Georgetown : Guyana joined with the rest of the world, today, in celebrating the global gift of literacy as September 8, has been designated International Literacy Day by the United Nations.
Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand in her International Literacy Day message declared that there is much to celebrate since close to four billion people, the world over, are currently blessed with the gift of literacy and while there are still others to be reached, those numbers still amount to an achievement worthy of global celebration.
“We in Guyana have always boasted a consistently high level of literacy…we have won international recognition for the job which our education system has done in producing a highly literate population and that is a feat which we celebrate today,” she said.
The theme for International Literacy Day 2012 “Literacy and Peace” was adopted by the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) to draw attention to the role literacy can play towards improving the quality of human life.
“If we ponder for a moment the nexus between literacy and peace what we will find is that the facility of being literate not only brings people closer to attaining individual freedoms but also contributes to a better understanding of our world, our region, our country and our community; that understanding, I submit, contributes immeasurably to both preventing and resolving conflict,” Minister Manickchand emphasised.
She illustrated that one only need take a cursory glance around the world to discover that it is much more difficult to establish or sustain a literate environment in unstable and conflict-ridden societies.
Minister Manickchand highlighted that the fact that Guyana has been able to retain such a high level of literacy is a tribute to the political stability and absence of conflict in Guyana’s society.
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