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Literacy
unlocks the door to learning throughout life,
is essential to development and health, and
opens the way for democratic participation
and active citizenship."
~ Kofi
Annan
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Acquiring
literacy is an empowering process, enabling millions
to enjoy access to knowledge and information which
broadens horizons, increases opportunities and creates
alternatives for building a better life.
~ Kofi
Annan
'literacy is at the heart of sustainable development'
~ Kofi
Annan
On this International Literacy Day, let us recall
that literacy for all is an integral part of education
for all, and that both are critical for achieving
truly sustainable development for all.
~ Kofi
Annan
"Literacy
is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for
daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against
poverty, and a building block of development, an essential
complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics
and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization,
and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national
identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an
agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone,
everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general,
a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the
road to human progress and the means through which
every man, woman and child can realize his or her
full potential."
~ Kofi
Annan
"Education
is a human right with immense power to transform.
On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom,
democracy and sustainable human development."
~ Kofi
Annan
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education
is the premise of progress, in every society, in every
family."
~ Kofi
Annan
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"These
children and their parents know that getting
an education is not only their right, but
a passport to a better future - for the children
and for the country."
-- Harry
Belafonte
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"Creating
a world that is truly fit for children does
not imply simply the absence of war. It
means having the confidence that our children
would not die of measles or malaria. It
means having access to clean water and proper
sanitation. It means having primary schools
nearby that educate children, free of charge.
It means changing the world with children,
ensuring their right to participate, and
that their views are heard and considered.
It means building a world fit for children,
where every child can grow to adulthood
in health, peace and dignity."
-- Carol
Bellamy
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Think
about it: Every educated person is not rich, but almost
every education person has a job and a way out of
poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to
poverty.
-- Governor Kathleen Blanco
"Education
makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive;
easy to govern but impossible to enslave."
-- Baron Henry Peter Brougham
Peace
is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting.
Peace, to have meaning for many who have known
only suffering in both peace and war, must be
translated into bread or rice, shelter, health,
and education, as well as freedom and human
dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is
to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved,
forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged
and the undernourished, must begin to realize
without delay the promise of a new day and a
new life.
-- Ralph
J. Bunche |
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"Literacy
is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility.
If our world is to meet the challenges of the
twenty-first century we must harness the energy
and creativity of all our citizens."
- President
Bill Clinton on International Literacy Day,
September 8th 1994 |
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Just
because a child's parents are poor or uneducated
is no reason to deprive the child of basic
human rights to health care, education and
proper nutrition.
-- Marian
Wright Edelman
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"We
must inoculate our children against militarism,
by educating them in the spirit of pacifism...
Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its
horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred.
I would teach peace rather than war, love
rather than hate."
-- Albert
Einstein
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"Education's
purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
-- Malcolm S. Forbes
"People
are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement
is possible with unimproved people, and advance is
certain when people are liberated and educated. It
would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads,
railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar
furniture of economic development.... But we are coming
to realize... that there is a certain sterility in
economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy.
Conquest of illiteracy comes first."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958)
"Next
in importance to freedom and justice is popular education,
without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently
maintained."
-- James A. Garfield (1880)
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"Peace
does not fare well where poverty and deprivation
reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance
and a lack of education and information. Repression,
injustice and exploitation are inimical with
peace. Peace is gravely threatened by inter-group
fear and envy and by the unleashing of unrealistic
expectations. Racial, class and religious intolerance
and prejudice are its mortal enemies."
-- Frederik
W. de Klerk |
We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about
education We ignore the air we breathe until it is
thin or foul. Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social
intercourse. -- E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
"If
you look back in history, you will find the core mission
of public education in America was to create places
of civic virtue for our children and for our society.
As education undergoes the rigors of re-examination
and the need for reinvention, it is cruicial to remember
that the key role of public schools is to preserve
democracy and, that as battered as we might be, our
mission is central to the future of this county."
-- Paul D. Houston, Executive director of the American
Association of School Administrators
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Bigotry
is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds;
enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education
and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
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"The highest result of education is tolerance."
