ILLITERACY IN UGANDA

It is estimated that 6.9 million adults are illiterate in Uganda with 5.5 million of the women and 1.4, men. The FAL (Functional Adult Literacy) programme which is seen as a key learning tool for knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required by human beings to develop their capacities and to participate fully in development was introduced in Uganda for purposes of reducing the illiteracy rates.
(NALSIP)

A functionally literate person is one that can engage in activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his/her skills, to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his/her own and community development.
(FAL manual)

Bushenyi is one of the districts in Uganda and it is found in the western part of Uganda. According to the case study given, it has been found that it has one of the highest illiteracy rates. However, the residents there are reluctant to enrol for National Functional Adult Literacy programmes and they claim they are “too old to learn”. In trying to convince the people of Bushenyi to accept adult literacy as a way of enabling them to acquire life skills and other important subject matter, a facilitator can use a number of appeals to convince the people to accept as discussed below;


The emotional appeal can be used and this targets people’s emotions and feelings so that the message is accepted and acted upon. This appeal arouses people’s feelings of sympathy, self pity, kindness either within the individual or to an individual.
The facilitator in this case can there fore use this appeal by having an open friendly relationship with the people in the Bushenyi community, by listening to their views, accepting their opinions about the Functional Adult Literacy programme and having dialogue or discussion freely without any fear about how the programme can be revised to meet their needs.
This emotional appeal helps to make people feel accepted and the importance of having equal views like other people and this would make them feel that they were part of designing the programme and will eventually increase the enrolment in the FAL programme.

However, the emotional appeal can not be used in isolation to motivate the Bushenyi people who feel they are “too old to learn” for even if they were part of the designing, they could easily think that learning is tiresome, boring, dragging and that is why the humour appeal would come in handy to complement the emotional appeal and this would not only be for entertainment purposes but also to the people that learning can be interesting.
This could be done in form of a play which depicts two people in the brick making business. The first actor could be a person who heard about the FAL programme, grabbed the chance with both hands and decided to enrol in the learning sessions in which he got knowledge of life skills like being able to count, read and write the records concerning the number of bricks made, their dimensions and cost of producing them in order to determine the profit margin. The second actor would still be in the brick making business, heard about the FAL programme but deliberately shunned the opportunity. An investor comes with a fat order and first goes to the illiterate brick maker but he fails to communicate effectively with the investor thus losing out on such a great opportunity. The investor has no choice but to look for someone else and on his way finds community members who direct him to the literate brick maker who finally gets the opportunity of a life time and his business advances tremendously and all this is done dramatically.
This would not only make the people to be happy through the laughter that could be caused by the dramatic scenes in the play but it is also common knowledge that what is seen visually tends to last in people’s memories and when these people go back home, they could tell others about how interesting the FAL programme is and this would eventually increase enrolment.

There could be the danger of people losing focus on the message that is being delivered and concentrating all their energies on the entertaining parts while using the humour appeal. Besides, the humour appeal is subjective in that it depends on someone’s mood and therefore the people of Bushenyi who feel they are “too old to learn”, who probably have very many problems at home and others who think they have outgrown their fun days may need another form of appeal that could encourage their enrolment. This is where the factual/logical appeal would come in handy to put emphasis on the message especially from the play and the need for action.
Therefore, it would be advisable that the literacy instructor goes to the learning session with learning aids for example chalk, blackboard, handouts, markers, flip charts.
The blackboard could be used to note a few lessons that have been got from the play, with the help of chalk; the flip charts plus the newsprint would have facts about the importance of FAL for example;
- Revelations of the people that participated in the FAL programme and have been successful for they are able to access and utilise information in print for modernising the different sectors they may be involved in for example agriculture, improving health, water, sanitation, micro-finance and primary education.

- The fact that illiteracy is a major barrier to reducing and eradicating poverty and thus making them recognise that literacy is not just about the mechanics of reading and writing but also about personal dignity, the right to participate, the empowerment of the marginalised and the excluded and the opportunity to learn in a variety of ways and settings both formal and informal as per the evaluation of adult literacy programmes in 1999.
These logical or reasonable arguments may persuade the people of Kanungu to accept the message.
It should be noted however that is very essential for these arguments to be presented to the people in a very clear and systematic manner and preferably their local language too so that they are not easily intimated by the foreign languages or statistics they may not understand thus rejecting the message.



The two sided appeal as well during the Functional Adult Literacy programmes especially in a situation where one has presented the facts about the programme is very essential for although it has very many benefits as may be presented from the facts, there could be losses, weaknesses or challenges that could come with the enrolment in the FAL programme.
If the people of Bushenyi are presented with only the facts which could eventually convince them to join and they later find out that there are side effects to their joining, they would probably leave the programme never to return.
It is therefore important to tell the people of Bushenyi that joining the FAL programme can be extremely time consuming and it would require them to forego certain activities or even reducing on the time that they would have used for those other activities to participate in the programme for example spending almost the whole day in the garden, meeting for certain social gatherings and the men too would have to be very accommodative of their wives who have enrolled in the programme and help them in certain daily activities such looking after the children and not to be too hard on them when supper that is usually ready by 8:00pm is now ready at 9:00pm.
The people of Bushenyi could also be told that the skills of literacy may take long before being acquired therefore they had to be very patient.
It would also be useful to tell the Bushenyi community that it would be quite expensive to join the FAL programme for they would need some learning materials like books, pens to write down what they have understood during the learning sessions.
This programme may not be able to make learners who are used to traditional methods to adjust accordingly therefore if they wanted to really gain from the programme; they needed to be extremely hardworking.
The above would improve people’s understanding so that they are able to develop their own critical analysis of the situation at hand, develop skills in not only decision making but also problem solving.


In conclusion, no single appeal can be used to make the people of Bushenyi who feel that they are “too old to learn” to enrol for the Functional Adult Literacy programmes and they could have different reasons for feeling that way though in actual sense they may not be old at all. Therefore it would be important for the Functional Adult Literacy instructor who views learning as “life long” to try all possible ways to make sure the message is accepted for the betterment of the human race and the country’s development as a whole thus the integration of the different appeals as discussed above.













REFERENCES

Dimbleby Richard and G. Burton (3rd edition, 1998): More than Words: An Introduction to Communication. Routledge, London

Functional Adult Literacy Training Manual (2nd edition, 1996). Ministry of Gender and Community Development. Kampala, Uganda. The New Vision Printing and Publishing Corporation.

National Adult Literacy Strategic Investment Plan (May, 2002). Kampala, Uganda. Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social development.