Literacy is the root of education and needs tending and stimulation to remain functional and buoyant on the mounting needs of knowledge. Much has been spoken of the torn social fabric in France and it seems to me that, from time to time, the educational fabric frays. The regular symbolic repetition of International Literacy Day is not therefore just international and bureaucratic drivel. On the one hand the existing gaps in the world educational map need to be filled by ensuring a minimum service to excluded populations. On the other, societies which have universal basic schooling need to guard against complacency.
Education is a fragile good and one that is still too unequally distributed.
Without it words have no meaning.