-- Helen
Keller (1903)
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"Let
us think of education as the means of developing
our greatest abilities, because in each of us
there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled,
can be translated into benefit for everyone
and greater strength for our nation."
-- John
F. Kennedy |
"Our
progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress
in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource."
-- John
F. Kennedy
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There
are all kinds of things you can do to marry
literacy with health.
-- C.
Everett Koop |
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"Upon
the subject of education, not presuming to
dictate any plan or system respecting it,
I can only say thatI view it as the most important
subject which we as a people may be engaged
in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate
education appears to be an objective of vital
importance."
-- Abraham
Lincoln
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"The
important thing is not so much that every child should
be taught, as that every child should be given the
wish to learn."
~ John Lubbock
Obviously, every child should be given the best possible
opportunity to acquire literacy skills.
-- Hugh Mackay
Parents should be encouraged to read to their children,
and teachers should be equipped with all available
techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs
and capacities of individual kids can be taken into
account.
-- Hugh Mackay
Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before
then, reading and writing were skills largely confined
to a small, highly educated class of professional
people.
-- Hugh Mackay
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"As
an empowerment right, education is the primary
vehicle by which economically and socially
marginalised adults and children can lift
themselves out of poverty, and obtain the
means to participate fully in their communities."
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
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International
Literacy Day is an occasion to celebrate the importance
of literacy to individuals, communities and societies
everywhere
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
It is intolerable that around 1 in 5 of the world's
adults are illiterate. How can we build equitable
information societies or thriving democracies if so
many remain without the basic tools of literacy?
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
it is inconceivable that poverty eradication can make
much headway in the absence of major advances in literacy.
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
Achieving the right to basic education for all is
thus one of the biggest moral challenges of our times.
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
A literate world is a possible and desirable one.
There are enough resources. What is now needed is
the collective will of the international community
to ensure that the necessary support is forthcoming.
-- Koïchiro
Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General
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Unless
we teach children peace, someone else will
teach them violence.
-- Colman
McCarthy
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"Children not only have to learn what their
parents learned in school, but also have to
learn how to learn. This has to be recognized
as a new problem which is only partly solved."
~ Margaret
Mead (1901-1978) US anthropologist, author,
environmentalist. |
"Literacy
is not, as it is considered in our schools, a PORTION
of education. It IS education. It is at once the ability
AND the inclination of the mind to find knowledge,
to pursue understanding, and out of knowledge and
understanding, not out of received attitudes and values
or emotional responses, however worthy, to make judgments."
-- Richard Mitchell
"The
principle goal of education is to create men who are
capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating
what other generations have done - men who are creative,
inventive and discoverers"
-- Jean Piaget (Swiss Psychologist and pioneer in
the study of child intelligence, 1896-1980)
"One
of the greatest gifts adults can give -- to their
offspring and to their society -- is to read to children."
-- Carl Sagan
Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver,
but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents,
the friends.
-- Professor Amartya Sen
The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple
but far-reaching recognition that we all have many
different associations and affiliations, and we need
not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single
categorization of hardened groups, which confront
each other.
-- Professor Amartya Sen
we must go on fighting for basic education for all,
but also emphasize the importance of the content of
education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling
does not convert education into a prison, rather than
being a passport to the wide world.
-- Professor Amartya Sen
"The
illiterate of the 21st centurywill not be those who
cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn,
unlearn, and relearn."
-- Alvin Toffler
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Because
there is global insecurity, nations are engaged
in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars
wastefully on instruments of destruction,
when millions are starving. And yet, just
a fraction of what is extended so obscenely
on defense budgets would make a real difference
in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs,
be educated, and be given the chance to lead
fulfilled and happy lives.
-- Desmond
Tutu
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"Literacy
arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but
also in the individual who is striving for fulfilment,
happiness and personal benefit by learning how to
read and write. Literacy... means far more than learning
how to read and write... The aim is to transmit...
knowledge and promote social participation."
-- UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg
