The Eighth International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on

SPETSES, GREECE
4-8 July 2001

Abstract

'My late father was one of the many many South African blacks who experienced the acute pain of illiteracy early in the twentieth century. While a soldier in the Second World War he and those of his likes were assigned young literate men to write and read letters for them. Reluctantly he had to disclose things which according to his culture were taboo to mention. He took a vow that if he can survive the war to aggressively fight illiteracy in his entire family. The main question now is up to now how much has been done to redress this thorny issue of literacy'?

The business of this paper is to religiously examine literacy between boys and girls of schools in urban and rural areas of North West in the Molopo region in South Africa. Comparisons will be drawn between boys and girls and between urban and rural schools. Sampling will entail groups of ten pupils (five boys and five girls) per school from five schools in the urban and five schools in rural areas. The findings will be made available to the Department of Education - North West Province for evaluating literacy programmes in the entire province.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

Presentation Equipment and Other Requests

Speaking Date/Time Restrictions

Country
South Africa