LITERACY

HL Deb 05 February 1975 vol 356 cc869-84

2.56 p.m.

Lord MAYBRAY-KING rose to call attention to the importance of literary; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. May I say at the outset that I am grateful to my fellow Cross-Benchers for allocating one of their very rare days to a debate on the subject of literacy. I am delighted that there is to be such a distinguished group of participants in the debate; that I am to be followed by the noble Lord, Lord Blake, the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford; and that among the maiden speakers will be an old friend of mine, the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, who has given a lifetime of service to education. There will also be another old friend of mine, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who illuminates every debate in which he takes part.

I think it is significant that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in a notable sermon at his installation gave as the first two needs of man, food and literacy. The United States Commissioner for Education, James Allen, recently said when launching a literacy campaign: Imagine if you can, what your life would be like if you could not read, or if your reading skill were so meagre as to limit you to the simplest of writings and if for you the door to the whole world of knowledge and inspiration through the printed word had never opened.

My Lords, since 1970, in a dynamic campaign, Brazil has taught basic reading skills to 6 million illiterate adults. Four years ago one-third of all Brazilians were illiterate. They reduced the number to one-quarter, and they are hoping that by 1980 the number of illiterates in Brazil will be reduced to one-tenth of the population. As for Iran, the Shahanshah made one of the key aims of his white revolution the battle against what he called the "scourge of illiteracy" and to do so, in his own words, in order that illiterates who did not know how to defend themselves would understand and become aware of their rights.

So he created a Literacy Corps; an army of young men and women who go up and down the villages of Iran teaching illiterate adults to read. I have had the privilege, as have some of my noble friends here, of seeing that wonderful work going on. It is against a background where newly emerging nations such as the two I have mentioned are placing education and literacy in the forefront of their fight to improve the quality of life that we might look at our own progress in this field.

We had hoped that before this debate we might all have been able to read the Bullock Report. Unfortunately printing difficulties have made that impossible, but I should like to begin by congratulating the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, on setting up the Bullock Committee to investigate the whole question of reading. I believe that her initiative, and the Report itself (when we get it), will make a profound and historic impact on the nation's thinking and actions in the field of literacy.

My Lords, what is the goal? We want every child to leave school not only able to read, to recognise words, but also to read with ease, to read with hunger for more, to read with pleasure, to read for information and knowledge, to come into contact with the masters of thought and beauty whose works have come down to us through the ages, and to share with us our precious cultural heritage. I do not believe that we have done enough in our battle to teach reading. As one who was engaged in education for about 30 years, I know just how remarkable are the advances which we have made in almost every aspect of education, especially since we began to provide secondary education for all our children, instead of for only a quarter of them.

In range and scope, in improved accommodation, apparatus and in other facilities—almost above all, in the introduction of a three-year training course for all teachers—we have done wonders. Some of these wonders are reflected in the ever increasing number of "O" and "A" Levels gained by our children, and the ever-increasing number of children who go on from secondary to further education in so many spheres. Anyone who thinks educational standards are declining might himself face the task of tackling one "A" Level in whatever subject he thinks he knows most about. I think he will find the examination paper something of a shock.

My Lords, I read conflicting reports on children's reading ability. I hope that Bullock will give us a scientific assessment of the problem we are talking about this afternoon. I was cheered to read in the Daily Telegraph of 17th January a letter from a secondary school head-master. He wrote: A few years ago we did receive those unable to read, but all who joined us in September 1974 were able to do so, and the need for remedial teaching in our school has been removed. This does speak volumes of praise for the middle schools.… I would add also for the infants schools"— where the key work is done. A letter like this may suggest that the tide is turning.

On the other hand, in the debate on 27th January in the other place, the figure was given of an increase of 7 per cent. per annum in the number of children leaving school unable to read and write. Dr. Morris, the expert in the teaching of reading, told an education conference in January that 30 per cent. of the pupils entering secondary schools needed special reading instruction. I am certain those two figures are far too high, but I am also certain that, while British education is now perhaps the finest in the world for bright pupils and for average pupils, we are still failing to cope with the under-average child and with the underprivileged. Especially is this true of reading and writing. I refer again to Dr. Morris, who said: Pupils who have not mastered the basic mechanics of reading by the age of eight have little chance of becoming competent readers. Half of them will have serious reading difficulties to the end of their schooldays and beyond. Unless high priority is again given to the teaching of reading in all classes, there is a danger of the educational system collapsing. Those are very strong words indeed.

