CHAPTER 1—INTRODUC TION
This chapter is an intrOduction to this dissertation and includes the following: Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Related Questions, the Hypotheses, Definition of Terms and
Description of Concepts, Limitation of the Study, Literacy Milieu of Communities in Accra.
i. t Bott‹ground ct’the Study’ and
Background to the study firstly looks at the national context for the situation of Adult Functional Literacy giving in this section a brief historical background to the Functional Literacy programme in Ghana. Secondly, it shows the issues regarding women and their condition in Ghana, which has resulted in the situation addressed by this dissertation under situation background.
Functional Literacy drive was important for Ghana in the 1990s and one could not overstate this fact. “In the world today there are over one billion adults who are illiterate. Ninety-eight percent of them live in the
third world. Of the adults who cannot read or write,
about two-thirde are women. In 1990 Adult Literacy rate as a percentage of total population aged fifteen years and over for men in sub-Saharan Africa was 98% and that
for women was 36%. This compared with the Adult Literacy rate for men in all developing countries of 75% and for women in all developing countries of 55%” (UNDP, Human Development Report, 1993 page 157). In response to these
alarming rates, the United Nations at its General Assembly proclaimed the year 1990 as the International Literacy Year and the 1990s as Literacy Decade. According to Keyon (1991), ”Education experts tell us, it is unlikely that the goal of universal literacy will be
reached in the next ten years. Achieving that goal will require at least fourteen to twenty-one years, they say”.
Ghana has already launched its literacy decade. There were major drives at the national, regional and district levels for adults and children. It however did not mean a fresh start. It was documented that Adult Literacy work by voluntary organizations and churches in Ghana pre-dates 1948. In that year, however, the colonial administration embarked on an experimental Adult Literacy programe in the Ashanti, Central, Volta and Western regions. Moreover, in 1951 the Legislative Assembly approved a literacy programme under the “Plan for Mass Literacy and Mass Education”. The Department of Community Development (then the Nass Education Section of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development) was the executing agency. The Department of Community
Development launched the first mass literacy drive in 1952, mainly to accelerate development in the rural areas and to help bridge the gap between the urban and rural areas of the country. There was the organization of
literacy classes for adults. Ghana’s literacy level was about nine percent of the population then. The Department of Community Development definitely had a great impact and succeeded in raising the level of literacy. By 1954, the Adult Literacy programme had spread to all regions of the country with eleven local languages and dialects in use as the medium of instruction. In 1951, the Bureau of Ghana Languages was set up as the Vernacular Literature Bureau with the help of UNESCO, to produce and circulate
twenty thousand primers and post-literacy materials. From
1951 tO 1966, mdss or global literacY *a ” Carried out, using the Laubach or Missionary method or tradit£ona2 21teracy to teach reading and writing, with the front line workers. Thia effort turned out some twenty-two thousand five hundred new literates each year. Until lQ64
the churches, a* well as the Department ot Social Welfare
and community Development used this traditional literacy. However, the mass literacy progra-e failed to keep pace with the number of school dropouts with the result that by °°+e 5.6 million Ghanaians were illit erate.
After the overthEOw Of the First RepubllC in 1966,
voluntary instructors were no longer willing to offer
their services to the literacy programme free of charge. A series of educational and institutional policies
greatly hampered literacy work in the post-1966 era. Cgupled with inadequate funding there was little or nO expansion of formal educational system, in spite of the growing population, which required greater access to
basic education. Moreover, the economic decline, which started in 1967, led to successive Governments cutting back on the real levels of financing the educational sector. Consequently, in the non-formal sub-sector of education, the funding was so inadequate that it was not possible to maintain work at the previous levels.
