Today is Internatonal Literacy Day. For most of us it probably does not mean much.

It didn’t mean much to me before I started hearing the work in this field some 16 years ago. Almost as long as I could remember, everybody read. Illiteracy did not exist in my vocabulary. By the time I reached the third grade, my sister and I were already reading big tomes of that great Chinese epic, The Three Kingdoms, in our own language, Thai, to our parents as an after dinner recreation.

My grandmother who would have been 120 years old if she was still alive today, indulged a good part of her days reading series of great Thai classics. She read piles of books such as the story of King Burengnong of Burma whose prowesse won him colonies in 10 directions and women in more. She read in prose and poetry and quoted from them. Reading was an automatic, natural act to her.

As a girl, her father wrote letters of the alphabet on her bare back. He made her trace his writing in her imagination and pronounce it. She grew up to be a reading junkie. Raised in her large household in southern Thailand, I couldn’t possibly understand the scope of what illiteracy could mean to a person, much less to a nation.

Today, UNESCO estimates that there are almost 900 million illiterate adults. Two thirds are women. Not to mention some 100 million boys and girls who are not in school, most of them girls. No matter how illiteracy is defined, these people are still the ones whose need in education has not been met. Raja Roy Singh, the legendary director of the UNESCO Bangkok Office, once said with a wry smile, ‘We could speak of the percentage of illiteracy, but for an illiterate, illiteracy is always 100 per cent.' Raja Roy promoted literacy among women, in particular. He believed that, since they formed the majority of illiterates, and as the first teachers of their children, they should be the priority group.

Over the past few decades, experts embarked on debates about the definition of literacy, ranging from the ability to read and write one’s own name to functional literacy which UNESCO defines as the ability to use reading and writing to serve the various functions required in everyday living. This means that the definition will vary from place to place depending on the level of development.

Today, people are speaking of legal literacy and computer literacy. As the word ‘literacy’ and ‘illiteracy’ are increasingly used in their figurative sense in more ‘advanced’ societies, the original meaning seems to have dissipated. How many of us can really imagine there exists a thousand million women and men who cannot use reading and writing for basic purposes in life? Illiteracy is probably as remote to us as those isolated third world communities where we might think they live. Behold, illiterates are widespread everywhere including the industrialised societies, such as Britain, France, Japan and the U.S. In the UK, for example, 22 per cent of adults have’low ‘ literacy skills, said Anabel Helmstedt of the Basic Skills Agency which won the UNESCO’s International Literacy Prize last year.

If we know how it feels to be illiterate, maybe we’ll think about the word differently.

Qi Yiling, from the mountainous province of Yunnan, China, got into the panic of her life when she could not find her daughter in the hospital. She went around and around looking at rows of hospital beds. They all looked the same. They became even more blurred as her anxiety rose. How could she find her sick daughter, a mere babe of two, when someone has taken away the red candy wrapper she had put on the windowsill as a reminder? But could she bring herself to ask anyone? And what could she say? Who would know her daughter? She sweated and flustered. She felt small, humiliated not to mention confused. In this town everyone seemed so superior to her. The feeling of powerlessness came over her. She sank to her knees and sobbed.

That was a few years back. Now Yiling has learnt to read and write. She makes money from raising pigs and using new methods in pig raising. She feels fine and talks about taking on new projects.

Then, there is Sid. He was the talk of the party at an Australian gathering for literacy and non-formal education. His inspiring keynote address shed light on the complicated social and cultural complications surrounding the issues. Sid had been illiterate up till he was sixty. His wife had taken care of all affairs requiring writing and reading. Sid developed a complicated escape mechanism that allowed no one to detect that he couldn’t read and write. Then his wife died. With her death came the end of his pretence. He was forced to learn to read and write. Now, there is no going back. Sid goes for reading and writing with a missionary zeal. He reads great literature, newspapers, anything he can lay his hands on –as if to make up for the lost time. Suddenly, life took on a different meaning. His pleasure has doubled when he realizes that his experience has been an inspiration to so many other Australians like him.

Sue Torr, who learnt to read and write at the age of 38, came specially from the UK to Paris to speak to an international audience at UNESCO during the 1999 celebration of International Literacy Day. She explained what it was like to be illiterate. "Everyday of your life is frustration, fear, anger, isolation embarrassment and rage. You have no self-esteem. You lie a lot." Reflecting on her own struggle to become literate, Sue said, " It's embarassing. It's hard to take things in. It's hard to concentrate. You think to yourself, 'Why should I bother?' But for her the breakthrough came and then there was no going back. "Once you feel that you're learning something, you get the feeling that you want to learn it all, NOW. Then you realize for the first time in your life that getting an education is so important."

It is ironic that there are hundreds and thousands of group literacy programmes for adults. But the number of illiterates is not diminishing in a significant way. Illiterates keep producing more and more babies. The World Bank conducted a study, which showed that literate mothers have a significantly lower number of children. The literate populations could participate more readily in family planning programmes. Illiteracy has been identified as the most important obstacle to development activities such as dealing with the shortage of water, farming, or with sending daughters to school.

People ask me, why bother? Illiterates living in far flung villages around the world, seem rather happy with their life. Why go and impose on them learning and other things? I used to be frustrated at such questions. And then I started, myself, to ask the same question. But over 17 years, I found an answer. So next time someone asks me the same question, I’ll say, "Why is literacy important for you and me? Are you sure that they are happy? Living without running water, in dire poverty and with diseases? Would you be happy doing the same?"

Yes, working in literacy is an eternal struggle. It’s never glamerous. If it is well done, literacy work often means getting your hands, and often your feet, dirty. It means unlearning what you believed about these people. It means showing respect to them and meaning it. It means consultation because, once imposed, the impact of the idea is likely to dwindle. It also means eating what the people eat, and sometimes not eating. It also involves speaking the same kind of language and, working with people so they could help themselves and reach out to realize their own aspirations. It is also knowing when to leave them to fend for themselves confident that they are running their own lives. More importantly, it means learning from these people, who though illiterate, are not stupid.