My Lords, I am one who believes that all that needs to be said on this subject was said by the famous Hadow Committee in its Report on Primary Education way back in 1931. It was then forgotten. In 1950, the Ministry of Education published a pamphlet called Reading Ability, but it is out of print, a fact which itself is a sign of the way we are neglecting the importance of the teaching of reading. In 1950, this pamphlet emphasised how important was the home in this problem. If possible, that is even more true today. The conversation a child hears in the family, the facilities he has for reading, the encouragement he receives to read from the fact that there are books and newspapers in the home, parental interest in his reading as in every other part of his education; adequate sleep, adequate nourishment—all these are vital factors in a child's progress towards literarcy. Yet, just two weeks ago, I read that, at the present moment, some 900,000 children under school age without nursery school provision are being cared for by child-minders, many of them without training of any kind whatever.

My Lords, I believe that the battle of battles is to win the parents. That is why I welcome the decision of the Government to earmark some £1 million to combat adult illiteracy. If we can win the parents, we can win some of the children that I am worried about. There will always be groups of children who will find reading difficult. Only recently we have learned to recognise the dyslectic child, the child suffering from word-blindness, the child who presents very difficult problems, about whom my noble friend Lady Masham of Ilton will, I hope, be speaking later in this debate. There are the mirror-sighted children, there are the mentally handicapped children, the psychologically disturbed children, all of whom find reading very difficult indeed. I understand that my noble friend Lady Kinloss will be giving us some rather frightening examples in the speech she proposes to make.

My Lords, the expert, Dr. Morris, at her conference, attacked those who think learning to read is a natural process. She is right. It is one of the most sophisticated of all man's achievements, especially in the English language. English is the richest language in the world. This is partly due to its history, but is partly due, also, to its habit of pilfering from the vocabularies of every other language in the world. It has the largest vocabulary, it has a simple, noiseless grammar. It could, therefore, be the easiest language to learn, and might even become—as I think it could very well—the world language of the future. But the very history which simplifies the grammar of English, the fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Norman, gave us a mixed orthography as Normans tried to write Anglo-Saxon sounds, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the hardest words from this point of view are the very ordinary, simple words, the very words which a child learns in the infants school when he or she learns to read; words like "once", "one", "two", "eight", simple words with fantastic spelling.

All my life I have paid tribute to the infant teachers for the extraordinary way in which they combat this very difficult orthography of ours in the infants schools of Britain. It is a simple fact that if every sound meant one symbol and every symbol meant one sound, as is true of most languages, and as was the original purpose of language and writing, then the teaching of reading would become very simple indeed. It was with this in mind that a friend of mine, Sir James Pitman, the grandson of the inventor of Pitman's shorthand, invented a new teaching alphabet. It is called the Initial Teaching Alphabet. In it each letter stands for one sound and one sound only. But it is scientifically devised so that wherever possible the original symbols remain and those which have had to be invented are so near other symbols that a transition from the Initial Teaching Alphabet to the ordinary alphabet as the child progresses is quite easy. Indeed, in the words of my wife, who was herself an infant school headmistress and who taught through this alphabet, transition becomes almost automatic.

For the Initial Teaching Alphabet is a teaching instrument, an aid to the child embarking on the important task of learning to read. It can be taught by any of the traditional methods that teachers use. It is an instrument, not a method of teaching. It makes learning easier—though not easy, because no learning is easy—and it helps above all, in my opinion, the underprivileged, the under-average child. For me that is its special importance. It helps the child who faces the complicated hurdles of the English orthography, who finds it so difficult and breaks down, who finds it so difficult that even though he or she learns it they avoid reading whenever they have a chance, as did the illiterate Bentley hanged for the murder he did not commit and ashamed to let the world know that he could not read.

I know that the ITA Foundation, of which I am the Honorary President, has given evidence to the Bullock Committee, and I hope we are going to find that the Committee has been impressed, and that the Ministry will give sympathetic encouragement to the very successful work that is being done in over 1,000 primary schools at the present moment, teaching by means of that particular instrument. I believe it can be important in the fight against illiteracy.

