KARACHI CHRONICLE: Writing skills

Karachi is said to have the highest literacy rate in the country. This does not appear to be true because one comes across so many, hundreds and thousands of people who cannot read. But I personally know readers outnumber illiterates. I am a frequent traveller by rickshaw and occasionally by bus. I always try to locate where the driver has tucked his daily newspaper. It is usually between the overhead bar and the roof in rirkshaws and to the left of the driver's seat in a bus. I also talk to people and find they can read.
Those who cannot read are the poorest of the poor or people who came to the city from villages in search of work. In short, all Karachiites can read. However, there is a puzzling phenomena: the majority of people who can read cannot write. That makes Karachiites half-literate. No matter how many reports I browsed through, written by educationists, social workers and NGOs on Karachi's literacy, I have not found any which even noticed this peculiarity.
It is also said that the ability to read is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the mobile cellphone and the popularity of text messaging. It may be so, but it is not proof that the ability to text message means the ability to write. Ask people of the working class to write on a piece of paper and they cannot do it. The clue to this puzzle is in the high rate of school dropouts, and also in the absence of the slate and chalk from the schoolchild's satchel. In most schools in bastis and in the lower-middle class areas too, you will find a blackboard, usually just a wall painted black, on which the teacher writes something and the children recite what ever is written. Thus they pick up reading skill faster than they learn to write. Children dropout of school normally after class two.
Most are forced to leave to help support the family, working at menial jobs. As they grow older they may learn to drive a vehicle, become mechanics at garages, welders and carpenters, factory workers and other semi-skilled jobs. Their ability to read comes in handy but they do not seem to need the ability to write. Their writhing skill usually is limited to the ability to write their name and they like to have a wiggly signature to put on a form or their NIC card, while the rest of the data is filled in by some helpful person or a professional writer.
There are many NGOs who believe that it is not necessary to have the writing skill, which is why handwriting is not stressed. They say a person who can read can recognise the letters of the alphabet on the keyboard and tap the right key to spell a word. I was surprised to learn from them that in America in the poor areas children are taught to use the keyboard and handwriting is not taught.
It gave me a funny feeling to think handwriting may become obsolete. Since we ape the West and since computers are common in Karachi now, could it be a reason why handwriting is not thought to be worth teaching? Writing also means composition, at which even college graduates are poor. Students cannot express themselves. Rote-learning means reproduction of mugged up data reproduced in exams. The appalling fact is examiners accept it and assume the student has comprehended the subjects and award good grades.
It is strange that there is such a hullabaloo about cheating in exams. Have you ever looked at the question paper? At times it is incomprehensible to the student taking the exam because just as they are encouraged to rote-learning they are also given questions which the student mugged up in the preparation for exams. So when a question is differently worded he or she is stumped. That could be a reason for whispering and peeking into another student's exam paper. Why don't the people who condemn cheating look into this problem of rote-learning? Adult literacy programme is probably lying in the dustbin at the Ministry of Education. When the country acquired television, one of the first educational programmes on PTV was adult literacy. Again the stress was on teaching people to read.
At evening classes at literacy centres in the city the same pattern as in children's schools in the lower economic sector was followed. That is, there was a blackboard and people recited the letters and worlds written on it. No such centres exist now. As for television as a medium of literacy, it is not a mission, not of PTV nor of the numerous channels. If you ask why not? You are told there is no market for it. No sponsors. Also no fun.