The stereotypical ‘illiterate’ in many such presentations was not a person looking for an opportunity to upgrade his or her education—not even one who would avail of such an opportunity if it were presented; in many instances, the whole 16 or 24 or 37 percent (depending on which source was cited) were portrayed as needing, first and foremost, moral and emotional support to boost their fragile self-esteem. Not only were educational programs not necessarily the answer; most illiterates, it was either implied or explicitly stated, were too ashamed of their ‘handicap’ to openly admit to it and join a program. For many of those not hindered by such shame, bad memories of their initial schooling were assumed to have made them forever averse to formal education.

It is not disputed that there is an element of truth in such presentations; in an overwhelmingly literate society, illiteracy is stigmatized—as, indeed, is undereducation, regardless of literacy ability. The problem, however, is that these presentations are stereotypes— that is, from a limited number of cases and examples, generalizations are made about an entire demographic category. And generalizations which suggest that undereducated or low literate adults are too ashamed to do anything about it, for example, are simply not borne out by the evidence of literacy campaigns themselves.

It has been demonstrated many times over the past two decades that, when the public is given to believe that educational assistance will be made available—whether through literacy and upgrading programs or individual tutoring—the response is overwhelming. The most famous examples include the experience of the British literacy campaign (1975-1977) where more than 45,000 adults sought help through a national telephone referral service. In the first two years of the campaign, well over 100,000 adults had sought help nationally and locally (Jones and Charnley, undated). Prior to the campaign, only around 5,000 adults had been receiving any kind of basic education provision (Haviland, 1973). A more recent highly publicized example is that of Project Literacy U.S. (PLUS), a literacy campaign effort launched by the American broadcasters PBS and ABC in 1986. During the first two weeks alone of the PLUS campaign, the national telephone literacy referral service took 35,000 calls. Response to the campaign overwhelmed local providers and, in both New York and Chicago, for example, programs had to close their doors to new students and tutors less than a month into the two-year campaign (Business Council for Effective Literacy, October 1986).