But, my Lords, this is only part of the problem. We hear nowadays the cry of, "Back to the three Rs". I am old enough to have had experience of being taught for part of my life under the soulless, repetitive mechanical instruction that went by the name of the three Rs. It was right that a revolt should have taken place against some aspects of elementary education, the cane included. In every way the classroom today is an improvement on the old one. The greatest educator of all, the Czech Comenius, writing 300 years ago, wanted all schools to be "gardens of delight". That has happened in British schools. But I believe that the revolt has gone too far; that it is possible to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And the great Comenius himself believed that discipline and formal instruction was necessary.

While it is well to remember that the generations of average citizens whom we know, the older citizens produced by old elementary education, were no mean citizens of Britain, it is also worth saying that not only was teaching under the three Rs routine drudgery; it also failed to teach the very children I am talking about to read. One of the myths that we have about the three Rs is that in the golden age, when under the old mechanical system we taught the three Rs, everybody could read. This was far from true. Having said that, I think we have to get back to the formal teaching that we associate with the three Rs, without many of its unhappy associations.

My lords, I have mentioned some obstacles. There is a third one. Our training colleges, the colleges of education, do excellent work but they fail, in my opinion, adequately to teach the teaching of reading. As was said in the other place, in a debate on 27th January, by the shadow Minister, an old friend of mine with most of whose speech I disagreed: We want in particular new methods of teaching reading and of teaching discipline in the colleges of education, so that teachers will be adequately equipped to go into the schools."—[Official Report, Commons, 27/1/75; col. 51.]

My Lords, learning to read is not easy. We speak rightly of the discipline of studies. All learning is difficult, even if improved techniques can make the approach a little easier. But if reading is difficult, the teaching of reading is much more difficult, especially in an age where the TV is a competitor for the child's interest, in an age when adults are reading picture books without any words. I believe that the colleges of education, and indeed some of our schools, are attempting too much. In the words of the James Report, the work of an old pupil of mine, on the colleges of education: In such a hubbub of competing priorities, it may not be surprising, although it is certainly alarming, that such matters as the teaching of reading should sometimes appear to be neglected.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph the educational correspondent, a man called Mr. Izbicki, wrote: With only a handful of exceptions, teachers (who wrote to me) agreed that standards in the three Rs had declined, that colleges of education were failing to give student teachers adequate training in how to put these subjects across. He went on to say that some of his teacher correspondents complained—I find it hard to believe—about the attitude of some of Her Majesty's inspectors. He said that one inspector had told the head teacher that he did not care if more than half the infants went from infant school to junior school unable to read. When the headmaster challenged him to repeat this he added, "provided they've had a meaningful experience in the infant school". My Lords, this reminds me of American gobbledygook in education. I believe that the colleges must devote more time, more skill and more research to the teaching of teaching to read.

In the debate in the other place some days ago, it was suggested that the Government should set up national standards for reading and writing. I am not sure how this could be implemented. In the last century we tried payment by results, one of the most lamentable reforms that ever took place in the history of the growth of British education. But having said that, in one way or another the whole nation must take this problem seriously and set about improving the standards of reading of our children.

My Lords, I have left myself no time to talk about real literacy. It was my experience as a headmaster years ago to try to teach illiterate boys to read in my own study, to teach one boy to read only to find that when he went home with the little books I had asked him to take home his father would not let him look at them. But it was also my joy, as a teacher of English, to teach all boys to read—boys of all ages and abilities—to teach the sixth form to read with judgment, with discrimination, with appreciation in the quest for true literacy. Having said that, my Lords, it is the first step that counts. By the end of the years in infant school, the child ought to be able to read comfortably, always excepting some of the very difficult groups I have mentioned.

We need more specialist teachers in the primary field, small enough remedial classes, early diagnosis of physical, of mental or psychological handicaps, or of speech defects. As I said earlier, I hope that the Bullock Report will usher in a dynamic attack on illiteracy and, if the steps which it recommends will cost money, I believe it is money which Britain ought to be happy to pay. I hope that my speech will not have been regarded as a narrow one. When I concentrate on reading and writing, these are the gates to the whole of the width and breadth of human knowledge. I know that for the least able child learning to read means hard work. It means hard work for the teachers in the colleges of education; it means hard work on the part of education authorities. Most important of all, it means hard work on the part of the most precious figure, apart from the child in the whole educational picture—the classroom teacher in the infant school. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.22 p.m.

