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Literacy

We Want To Build Communities Of Readers

February 21, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
There are days when the dusk of events settles heavily on me, and I try to find a way to retreat into a quiet corner and throw myself into the world of a book. It does not matter if it is a novel or a history book, as long as the author is able to conjure up a world that transports me from the flood of brutalities to an island of imagination. In recent months, I have been reading more and more novels – including Japanese crime fiction, a notable favourite – and finding in them characters with whom I can sometimes laugh and sometimes frown in bewilderment. Madness is not new to our world. It has been there before.

‘There Is An Attack On Black Literacy’: Education And Activism Go Together

September 7, 2023 Tinashe Chingarande, The Real News Network. , , ,
A 2022 report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, dubbed the nation’s report card, reported that 33% of Maryland’s eighth graders could not read at a basic level. For Black students, this number was an alarming 46%. Furthermore, 82% of Black students could not read at a proficient level, according to the report. As reading levels fall, Black Baltimoreans are slipping further away from their ability to liberate themselves. Particularly during a time where socioeconomic barriers, further pronounced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and draconian legislation actively bar Black children from accessing wholesome education.

Who Die For Life – Like Hugo Chávez – Cannot Be Called Dead

March 3, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental Institute For Social Research. , , ,
On 28 October 2005, a special event was held in Caracas at the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. At this gathering, held on the birthday of Simón Rodríguez (Simón Bolívar’s teacher), the Venezuelan government announced that nearly 1.5 million adults had learned to read through Mission Robinson, a mass literacy programme that it initiated two years earlier. The mission was named after Rodríguez (who was also known by the pseudonym Samuel Robinson). One of those adults, María Eugenia Túa (age 70), stood beside President Hugo Chávez Frías and said, ‘We are no longer poor. We are rich in knowledge’.