A door out of illiteracy conference
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy decided to gather the 30 associations that she is supporting through her Foundation and its Sortir de l’Illettrisme national programme, in Paris on Tuesday 17 May 2011. Gérard Depardieu sponsored this event organised to raise awareness of the issue and discuss efforts to curb illiteracy in France, which gathered a large number of people involved in putting reading and writing within everyone’s reach.
Illiterate people are not intellectually challenged. Neither are they foreigners who do not speak French. There are many deep-seated preconceptions and misconceptions on this issue – even though it is big enough to warrant a closer look: 3 million people in France have trouble reading and writing. A vast majority of those 3 million people have jobs. As they are ashamed of their condition, afraid of losing their jobs or afraid of being singled out, they find ways of hiding their trouble – very cleverly, as a matter of fact. That is Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s top priority: to use the spotlights that she attracts to cast light on this his issue relegated to the shadows.
Journalist Frédéric Taddeï served as moderator for this day, which was principally for the pro-bono tutors and learners from 30 grassroots associations across France that are running the projects that they devised specifically and submitted for Foundation financing under its programme to prevent and curb child and family illiteracy. Delegates from cultural, educational and vocational-training institutions and from other foundations involved in efforts to eradicate illiteracy also attended.
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy addressed the audience: “Being illiterate has nothing to do with how smart you are, how good or bad you are as a person, or what you are worth. Life’s circumstances, twists of fate and back luck make people forget what they once knew. It can be lack of practice because there were no books around or because they learned in the wrong environment. Being illiterate shouldn’t be something people are ashamed of any more. I think not talking about it is a shame.”
Then, Marie-Thérèse Geffroy, who runs France’s national agency to fight illiteracy (ANLCI) and sits on this Foundation’s executive committee, provided the facts and figures: 3.1 million people in France are illiterate. That is 9% of the population in the 18- to 65-year-old bracket.
Gérard Depardieu spoke after a short film providing several testimonials, mostly from the Lire et Dire association (in Chinon, Indre-et-Loire). The Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation’s ambassador in charge of illiteracy grew up in an environment where illiteracy was common. He shared a personal testimonial: “We were probably six… seven in the house (…) never mind, we lived as a gang (…) We cultivated illiteracy, became violent, became jerks, became narrow-minded. It’s a downward spiral to hell (…) Charles Baudelaire wrote, ‘For I have from each thing extracted its quintessence, You have given me mud and I have made of it gold.’ (…) When I was 12, at Jean-Laurent Cochet’s place… I made a point of remembering names… I did things but couldn’t understand why I did them (…) Louis Jouvet said, ‘Diction elicits sentiment, the exact opposite of illiteracy’ (…) Today, I can’t read without punctuation. Punctuation is about respecting words and freedom in a sentence.”
Then it was UNESCO Institute for Education director Adama Ouane’s turn to speak: “We know today that knowledge is a raw material (…) This problem is a problem for 80 million people in Europe. That’s 30% of the active population – but it could be 35%.”
After an update on the initiatives underway in France – and their success – and a second short film about efforts to counteract illiteracy, the second part of the conference and meeting began with a roundtable to discuss the problems and the solutions to tackle them, with the people rolling them out. The speakers came from the main battle fronts: the Education Ministry (Dominique Roure, the correspondent in charge of preventing illiteracy at Créteil education district), student circles (Eunice Mangado-Lunetta, the director of AFEV, an association gathering 7,000 pro-bono students), vocational training (Bertrand Le Grix de la Salle, the president of Faf Propreté, a vocational-training organisation), family liaison (Manuel Messey, the director of UDAF Haute-Saône, a departmental union of family associations) and others. Jean-René Mahé, who founded Addeski (Breton for “relearn”, a network of volunteers that helps 40 to 50 learners every week) – after overcoming illiteracy himself – then spoke about support and coaching on the ground: “I had the impression that society had forgotten us. I learned to read and write ten years ago. I have a tutor who comes to my place every Monday. Connecting letters for the first time was the best thing that has ever happened to me… I wouldn’t have been more ecstatic if I had won the lottery.”
At the end of the roundtable, Marie-Thérèse Geffroy and François Fondard, the president of the French national union or family associations (UNAF), spoke about the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation’s achievements through its efforts, and announced that it would be asking associations to submit new projects under its programme to prevent and curb child and family illiteracy. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the Foundation’s president, then rounded up the discussion.
