Illiteracy and Poverty

A recent study conducted in Curaçao, a poor country located in the Southern Caribbean Sea and flanked by the prosperous islands of Aruba and Bonaire, states a strong relationship between functional illiteracy and mental poverty. The study was sponsored by the First Galaxy Bank and executed by an international team of social scientists as part of the Global Illiteracy Combating Program (GICP).

The study shows that the eighty percent mental poverty in Curaçao coincides with the eighty percent functional illiteracy. Information is communicated orally by the disc jockeys of the eighty radio stations that the country possesses and is highly unreliable and contradictory. As a consequence eighty percent of the population is kept uninformed.

Curaçao was formally one of the most prosperous Caribbean islands with the highest standards of education and with a negligible level of illiteracy. Most inhabitants mastered two or three foreign languages in reading, writing, singing and dancing. Historical data demonstrate that the negative trend started with the shortsighted decision some twenty years ago by politicians to cut down the expenditures of the only public library in the country, which was growing at that time and limit the access of the public to printed and electronic information. Some researchers believe that this decision was a malicious conspiracy of politicians to deprive the public from information, but this theory has to be refuted however.

The results of the study were presented in a report to the government of Curaçao, but unfortunately none of the politicians in office could read nor write, with the exception of the President, an old Dutch politician by the name of Balkenende.

(Reference: Alfa Beta Quarterly, December 2025)

K.