Heather Trexler Heather Trexler Ms.

Fuentes English 1101 September 01, 2013 Opinion Essay Literacy as power, that proves as a very powerful statement, it also tends to hold value as something that people can easily believe. As a nation grows and develops the people there also grow as a society. More people learn to read and write and, in many cases the women tend to start to learn more about reading and writing, but also about their personal freedoms and their right to choose what they do as a woman. Theoretically literacy may bring about power but, in all reality, most of the time that is not the case. With more of a population able to read on the surface level, but unable to read for deeper meaning and also unable to form their own opinions and perspectives, a government is at an extreme advantage. The government can easy print whatever they like into the magazines and newspapers and the people of the country will read, but not form personal opinions; therefore they will automatically listen and believe what the government has to say as truth. Another way government can influence seemingly literate people is through censorship. The Chinese government is always censuring everything that their people read, see, and post. The PRC can consider anything they want to be dangerous or harmful to the nation and then block every person there from seeing it. China currently has a literacy rate of 92.2 percent, but the majority of their human rights

Heather Trexler are still being violated. For example, in 2008, when China hosted the Olympics the Chinese government promised, protest parks in Beijing, but most of the applications were withdrawn or vetoed, and the Chinese government detained many of the people who put in the applications. Not only did that stop the progressive people, it also stopped some that were in the background wanting to join the movement but were waiting for someone else to take the first step; when they saw the leaders of the movement being detained they did not go forward with their. For fear of what would happen to them many people sided with the government so they would not be detained or deported. Freedom of speech is just the beginning to all of the violated human rights in China. Freedom of press, religion and movement are also greatly affected. The treatment of the people there is also almost unheard of. The government does not need all of the farmers out in the country side therefore when the people are out on the farms and the government does not have as much control as they do when people live in cities the government closes schools that are in the rural areas in hopes of moving more people to the cities. When people are in the cities the government can control what food they get when they get it, and how much they get. They also have more control over where the people live and work. By simply looking at China and their policies one can clearly see that increased literacy rates do not help the people socially or politically. Now, lets take a look at Egypt, they have a 72 percent literacy rate and their government violates many of the same human rights that the Chinese government violates. The only difference is that the people there know what is

Heather Trexler happening to them is wrong and they also know that in many other parts of the world people are not being treated like them. Their government also is printing in the newspapers that strong government is great and the government is only do what is best for the people, and the people there are reading that, but they are reading on a deeper level and they are forming their own opinions on what the government is saying. For the past few years and still currently Egyptian people have not been at peace with their government. There has been protest after protest and governments have been overthrown by the masses. The problem there is not that people do not know what is going on, they are clearly aware of how horribly their government treats them; the problem is that they do not know how to change their situation for the better, and that is why although they have had social and political change their overall situation has not varied greatly from one leader to the next. We have looked at two different countries with significantly different literacy rates now and we can see from all the information that the two are not much different even though the literacy rates are. They both are still being treated poorly by their government, one is trying to change and the other is simply settling. From this it is evident that literacy is not power. If literacy were power China would be much better off than Egypt right now. Their people would have much more freedoms and so poorly the government would not treat the people in the rural communities. If literacy is defined as simply being able to read the words for face value then literacy will never bring about power and change;

Heather Trexler the only way literacy is power is if literacy is defined as being able to read for deeper understanding.