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To be heard, learn to read and write

Literacy opens the world to adults and the deaf, says Katy Chance

Published: 2010/11/09 08:17:24 AM Business Day

JACKIE Carroll of Media Works, which she founded 15 years ago, was named last year’s Media Women Entrepreneur of the Year by Topco, for empowering women. However, her remit is far more encompassing; it’s about empowering those adults, already in the workplace, who have limited or no ability to read and write.

“Obviously some of these people didn’t finish school,” she says. “But what is really frightening is that the majority of them have been through the school system, some with matric, some not — and they cannot write a CV. They’re in their 30s, young, but without these fundamentals there is almost no chance of further training.”

Carroll started Media Works with the aim of improving English literacy skills and basic numeracy through Adult Basic Education Training (ABET) in the workplace. The bulk of her clients come from blue-collar industries with large pools of labour, such as manufacturing, mining and agriculture.

“Sometimes, there are people who have never even held a pen. At the end of our training, their skills are strong enough to move on to occupationally driven training or apprenticeships. But adult literacy is also about independence of thought. They can read newspapers, form their own opinions — and at more practical levels they can eventually draw their own pensions and use an ATM.”

Carroll was trained as a teacher and taught for three years. “I taught English and history to matrics, which was really scary! I fled to junior primary, where they still respect and adore their teachers!”

But the education system changed during her tenure, and two events saw her leave the profession. “The government insisted we couldn’t fail anyone. One child was simply not ready to move on, he needed another year. For no special reasons, he was just a late developer and wasn’t confident. His parents agreed, but the inspector saw this as ‘failing him’ and pushed him through, even though he’d be on the back foot and possibly feel out of his depth for the rest of this school career.

“The second thing was that I was a specialist language teacher — but got told I had to teach mini-cricket. If our schools were run more like a business — where special skills were used appropriately — things would work a lot better.”

She’s pleased that outcomes-based education is being phased out, not because it’s a bad system but because it’s designed for the first world. “I think the government finally recognised that its limited resources have a direct impact on outcomes.”

That “direct impact” is felt a lot in the working world.

“What makes me so angry is that companies just look at the cost of ABET; they see it as a loss of production time as well as costing them money. For the price of a single, sponsored MBA, we can help 20 staff.”

While children tend to be all of similar age and usually from a single community when taught reading and writing, adult students can range from 20 to 60 and come from very different backgrounds, and progress at different paces.

“We have to recognise prior learning. Adult students may not have been at school for 10 or 20 years, but we must be cognisant of how much they’ve learned by themselves in that time. And they have families, or take leave — we have to create individual training plans and work on site.”

It was during a big project with the Agricultural Sector Education and Training Authority (AgriSeta) involving 17000 workers in the Western Cape that Carroll noticed an unexpected number of workers in the winelands were deaf. “I thought, ‘why not? They are totally employable, they can pick grapes’. But then I wondered if they’d ever do anything more.”

So about five years ago, Carroll devised a methodology for teaching English literacy skills for the deaf. “I thought, ‘How hard can it be? It’s just a case of translating’, but it took two years, a lot of money and engaging with many schools and institutes for the deaf to get it right. There was nothing on the market for deaf or blind people and what there was, was child- based. I wouldn’t use Winnie the Pooh to teach literacy to hearing or sighted people, so I’m certainly not going to use it for the deaf!”

The ignorance around the deaf is best conveyed through exposure of my own. Deaf actress Marlee Matlin has become the poster child for what many of us deem to be the norm for deaf people. She can read and lip-read English fluently; and she can articulate herself clearly in English. The reality in SA is very different. Few deaf South Africans can read and write English. And I hadn’t realised that sign language wasn’t a universally understood one. I had this image of two deaf people from different countries meeting and instantly speaking the same language. Not so.

Sign is culturally bound; it doesn’t allow for syntax — so no tenses — and has no sentence construction as hearing people would understand it. Deaf, illiterate people battle to get things as basic as a driver’s licence, due to the written resource material — and even an oral exam is no help.

“Not being able to read or write is what I call an invisible disability,” says Carroll. “While everyone has the right to read and write in their mother tongue, the reality is that English is the language of employment and of further learning in SA. If you go to university, you are judged by your writing and you have to be able to read in English, so signing doesn’t help.”

Nazreen Bhana, executive member of eDeaf, a deaf-owned company offering skills development and employment opportunities for the deaf, which works closely with Media Works, says the English ability of deaf matrics in SA is “five years behind that of hearing children”.

According to eDeaf, about 500000 South Africans are deaf or hearing impaired and have sign as a first language, of which eDeaf estimates 70% are unemployed. Bhana notes that SA has one of the most fluent sign languages, chiefly due to our diverse history: “We have one sign language but nine dialects, which are constantly evolving and amalgamating.”

Yet only 4% of teachers working in institutions for the deaf speak sign themselves.

The ABET qualification is the equivalent of a grade 9 general education training certificate. But if a deaf or blind pupil leaves after completing grade 9, they don’t get certification. “There is no formal assessment for them, even though there is supposed to be one for every grade,” says Carroll. “I’ve spoken to every department I can and we don’t seem to be making headway, but it must be addressed.”

Carroll notes with wry regret that her business is doing well, thanks in large part to the skills development levy and Setas. While there is no shortage of adult workers who need literacy training, “there is also is no shortage of good former teachers”.

Media Works has 425 contractors or facilitators nationwide and 92 permanent staff. Carroll is quick to acknowledge that the government is still the biggest provider of adult education, but the need is just too big for the government to get to everybody.

“You need to be very brave to stand up and ask for literacy skills as an adult, and I learn from them all the time. I asked one 58-year-old man, close to retirement, why he wanted to learn to read and write now, and he said: ‘I’d like to read my Bible before I die.’ There is no single motivation, which is why we have to tap into every person’s circumstances.”

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