“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?”- Erich Fromm
Happy world literacy day! With an impressive literacy rate like our own, we can’t help but celebrate for we have reason to do so. In all our celebrating we must, however, never allow ourselves to get comfortable but rather we must promote the education of our community
One way to close the gap existing in literacy is by supporting adult literacy. Whilst this should not take away from our heartfelt desires to keep the youth educated it should be considered a call to balance these efforts and share this same desire to get our adults educated.
Here is a list of small ways you can begin to support adult literacy;
- Use electronics where possible
One way to support the efforts of adult learning is by aiding adults to adapt to the fast-changing digital world. This may be as simple as getting them on social media platforms and teaching them how to access all this or tasking them to assignments that need to be typed out from the computer and printed out. - Be a helpful colleague
Depending on your work setting, you are likely to receive staff training for new tools or soft wares to stay updated. Whilst it is much easier to gen x and y to adopt fast paced world that is filled with so many changes, this flexibility does not always extend to older generations. Hence if you find yourself with the capacity to do so, assist those struggling to grasp the concepts you understand.
In all the teaching and assisting you to decide to undertake, never forget to stay respectful as the ‘teacher-student’ dynamics will play out a little differently in this kind of setting, find ways to package your teachings that will limit resistance to learning or adopting new skills.