Lord BLAKE

My Lords, I rise to make a very short and, in many ways, a purely subjective speech. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, and other speakers, will forgive me if I say that owing to a genuinely inescapable engagement it is unlikely that I can be here at the end of the debate. I apologise to the House for this dereliction of duty, and I much regret that I may not be present to hear what is said by all noble Lords who have put their names down to speak this afternoon.

I am sure that we are all most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for drawing our attention to this extremely important subject. It is not a subject on which I can pretend to be an expert. My contribution to this debate cannot be more than a personal impression from the point of view of the universities. I have had none of the experience which some noble Lords have had in primary and secondary education. I can only speak about the form of education which is nowadays called tertiary—an expression which always reminds me faintly of a geological epoch rather than universities and polytechnics. I was in fairly regular receipt of written work from 1946, when I first became a don at Christ Church, until about six years ago when I moved to Queen's College, where I do not have the same contact with immediate teaching.

For what it is worth, my impression over the 20-odd years following the end of the war is that standards of spelling, grammar, punctuation, not to mention English style and simple intelligibility, were on the decline. I emphasise that this is a personal impression but I am not alone, I think, in believing this. To some extent it has been endorsed in Oxford by examiners' reports in Final Honour Schools. The noble Lord, Lord Crowther-Hunt, will probably confirm that this is so. He has had just as much, if not more, experience than I have. I have seen a good many adverse comments on the general standard of literacy as far as writing is concerned, ranging from indignation and irritation to despairing acceptance of a falling-off which seems almost irreversible. I admit, of course, that there are plenty of exceptions. There are many boys and girls of university age who can write clearly, lucidly, grammatically and correctly. My point is that there are relatively—or this is my impression—fewer than there were, and that one now positively notices decent English in examination papers which one corrects, whereas a generation ago one tended to take it for granted.

To take another example, twice in the last few years I and my co-examiner for a Doctor of Philosophy thesis have felt obliged to refer back to the candidate a thesis on an historical subject, not on grounds of inadequate scholarship or getting the facts or the perspective wrong— the sort of grounds on which in the past one would have had occasion to do this— but because in both cases large slices of the thesis were written in a manner so as to produce, in the literal use of the word, non-sense. It was ungrammatical, and if you had any regard to the rules of construction and grammar it did not mean anything at all. The depressing thing was that on pointing this out to the candidate it did not appear to impinge in either case. They were men in both cases. They did not even appear aware of the problem to which one was drawing their attention. I found this rather depressing. One must remember that by the time somebody submits a thesis he has had at least six years of tertiary education behind him. In fact, if we go on with the geological analogy, he would almost have reached the quaternary epoch. I was not conscious of this kind of problem 20 years ago.

My Lords, I am not competent to determine the reasons for this decline, but I suspect that it has at least something to do with the falling off in standards of literacy at school. The decline has nothing to do with the arguments that we have about reorganisation—comprehensive or grammar schools—or anything like that ; it began long before comprehensive education ever came into the picture. I wonder whether it has some connection with the matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, drew our attention; the allegedly more painless methods of teaching which have come in. It would not surprise me if this were the case. Certainly some of those who actually teach are becoming increasingly sceptical about the validity of some of these techniques.

Perhaps I could finish with a quotation from a letter by the senior history master of a comprehensive school in Brecon which appears in the current number of The Spectator. Commenting on a remark in an editorial in that same paper to the effect that Dr. Rhodes Boyson and Mr. Stevas need expect little but "approbrium from most of the teaching profession" for their stand against "progressive" methods, the senior history master wrote: I have taught for the last nine years in a comprehensive school and, before that, for nineteen years in grammar schools, and in all that time I have only met two or three practising teachers who approve of the new 'progressive' methods. Overwhelmingly the profession is in favour of a return to strong discipline and more formal methods. That is just the point which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, made towards the end of his speech. The quotation goes on: These new ideas come from professors of education and training college lecturers and would soon be abandoned if these people actually had to take classes. Mind you, at council meetings of the various teachers' unions it would be professional suicide to voice our real feelings on this subject. We should be stamped as reactionaries. But in the privacy of our common rooms our real opinions can be voiced, and any journalist who cares to penetrate them would hear the truth. My Lords, it is much to be hoped that those in the profession who share these misgivings expressed by the school-master will not allow themselves to be browbeaten by the stigma of "reactionary". I hope that they will speak up, and speak firmly. I cannot believe that any harm would come to them if they did so. I strongly suspect that at least some of the trouble about literacy could be cured by a return not to the three Rs (which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, described as "soulless, repetitive, and mechanical") but to discipline and to formal classes. I believe that a close examination of the content and manner of what is being taught in both primary and secondary schools, and of the methods of teaching teachers themselves, is something that is increasingly worrying parents, and is far more important than the endless and now rather sterile debate on educational reorganisation. I, too, hope very much that the Bullock Report (and in many ways it is a pity that we are not debating this subject in the light of that Report) will give a real impetus towards reform in these fields.

