How Ernakulam became the first fully-literate district in India
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Kerala's amazing success in literacy is in large part due to the KSSP's mass movement for education.
The consistently high literacy rate of Kerala is a striking feature. From 70 per cent in 1981 to 90 per cent in 1991, there was a phenomenal rise. Ernakulam in Kerala became the first fully-literate district in India.
How did this happen? The Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad's literacy movement had a lot to do with it.
The very successful Total Literacy Project (TLP) inaugurated in 1989 in Ernakulam district was spearheaded by the KSSP, which designed a time-bound, area-specific campaign with well-defined, achievable targets. Door-to-door estimates of illiterates in each household were made. Each literacy centre was given a target of ten people.
The curricula emphasised basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills, and incorporated issues of hygiene, child immunisation, co-operative farming and small savings. Local folk and print media as well as cinema were used to project literacy messages. More than 60,000 volunteers were involved in this huge campaign.
Lessons were introduced through discussions, competitions, group songs, quizzes and rural artforms. Radio and television stations broadcast these programmes. Thus it was that Ernakulam became the first fully literate district in the country!
The KSSP, formed in 1962 by a group of science writers as a movement to popularise science in Malayalam, has been involved in education since the early-'60s. Nearly 10,000 of its 60,000 members are teachers. Over the years it extended its activities to the fields of education, environment, development, energy, health, women's issues, communication and research. It also provides training for teachers and arranges the popular Children's Science Festivals and Teacher Exchange Programmes. Its frequent lectures are attended by thousands of people.
KSSP's science magazines for children are a rage in Kerala. Two very popular titles are Science Cream and Naughty Mathematics. Their monthly publications include Eureka for primary school children (print-run 70,000), Sastrakeralam for high school students and Sastragathi for college students and the general public. With over 700 titles, KSSP is the single largest science publisher in Kerala.
People throng the KSSP's celebrated annual Sastra-kala Jathas (art caravans), which combine elements of street and epic theatre with lectures and home visits. Today in India this new theatre medium and several thousand 'Kala Jatha' groups have built a huge network of resource persons, instructors, organisers and learners in the massive literacy campaign. Members comprise 60-70 million learners and six-eight million volunteers.
Reproduction of the KSSP model in other Indian states to induce literacy is a pan-Indian recognition of a totally indigenous people's movement.
Contact: President, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad
Parishad Bhavan, Vanchiyoor
Trivandrum - 695035
Kerala, India
Tel: 91-471-460 256
Email:
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