The point is, I don’t remember learning to read. I remember when things started to make more sense, and making the connection that signs were made up of words just like books were made up of words. However there isn’t a time when I remember not reading.
Take a minute to think about your education. How is it that you can read and comprehend this? The letters form words, which form sentences, which form paragraphs, which express thoughts, and all of this is intelligible to you. This isn’t just an image of lines on a screen. For most of you literacy has been a part of your life since childhood. But what if it hadn’t? Or, even more, what if as a child you had the responsibility of sharing literacy with complete strangers?
Cuba sponsored a massive literacy campaign in 1961. In a four-hour speech Fidel Castro declared to the United Nations that Cuba would eliminate illiteracy within a year. Not only were these remarks unheard of in his time—or even today, for that matter—but also he lived up to them.
|posters celebrating the anniversaries of the literacy campaign|
|flags that were used during the campaign to declare 'territories free of illiteracy'|
It’s easy to forget to power of language—especially written language—and how much simple acts like reading and writing can change a person’s life.
-Claire Wellbeloved-Stone, Connecticut College '14