Word Blindness in the Army
SIR,-1 am afraid that I have not yet examined the results of tilt R.A.E.C.'s survey of the standard of literacy among National Service' men, but I must contest certain of Dr. Raybould's conclusions. Should bilingualism be a factor causing backwdrdness, one would expect to find it among other bilingual areas of the British Isles, sueb as the Western Isles. But I suspect that Dr. Raybould will discover that the parts of Scotland where illiteracy is greatest are the sou western coal-fields and Fife, with Glasgow as a runner-up. It has be my lot during the past three years to spend some time in a triling area; whilst it is seldom that a child learns to read and write mo than one of the tongues concerned, I halite not found that the degree of illiteracy there is as high as in our own country. What bilingualism does demand is an enlightened education programme, so'arranged that the child is not compelled to 'begin learning in an entirely foreiga medium. Otherwise the less intelligent do suffer a serious initial setback, which is only slowly conquered. But many governments other than our own have long since abandoned a policy based ea national feelings of superiority as far as education is concerned, and bilingualism has proved no bar to literacy. One need only cite Finland, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland.
What seems to me to be the most important factor in the incidence of illiteracy is the attitude of the child's parents towards education; and in this country (but not in many others) this is all too often correlated with social divisions. Thus the children of university professors, or successful stockbrokers, or even of humbler schoolmasters unable to afford public-school fees, whilst often without a potentially greater intelligence, are seldom illiterate. Our solution to the growing problem is clearly to educate parents to permit their children to be educated:-
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