3.33 p.m.

Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY

My Lords, I know that we all owe a great debt to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for having initiated this debate today on an extremely important subject which has raised such a distinguished number of speakers and such a good attendance in your Lordships' House. We all look forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, who will add so much, particularly on education, to your Lordships' debates in the future. As an ex-member of Christ Church it is my very pleasant duty to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blake, on what I believe is his first speech from the Dispatch Box —and a very good and able one, if I may say so.

We all hope to get from the Bullock Report a rather more scientific approach to the number and the definitions of illiteracy and literacy than we have had in the past. But I think it would not be unfair to say that the number of people in this country who are functionally illiterate cannot be less than about 2 million. By "functionally illiterate", I do not mean people who cannot read very simple things; I mean people whose literacy is considerably below what is needed for the situation in which they find themselves in the modern world. When one remembers that it is calculated that in order to fill in welfare forms one should have a literacy age of 18, and when one considers the number of people who must fall below that standard and who have to fill in welfare forms, one is aware of an immense human problem, one which goes far beyond the confines of the education problem as such.

Two questions immediately come to mind: Is the position getting better and are we doing anything about it? Broadly speaking, I think the answer to both questions is, "Yes". The literacy standards of schoolchildren went up steadily till 1964. Since then they have certainly reached a plateau. It is possible that they have declined slightly. Again, we must await the Bullock Report to have the full diagnosis on this aspect, but I would say the standards have declined only very slightly if at all. It is difficult to tell what the specific factors may be which have caused this halt in the improvement of the plateau. I think that we must be very cautious about producing too simplistic judgments.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blake, has rightly said, it is nothing to do with school reorganisation as such. What evidence there is seems to show that although the reading standards of the brighter pupils in comprehensive schools are below the national average for brighter children (and this is something which those of us who are in favour of reorganisation in comprehensive schools would do well to take to heart) at the lower range the comprehensive schools are better at dealing with people who have reading difficulties than the average of other schools. So almost certainly it has nothing to do with reorganisation. I think there may be some-thing (and I am impressed by the arguments which have been presented by the noble Lord, Lord Blake, and the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King) to be said about teaching methods in primary schools. But we must not take this position too far; there are dangers in it. In fact, literacy is merely part of a general articulateness. Spelling, although useful, is not everything.

Often one can notice that although the present school system produces much worse spelling and, to a certain extent, worse grammar (and that has its very real dangers which I do not underrate) than more orthodox and old-fashioned methods, nevertheless it produces a spontaneity and an articulateness in expression which is very useful and which can only be a good thing. I do not say that this outweighs any loss in formal literacy: I do not think that it does. I merely say that I think this is a difficult field where we cannot be too dogmatic and where certainly the findings of the Bullock Committee will be of immense help. In the past different methods of teaching reading have been blamed, although not in this debate. They may be muddling for a few, but I do not believe this can be anything but a minor factor, and experiment in this field is, of course, to be welcomed because it may add something really worth while. What seems to me probable is that there is, in fact, a genuine plateau. There is in all human endeavour. There come moments when one cannot go on improving things by using the same methods and within the same system. Not everything can go on getting better and better without a change of approach, and it seems to me that it may well be true that we have reached a rather natural plateau in this matter caused by the nature of our society.

I should now like to answer the second question that we ought to ask ourselves: are we doing anything about this? I think here we may be pleased and may congratulate Governments of all complexions on the fact that they are taking this matter seriously. It was a very good thing to set up the Bullock Committee and we are all looking forward to its report. The Government have recently given a grant of £1,000,000 to an Adult Literacy Resources Centre, and they are to be congratulated very much on that action. The BBC is to start a three-year project to combat adult illiteracy later this year, and again that is something extremely worth while and which we can be extremely pleased with.

