Iilliteracy: a Country’s Worst Nightmare

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Illiteracy: A country’s worst nightmare What is illiteracy? Illiteracy means not being able to read, write or add up in simple situations in everyday life. Knowing how to read and write, or being literate, is a prerequisite for succeeding in today’s technologically advanced and quickly evolving global society. The life of illiteracy is to see, yet remain blind (Highlands Today, April 13, 2010). Recent studies show that there is an increasing rate of illiteracy all over the world. Illiteracy rates are highest among developing countries, especially those in the South Asian, Arab and Sub-Saharan African regions where illiteracy is prevalent among 40 to 50% of populations. It is very much threatening for any particular country where the illiteracy rate is higher than the literacy rate. There are many causes of illiteracy such as poverty; ineffective ways of education, preference to work rather than to study and these effects all together often negatively impact on a nation’s ability to develop its human resources, economy and last but not the least its preservation and development of language and culture. One of the major causes of illiteracy is poverty and the subsequent lack of materials. Most of the people living in the rural areas are not capable of sending their child to school. People in the rural areas don’t have access to necessary reading and writing materials. Limited literacy also leads to lacklustre health. Illiterates tend to "have poorer health status than the rest of the population due to the aforementioned deficits in health knowledge, as well as medication errors, poor understanding of medical instructions, and lack of self-empowerment," according to the AMA Association's Second Manual for Clinicians. Ineffective implementation of educational programmes in rural areas causes illiteracy. The schools mostly don’t follow any particular
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