TED Conversations

Richard Stack

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Improving female literacy in the maternal language as a significant contribution to helping women to control their fertility

Literacy is the ability to decode and encode the language you already know. In the "advanced" world it is taken for granted. In the "Third World" it is not; most established institutions insisting on teaching the lingua franca, or the colonial language, or English, rather than the languages people actually speak..

This practice produces an inevitably secondrate literacy, (and thus an underclass,) for all but the most gifted and wealthy, for it involves learning a new language at the same time as alphabetical coding and decoding, rather than, as in the developed world, one AFTER the other,

Making the transition to literacy in a language you don't ALREADY know is a mistake, since it abandons the obvious idea that you can hear what you are reading. It means that you are condemned to exerting yourself at great length to master the colonial/national language and its systems, or to flounder about in a language of which you know only the most rudimentary parts, and probably none of the idioms, thus permanently marking out your "class" and making any real literacy in that language highly unlikely

Female literacy is, as much research shows, the SOLE conistent correlate to drops in fertility. Worldwide, they march together (see Connelly, Fatal Misconception, a magisterial history of the brutal, forcible and misguided efforts by governments and NGOs at birth control).

The answer, then, for those .concerned to remedy the disempowerment of a large proportion of women in relation to family planning, is to promote literacy in the maternal language, the mother tongue. And, therefore, to devise a program readily translatable into ANY alphabetic language, to be offered to women who show up to neo-natal clinics, designed so that any native speaker of the given language could readily supply the local elements of the program. This program would spread (like TED) like wildfire.

It would be a perfect embodiment of the global mission of the Gates Foundation.


Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • J M

    • +1
    Jul 13 2012: Why should "women be helped to control their fertility"?

    If one advocates "population control" then advocate _that._ But increasing female infidelity --which is what female "empowerment" actually does-- doesn't actually "control population" best.

    Female infidelity is not the way to create "equality"[for all] and "peace" or properly raised [nurtured, educated] human children; it is the catalyst (for most negatives, eg competition and greed) and a type of *abuse.* _Female infidelity is a symptom of females searching out "better" men--on instinct._ When females are "empowered" MOST males become not good enough --hence infidelity increases with all the attendant problems there in.

    Why shouldn't high IQ men "control" things? Just like parents. Once the masses can be replaced with tech they can be phased out. That's the best way to end cruelty and stupidity; the best way to create "progress".

    Males advocating "female empowerment" is a mating display modern males engage in to box out the olde "tournament" victor males of man's past. Ie women's lib is not a thought through method for solving the human condition; it is a mating display /sex strategy by the roosters as they fight over the hen house. (Note the females are still more turned on by the vestigial tourny victor males --especially when ovulating. Ie nothing about this female liberation _tactic_ is working.)
    • Jul 14 2012: JM conflates control over one's fertility with "infidelity". Since it is obvious that JM does not want to hear arguments or listen to facts it is difficult to know how to continue the conversation.
      • J M

        • 0
        Jul 14 2012: I conflate female empowerment /"liberation" with infidelity because that's what it is. ("Infidelity" here means breaking up too not just crypto-'cheating'.)

        It is that because--like I said-- as females get more status their standards go up for what they will 'settle for". But as males try to ascend up to that mark --through competition where only a sliver win and most lose-- the other males[the losers] (and twisted females) pull them down.

        "Control over one's fertility" ...For the male that means controlling the female womb (or eliminating other males, which is a type of control of the womb).

        Neither you or your entire "movement" has established any "facts".

        You have --and you entire movement has-- assertions --which go unchallenged because they hide behind *female sexual value* (and the way this species has always deferred to it). Assertions motivated originally by --as said-- the desire to box out tournament-type (ie more physical or "sexier") males. Now the movement is simply conformity by the intellectually lazy looking for an easy slam dunk politic. It is a 'slam dunk' since "protect the females" (which is what "liberate females" actually means) has never been challenged given female sexual value (and the way this species has always deferred to it).
    • Jul 14 2012: The demographic concept of fertility is more precise than the use of the term in ordinary discourse. It refers to the average number of children produced by women during the period of their fertility, normally taken to mean between 15 and forty or so. The demographic facts - that fertility has gradually dropped to something approaching the replacement level of about 2 in developed societies and is rapidly dropping in the developing world - are very easily verified in a large literature on the subject. JM alleges, quite without any evidence, that drops in fertility represent increases in infidelity, an allegation which on its face seems rather paradoxical. The connection between drops in fertility and drops in female illiteracy are also well documented, as I have indicated. [Comparative fertility rates can be seen at http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=ml&v=31].

      JM's sexual economics, apparently of the jungle variety, might well be applied to a career in primate behavior.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.