What more then needs to be done? The most crucial area, of course, is among the very young in the poorer sections of the population. Here I should like firmly to make the point that there is no substitute for the abolition of poverty and the abolition of the slums. The general politicians cannot swing this problem completely on to the educationalists. If real poverty were to be abolished, and certainly if the slums were abolished, a great deal of the problem of illiteracy would be solved straightaway. To a certain extent, all the teachers—the poor, bloody infantry if I may say so of this problem—are trying to do is to heal wounds caused by our social planning.

I come back to the point I made earlier: that I think there may be a very real plateau of achievement in this field which is caused by the kind of society we are. But, of course, there are things which can be done in the purely educational field. Pre-school education in this country is abysmally lacking in quantity and now, in the present climate, is likely to be the first victim of cutback; as in Buckinghamshire which, as we know, proposes to close all the county's 14 nursery classes and five nursery schools catering for 2,000 children.

Obviously to hope for big advances in this area is over-optimistic in the present financial climate, but there are imaginative steps which could be taken. I suggest that one step is that whatever the attitude to child-minding services as they at present exist, some kind of support and some kind of establishment to try to help child minders to give a less negative experience to the children under their care might be well worth exploring. In the orthodox school years we need better diagnosis of reading difficulties, more trained teachers and, above all, a better curriculum. Better diagnosis probably involves more reading tests which are useful to find out the causes of illiteracy in specific children—for example, those with specific physical or mental handicaps, and specific diagnosable reading problems.

My Lords, I do not suggest that we come back to having tests every week or every month, with a rat race for marks. Such tests need not be orthodox. There was an account in the Evening Standard two or three days ago about experiments to detect basic reading faults using a machine made of two old cigar boxes and a battery operated light. It may well be asked how many primary schools have two old cigar boxes, but nevertheless substitutes for those can probably be found. A better curriculum is also important, involving much better material for reading. A major cause of illiteracy —probably the major cause—is not wanting to learn to read. As Bruno Bettelheim recently remarked in an article in Encounter, admittedly largely dealing with the American experience: I do not need to pose the question of what vistas are opened up to the child as a reward for having become able to read. See Spot Run. See Spot Jump. The same author points out that in what is probably a misguided attempt to relate reading materials to what the child already likes and what his interests are, a great deal of reading material is related to children's play activities: e.g., I mean i.e., it is consistently reminding them that they really want to get out to play, instead of trying to lead them into a reading experience, and encouraging them into the world of the mind. This is an area which needs a great deal more exploration and probably in which a revolution is overdue.

Another admittedly long-term curriculum reform would be to teach today's children a little more about child development so that they can help their children better, which might be slightly more useful than some of the subjects which they learn about in schools. In the field of adult education most of the paths have already been charted. The Russell Report on Adult Education needs to be implemented. One important step which must not be neglected, and on which action can be taken now and in the immediate future, is that the BBC's major effort should be given maximum effectiveness. All the material should be made available on video cassettes, or in other ways, for educational establishments, community centres and libraries, and the money for this must be found.

Another thing which can happen is that the whole attitude of people learning to read can be made much more positive by the greater use of schools as community centres. One of the troubles which has been mentioned is that people are ashamed of illiteracy; they do not want to reveal it. If schools are being used as teaching centres for the whole of the population of a community, it is much easier to get people into adult education classes.

My Lords, these are some of the specific points which I think it is worth our while looking at, and which no doubt the Bullock Committee have been looking at. But I do not think that we will really seriously tackle this problem until we realise that it is important to individual people. It is not just a function of our society—how well people can express themselves, or how illiterate they are. In the end it comes down to individual tragedies which should rouse our compassion just as much as, say, the diseases caused by inhaling asbestos, which we have heard about earlier today.

Every illiterate, no matter how wise or useful he or she may be in his or her life—and so many of them are—is a member of the walking wounded of our society, not able to lead a full life in the modern world in which they find themselves—impoverished and, to that extent, diminished. Each one is the centre of a personal tragedy, almost every one of which could have been, and should have been, avoided, and the responsibility is upon us all