Literacy Lives: How Someone You Probably Never Heard of Deserves the Nobel Prize :: Frank Laubach

Literacy Lives: How Someone You Probably Never Heard of Deserves the Nobel Prize

Huffington Post: 10.21.2017 by Lily Casura

Frank Laubach

I can still remember the first time I learned about Frank Laubach, a Congregationalist minister known in his time as “the apostle to the illiterates,” who almost singlehandedly dragged the developing world into literacy — and for the most practical of reasons.

Sent over — erm, choosing to go — to minister to the warring Moros, a Muslim tribe in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines shortly after WWI broke out, he recognized instantly he had a different problem on his hands, more immediate than the need to share the gospel. No one except the elite were able to read and write, and consequently villagers were being taken advantage of and entrapped on a regular basis by what they didn’t have the means to understand.

For Laubach, who would probably be shocked by the high levels of illiteracy still present in 21st century America, it was second nature to connect the ability to read and write with full participation in civic life. From his autobiography, “Forty Years with the Silent Billion: Adventuring in Literacy:”

“You think it is a pity they cannot read, but the real tragedy is that they have no voice in public affairs, they never vote, they are never represented in any conference, they are the silent victims, the forgotten men, driven like animals, mutely submitting in every age before and since the pyramids were built. It is human weakness not to become aware of suffering until we hear a cry. The illiterate majority of the human race does not know how to make its cry reach us, and we never dream how (much) these millions suffer.”

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By the time Laubach died at 85 years old in 1970, his record of achievements was legendary:

~ He had traveled to 103 countries;

~ Created literacy primers in 313 languages;

~ Written 43 books;

~ Opened literacy and journalism centers at colleges throughout the United States;

~ Was on the cover of “Time” magazine; and was

~ Celebrated by luminaries as “the foremost teacher of our time,” “the father of literacy,” and “one of the top five men in the world today.” 

ProLiteracy

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