Coming out of the darkness
A little over sixty-three years ago my family pioneered the invasion of a mountain in the west of Caracas. The area was difficult to access, with no public services and very poor public transportation.
The nearest school was about twelve kilometers away, not easy to get to, so most of the children in the area did not go to school.
But my mother decided that we would go to school and got us a place for the afternoon shift. Every day we made a short trip to school, leaving two hours before school started and returning home as night was falling. Not a single day we were late.
Between trips, I finished elementary and high school and it was time to decide what I would study at the University. I was inclined to study to become a teacher and I was a little afraid of not knowing if I would really be good at it.
But as soon as I started working as a teacher I realized that I had made the right choice. I felt that with that job I could do a lot to improve people's lives. I understood the importance of helping others to advance in the world of knowledge.
I always worked in public education, with young people of very limited economic resources. Like me, many of them had achieved a much higher level of education than their parents. Each boy we managed to bring out of ignorance was a triumph for him, for our society and for the world.
One of the great satisfactions of my life is to meet people who were my students and are now doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals. Like me, they have achieved a better standard of living thanks to education.
By the year two thousand and twenty, the United Nations (UN) estimated that six hundred and seventy million people worldwide were illiterate, a truly worrying figure.
The discovery of writing allowed humanity to take a monumental leap forward in the path of advancement and civilization. Thanks to the possibility of reading and writing, it was possible to transmit accumulated knowledge from generation to generation.
Illiteracy condemns people to a state of obscurity, isolating them from the world around them. Without knowing how to read and write, people remain tied to ignorance, they have little chance of getting good jobs, thus reducing their chances of having a better quality of life.
Sometimes I imagine how difficult my life would have been if my mother had not insisted on taking us to school. Without knowing how to read and write, many paths would have been closed to me. I probably would not have been able to advance economically, nor would I have been able to nourish my spirit by reading the works of the great authors. Through reading I have been able to discover a whole world of possibilities and through writing I can create texts like this one.
In our time, in addition to traditional illiteracy, there is technological and digital illiteracy, and this is much greater.
In poor countries like mine, technological illiteracy is a gigantic problem. Large sectors of the population do not have access to the necessary knowledge to efficiently use the tools of computers and the Internet. This causes these people to fall further and further behind in the queue of progress.
Solving this situation is much more difficult than in the case of traditional illiteracy, because large economic resources are needed. For the poorest people it is unimaginable to buy a computer and pay for internet connection service.
Knowing the technology improves the quality of life. For example, here in the Blockchain there are numerous people from countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, who improve their standard of living because they know the technological tools to be here. Many of their neighbors cannot receive these benefits because they are technologically illiterate.
In my community I have taught many people how to join HIVE, which would offer them a real chance to improve their lives. However, for them it has been difficult because they don't even have a smart phone to connect to the internet, they hope at some point to have the opportunity to be with us...
This is my entry for the initiative convened by the @weekend-experiences community in its 138th edition. Responding to the question: solution to illiteracy. I invite friend @damarysvibra to participate.
Thanks for your time.
Photos taken with Olympus E-500.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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https://wallet.hive.blog/~witnesses
https://peakd.com/me/witnesses
https://ecency.com/witnesses
You can vote for @ocd-witness, with HiveSigner or on Hive Witnesses.
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I really enjoyed your entry. Illiteracy is really a global problem especially in poor or developing countries. When we do our best to help others using whatever skills we have, we give others the opportunity to improve our lives. Technology education is nearly dead in public schools in my country too, just like yours. So teachers in this field that have the devices and other assets could use this to help kids come up in this area. Its a win-win situation once we assist each child to fight illiteracy.
I'm glad you liked the post. Access to the latest technologies is a big problem for public school children. Most teachers find it difficult to own a state-of-the-art phone. Today the average income of a teacher does not reach $20 per month. The State would have to set up telematics rooms in schools. Thank you very much for passing and comment. May you be well dear @fokusnow . A big hug from Maracay.
I do not agree with this statement, as applied to the time when my parents lived. My mother could neither read nor write, but she was a great mathematician, very good at maths. My father barely reached the sixth grade and was for twenty-five years a butcher and for more than thirty years a master mason. His phrase comes to life in these times…
In relation to technological illiteracy, I observed in my visit to Venezuela during the month of December 2022, that even eight-year-old children had a Xiaomi 9 mobile phone and upwards, in a popular neighbourhood in the West of Caracas, a neighbourhood called Nuevo Horizonte in Catia. I found that very strange, everywhere, they were manipulating their devices connected via wifi, playing online games or watching videos on YouTube.
