Adult literacy, political participation and democracy

There is a bipartisan commitment in Timor-Leste to the eradication of illiteracy in the adult population, and a national literacy campaign has been underway since June 2007. By the start of this Conference, i.e. July 2011, over 120000 people had graduated from the campaign's basic literacy classes, and five of Timor-Leste's thirteen districts had been declared "free of illiteracy." It has long been argued in international development literature that improvements in adult literacy levels are associated with increased political participation (Stromquist 2005). So, in the lead up to next years presidential and parliamentary elections, it is timely to consider to what extent the national literacy campaign has made it possible for people who were previously illiterate to play a more active role in the political process. This paper introduces a research project we propose to undertake over the next two years as a partnership between Australian researchers and the national university (UNTL). Our aim is to study the relationship between the acquisition of literacy and political participation in three of the country's thirteen districts. The project is part of a longer term research program on the contribution of adult education to Timor-Leste's national development goals (Boughton and Durnan 2007). By sharing some of the thinking that has gone into designing this research project, this paper continues an ongoing dialogue with the popular education movement in Timor-Leste about adult literacy campaigns, a dialogue which my partner Deborah Durnan and I began in 2004 (Boughton and Durnan 2004). The paper begins with an overview of the history of efforts to raise levels of adult literacy in Timor-Leste, starting with the historic FRETILIN/UNETIM literacy campaign in 1974-75 and finishing with a brief account of the current national literacy campaign launched by the FRETILIN government in January 2007. The next section of the paper discusses the question, "Literacy for what?"; or, in other words, "What are the purposes of a national literacy campaign?" I review two different and contradictory responses to this question, each of which implies a quite different approach to researching the impact of the campaign. The third section of the paper discusses the relationship between participatory action research and popular education, and sets out some of the research questions we have identified as relevant to our study of the campaign in Timor-Leste. The fourth section of the paper summarises what we already know from international research on mass literacy campaigns. The conclusion raises points for further discussion.