ActionSA launches literacy programme for youth
"The 78% pass rate that our government talks about does not mean anything. In reality, when you take a book to my students at university, they struggle to read. The 78% is just a number to make you feel happy.”
Universities today have to do the work that high schools were doing, while high schools must do the work that primary schools used to do.
This was according to Professor Chatradari ‘Chats’ Devroop, who was speaking at the recent launch of an ActionSA programme for the youth in the Gomorrah informal settlement.
Devroop said the basic education level was in tatters.
“The 78% pass rate that our government talks about does not mean anything. In reality, when you take a book to my students at university, they struggle to read. The 78% is just a number to make you feel happy,” he said.
“How can we be expected to champion the 4th industrial revolution when the future of this country can’t read nor write?”
According to Phono-Graphix reading therapist and trainer, Jenny Taylor, eight out of 10 children who were in grade 4 cannot read with understanding in English, and their home language.
Taylor said this was partly to high absenteeism among teachers at school, large classroom sizes and a lack of good teaching techniques.
Advocate Gillian Benson, who also attended the launch, encouraged parents to instil a love of books in their children and to ensure that their children learn to read as knowledge was a powerful tool.
“Instead of wasting our money at Christmas time on things that our kids will play with for a few hours, we need to invest in books. Literature is knowledge. Our people have forgotten the importance of books,” Benson added.
Councillor Henriette Frohlich, the founding member of Reading with ActionSA, told Rekord that the reading and spelling programme has proven to be 98% effective in addressing reading problems at any age or ability level.
Frohlich further said this formed the basis of many other reading programmes, which were available in the country today.
National Youth Advisory council member of ActionSA Katlego Mphahlele said as the youth wing of the movement, they hoped to make the programme fashionable and become a lifestyle to many young people in and around Tshwane.
“We aim to set up a Buddy Reading Centre in all seven regions of Tshwane, and from there, to multiply similar programmes into each community. We currently live in an information era, where being able to read, analyse and understand information is freedom,” added Mphahlele.
He said the programme was free of charge to anyone who wanted to be part of it as the programme was aimed at changing people’s lives and reshaping society at the same time.
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