Literacy History

I was born in very small town in the northeast of Brazil. I used to attend a public school; it was the only one in the whole town. The public schools in Brazil have never been good, at that time they were worse. The teachers didn't motivate us to want to go to school. They were more victims of the system than guilty.

I learned how to read in a traditional and boring method. We had to memorize the sounds of the letters and then the sounds of the syllables.  We had to know how to spell the words, because if we did not know how to spell the words, were considered illiterate. The teacher stood in front of us, holding a paddle, and if we spoke with each other, we were seated facing the wall, until the class finished.

The chronological order of the events of my learning literacy is a bit jumbled up in my memory. But I remember that I was 5 years old when I learned how to read. At 6 years old, I got my first book. Then began my passion for books and reading. It was a book without images, and perhaps this was a reason I found it so interesting. My imagination was flying, and I gave the characters the shapes and the faces that I wanted. An important point was that I had no access to television during my literacy.

When I was 13, I started to notice the poverty around me and it really bothered me and bothers me until today. I became engaged in programs at the school that I believed would reduce poverty.  Then I heard my mother make a criticism about the government cutting public funding. She said that logically the government would cut the amount allocated to education because the dictator did not want to educate the people because educated people can think, and when you can think you can contest and protest. My family has always been very political, especially my mother.  This comment from her changed my way of seeing things. From there, a lot has changed for me. I realized that knowing how to read went beyond the recognition of words. Knowing how to read was acquiring the ability to understand and integrate the words on the page with the world around you.  This perception gave us opportunities to question, to change our opinions and beliefs, to encourage us to want to know more and more.  There is another reality for me because I am a Brazilian, who comes from a totally different social reality from America. I say Literacy is the heart of basic education in general.  It is at the core of eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, stimulating population growth, achieving equality for both genders, and promoting sustainable development in the pursuit of peace and democracy. Brazil was a dictatorship until I was 13 years old.  Those are good reasons why literacy is the essence of education for all. A quality basic education is fundamental to empower students with skills for life and further learning.

One day years later I was in the car with my kids and a beggar, who must not have been more than 5 years, approached the window and asked for money. Impulsively I put him in the car to spend a day at my house. I was trying to show my kids how unfair our country was, they had fun together but my kids didn’t really understand. I told my mom about that and she said I had done bad with that kid because I had showed him the other side, a side that he probably would never realistically be able to attain.  She added that if I was really interested in helping to reduce social problems of Brazil, I should start educating children.

For that reason I engaged in a social program in the bank where I worked called a, ‘A Country is Made with Men and Books.’ I was a volunteer teacher to help poor children learn to enjoy reading. I chose books that spoke of self-pride, of change, and of cultural differences. I used newspapers to show how the “rest of the world” was. I feel lucky to have worked with these children. I learned so much from them about their individual cultures and it helped me to learn more about myself.  In this program I've come across two types of illiterate people, children who cannot read yet, but were learning and adults that were illiterate because they were victims of an evolving society and the poor Brazilian education system.

Throughout my literary life, I read a little of everything. I read all the Brazilian classics, both because I loved them and the fact that some are mandatory in high school. I read the great classics of world literature, such as Victor Hugo, Eça de Queiroz, John Steinbeck among many others. Although, in this modern world, there are many times where I am an illiterate.  When I am reading technical texts with very specific content about something I do not have prior knowledge, I feel like an illiterate, after all I'm just reading, I am not understanding.

Every day new technologies are discovered or improved, providing more comfort, reducing distances, and making a more globalized world a reality experienced by many if not all of us.  These can include things from the most modern electronic equipment to personal computers. This advent creates paradoxes of inclusion and exclusion, also creating a new class of technological illiterates.  There is so much information that technology provides, I wonder if I'll have time to learn.

I want to highlight several points in my literary history.  There is something in my personality that is investigative, curious, and filled with joy in gaining knowledge. These have changed my reality, and have been formed in relation to the way I was literate. Also, those of us that are literates and have well-developed social awareness, have to fulfill the role of agents in building knowledge. I am a teacher who abdicates the traditional functions of schools, and also thinks that learning should go beyond the walls of the school.  Schools should foster formulating questions that can initiate the processes of creativity. I want to teach in a provocative way that solicits students to question and read beyond the words. I want to help them proactively build their knowledge in a positive way. I don’t want to be a teacher that just disseminates knowledge passively.