International Literacy Day

Today, September 8th, is International Literacy Day, declared so in 1990 by the United Nations. Go here to read about the background of the day; see literacy statistics in various countries, states, and towns; and find links to more resources.

In January of 2003, the United Nations launched the Literacy Decade, which will aim at increasing literacy levels by 50 percent by 2015. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is advocating closing the education gap, calling it "a fundamental inequality in our globalizing world."

He said in 1996, "Those societies that, over the past decades, have invested most heavily in the education of their citizens have been the ones that have advanced most rapidly and where the conditions of life have been fundamentally transformed. A literate world...is a world in which the human potential has been liberated and placed in the service of progress."

Although in the United States there are fewer people completely illiterate than in some other countries, up to 20 percent have low literacy skills. That's 40 million people, who may end up in your training classes or e-learning programs.

More on literacy and education from this blog:
The written word is dead. Long live the written word.
Written word update