Some Social Psychological Effects and Noneffects of Literacy in a New Nation

Abstract

Literacy rates across nations are substantially related to a wide range of variables that make up, go with, cause, or result from economic development.' But the correlation coefficients that indicate these broad relationships cannot explain their own origin. Explanations must come from a detailed search for the ways in which the teaching of men to read and write influences their performance of such crucial social roles as citizen, worker, and consumer. This paper explores, for one country, the associations between literacy and a number of important social psychological characteristics directly relevant to participation in economic and political development at the level of the common man. The data come from lengthy structured interviews with 177 rural cultivators and 385 urban factory workers in East Pakistan.2 The two quite different populations-cultivators and factory workers-provide internal replication of the results and help us disentangle literacy effects from the factors of urbanization and occupational type. We will look first at the extent to which measured literacy is associated with two other apparently similar variables, level of education and verbal aptitude. Second, we will illustrate empirically and discuss more speculatively several ways in which literacy is related-and not related-to the development of new identities, perceptions, and attitudes.