spend
time on chanting the texts in unison and copying out words, rather than the more
creative discussion approach in which they had been trained. Though the women disputed
the teacher’s authority in relation to the development ideas, they welcomed a more
hierarchical relationship where they called the teacher “Miss”, answered the register
and imitated the kind of education they had seen in local schools. Alina, the Arutar
facilitator, responded by treating the women (who were much older than she) as school
children, even though she knew well the constraints women faced as they were her
neighbours:
Alina: Did you understand it? I said so much myself I don’t know if you understood.
Tomorrow don’t bring any children. And study at home.
All the women laugh–no time.
Alina: If you can’t study, how can I teach? Go home and study in any free moment
you have, here and there.
So what did women gain from literacy classes? Although many women challenged the
teaching methods, language of instruction or course content, their very presence
at the classes suggested that they still saw something to be gained from literacy.
As time went on, I realized that what they valued in the experience was less tangible
than the skills of keeping written accounts or reading about worms. When I talked
to Sansara, the women’s group treasurer, she was keen to show me the part of the
records book where the women had signed their names. I noticed on another page that
there were only thumb prints–these were the marks of their husbands who had attended
in their place one day. The fact that a wife could sign in place of a thumb print,
when her husband could not, indicated some important changes taking place. Surprisingly,
most men did not see this as a threat to their authority, as they regarded writing
as just one skill which one member of the family needed. For the women however, signing
their name constituted a new identity as a “literate” woman. When I attended the
annual parents’ meeting at Arutar school, I discovered that the few women who came
did so partly to assert their identity in a public arena through signing the register.
A private
space
An incident that I
observed at the Arutar literacy class made me realize that some women were beginning
to use literacy for their own purposes: I sat next to Misra and glanced at her
book–she had written something about herself. She covered it with her hand when she
saw me looking. Alina [teacher] asked her what she had written–something that was
in my mind, she answered. But still she refused to show it. I was intrigued to
think that Misra–the husband who refused to let her come to the literacy class regularly–was
now perhaps expressing herself through writing. It seemed that writing (and reading)
might provide a private space for women to reflect on their experiences. Further
proof of this are some of the articles and stories written by women published as
a follow-up to the literacy course (see
box).
So whose agenda should determine the kind of programmes on offer? The link being
made between literacy and information on health, nutrition or income generating through
the “functional” approach seemed to result primarily from the aid agencies’ need
to produce quantifiable results from literacy programmes. My experiences in Nepal
show that we, the “developers”, have not taken time to understand where women are
starting from, and more importantly, where they want to go. They may already have
knowledge about nutrition and skills in chicken-rearing and they may not want to
learn to write agendas for meetings or accounts. Is the desire to write about your
feelings as a low-caste woman or to read religious books as justifiable as the more
concrete development aims? If women want to imitate a style of education provided
in traditional village schools, should the aid agencies be supporting this?
Gains
in self-confidence
The illustrations from
Nepalese classrooms demonstrate that if women are not getting the kind of literacy
that they want, they either drop out or put pressure on class facilitators to focus
on what they enjoy. Aid agencies need to respond to this challenge and give women
more direct control over what they learn and how. This can be done by conducting
initial research into women’s specific needs and interests: not everyone wants to
write about their lives, just as some women may prefer to learn how to write accounts.
Literacy programmes can be based on women’s own interests and an understanding of
the local context, rather than a universal stereotype of an “illiterate” woman. Education
around issues such as family planning can begin from a more critical approach that
encourages women to analyse their problems and find ways to address them. Literacy-focused
programmes are only beginning to draw on such participatory planning approaches in
an attempt to provide support for women’s existing (rather than imagined or projected)
literacy needs. The development outcomes of such programmes might be more difficult
to evaluate than the numbers of savings groups formed or scores on a health knowledge
test. But the gains in women’s self-confidence and changes in social relationships
should be long lasting and eventually improve their quality of life.
1. Italicized in the text are extracts from the author's field notes.
