Living in print

Life in the UK can be described in many ways: comfortable, western, rich, developed, peaceful, privileged. I’m sure you can think of your own label. One classification that may not spring to mind is ‘print-rich’. However when you stop to think about it, we live in a country (and a culture) where the medium of print is everywhere. It is central to our daily lives and we would be very lost without it. Even as studies continue to show that the amount of reading people do every day is dropping, we still rely on print in our everyday lives. Be it a road sign showing us where to go, or a billboard announcing the latest film release, or the electronic programme guide on our televisions… these small snippets of print, words on a page/screen/board/sign, surround us every waking moment.

Can you imagine what it would be like not to be surrounded by this?

How hard would it be to try to learn to read and write if you had…

no

words

to

read?


Pretty hard I’d imagine. As difficult as it is for us from a print-rich culture to believe, many people all over the world live in places where there aren’t written words around them all day. Whilst there may be some shop signs in the market, maybe for Coke or a mobile phone company, these are very limited and can be learnt by heart. The only real time people may see written words, the only chance they get to practice, is in class at school.

That’s why initiatives such as this in Uganda, where students are provided with a national newspaper every week, are so important. Giving people a chance to read, to practice what they’ve learnt and to share it with others around them, is so important for literacy. Only when people are excited about reading, when they have something new to read, does literacy work really start to explode! That’s why Liz’s work, proofreading new books, is so important. Continually providing new materials for people to read is a challenge, albeit a fun one for some people, and a part of literacy work that should never be underestimated!