I, like you, my friend @irvinc, was also a teacher... At home there was never a lack of food; all the services were available at home; the salary was enough for food, clothing, medicine and recreation... Today, times are different, the couple has to work and sometimes two salaries are not enough to cover basic needs, so people resort to the famous “mata gallo”, a colloquial expression used in Venezuela for weekend jobs.
Nowadays, if we refer to “illiteracy” as “not knowing how to read and/or write”, simply, referring only to Venezuela as the land where I was born, it is a condition that I do not justify... Yes, if we broaden the term to “knowledge”, today's youth prefers to be glued to social networks as a distraction or fashion, because of their cheapness and immediacy.
It may be that in Caracas there is greater purchasing power and the boys may have smartphones. In my area, in the north of Maracay, most adolescents do not have these phones and very few people have computers.
Thank you very much for passing and comment. May you be well dear @amigoponc. A big hug from Maracay.
You trimmed the part where @irvinc justified his first statement. Are you using your mom's analogy to prove that even if she was not able to "read and write" yet was good at Maths - her being illiterate could not isolate her from getting the same job opportunities as the qualified "mathematicians" who could read and write? Means she was not obscured from mathematicians' jobs that were willing to pay her the same salary?
But there are also kids who are putting technology to good use and are even learning to code in their schools. Maybe the focus should be to discipline the kids and teach them to embrace the good side of technology.
This was quite intriguing @amigoponc - It is discussions like this that raise awareness and there are two sides to every coin.🌼😊
In my commentary you will notice that I mention “Venezuela”, my native country, I am currently living in Canada, the land that opened its doors to me… My comment was focused on Venezuela as a sample and could possibly be extrapolated to other neighbouring Latin American countries, but that would be another matter.
Indeed, here in Canada, the educational situation and illiteracy are other matters. As you say, children are educated for self-sufficiency, and independence and to make them productive human beings “not a burden”. In Venezuela, the State has been in charge of “Idiotising”, sorry, “indoctrinating” the citizen of the popular areas (80% of the population) under a scheme of total dependence on the State, which manages them at its whim…
The Venezuelan state transmits 24 hours a day, through the mass media, an “unreal” image (we live better, we eat better, we have the best schools and hospitals in the world) and when a lie is reaffirmed a hundred times, it unconsciously becomes real…
Heh, heh, heh, I got out of the educational topic and went into the political one; sorry… Thank you for sharing your comment, these are ideal means for us, in one way or another, to discern and try to get to the origin of the disease. Blessings.
I get you☺️! My bad I wasn't really extrapolating. I just treated :access to internet and phone as our random effects meaning if we give kids phone and internet how will it affect their literacy? My guess is regardless of their physical location some will be glued on phones and social media. I didn't really think Venezuela sample size will follow a different distribution.🤦🏾♀️
And I do get you how we ended up in politics that's still relevant and relatible to some extent. Some would blame it on having incompetent people in governance but let's leave if another platform. It's a frustrating topic not warranted to spoil our Sunday.😊
I think we stand a chance to do better as people if we look at a positive side. I have hope on the kids, parents and teachers that most will shape the future and ripe the benefits of being literate to improve their quality of living. The same phones that are toxic also give them access to alot of information that can bring awareness and self-learning. But they got to be literate to even be able to make use of that information.🌺😊
I had to check song lyrics and translation. It's a very interesting message!
I guess you are leaving it up to me to interpret how you relate to it right😀🌺!
Cheers and keep well!
There are many differences in the country. There are sectors that have the latest technologies and others do not. I agree with you that the first step is to be literate without that it is impossible to advance in knowledge. Technology can be used in a positive and negative way, we have examples of both situations. Thank you very much for stopping by and commenting. Be well dear friend @humbe . A big hug from Maracay.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
True, countries varies as some are more developed than others. Even within a country there would still be private schools having access to latest technology than public schools.
Thank you for sharing great awareness in your post!
Cheers! 😊🌺
Indeed, one of the problems is technological illiteracy. One day, all your desires will come true Sir. And I am happy to know that you are helping to spread Hive in your place. You are incredible. Have a nice day and more power to you.
We all want things to improve, especially for young people to have more opportunities to get good jobs. Thank you very much for stopping by and commenting. Be well my friend @pinkchic . A big hug from Maracay.
Being a teacher is the profession that since you choose it, you think about the benefit of humanity itself, it is good that you have made the best decision that influenced not only you, but also the life of each student who passed through your tutelage, as well now you teach people with no technological knowledge too, since you want to give it a chance that what we love about Hive, we have found. I loved reading you my dear and appreciated @irvinc. God bless you greatly 🙏🏽🤗💖