Been seeing more and more evidence that mass literacy is both massively diminished compared to the 20th century and accelerating in its decline across the world, especially in relatively highly educated countries. This problem is obviously much more severe amongst the working class than others, as historically tends to be the case.
If we want the masses to get to grips with a communist understanding of the world, which requires a lot of reading and discussion of text, surely this is an issue we need to grapple with. Current political education initiatives usually bring together smaller, highly-literate (typically university educated) groups of people, which tend to remain insular and rarely seem to engage with the broader working class. I am convinced that a significant barrier to mass political education is that so many “literate” people are unable to read a simple paragraph.
How do we rectify this situation? It seems historically unique because in the past, illiterate people had no illusions about the fact that they couldn’t read and were enthusiastic about learning (at least, in general). Nowadays, I can imagine that most people would not view their literacy as something that needs to be improved, and many will even react with hostility to such a suggestion.
What’s the correct approach? Do we need to emphasise the practical rewards that those who engage with theoretical texts benefit from? Take a direct approach and offer reading comprehension sessions? Interested to hear what others think.
Encouraging and teaching literacy are incredibly important. Historical communist movements have focused on literacy campaigns as major aspects of their programs.
But meeting people where they’re at is also really important. Reading to people or teaching direct courses on things like civics, labour organizing, or community defense have also been really successful strategies.
We need to up our Edutainment game. We need more communist science communication YouTubers and infographics chart sites and rec center class teachers.
thats an awesome twist on that saying
I also like:
This! Lenin didn’t lock himself in a room for his entire career and limit himself to academic jargon, he went out to the streets and the factories and he spoke to workers directly. We need the academics certainly. But meeting the people where they are both physically and linguistically is vital.
CPC should take over Tencent and start spiking the content with some communist propaganda. Why thay aren’t doing so yet is a mystery for me.