On 12 May 2010 07:33, Antonio Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > Sometime back I had few posts on the Goanet in which I had expressed my > opinion that by 1961, > 90% of Goan catholics were either illiterate or quasi illiterate. No one > seems to have challenged > the veracity of this figure on illiteracy in Glorious Goa of 1961.
Where did you get your figures of literacy from? How did it compare with the rest of India (and South Asia) at the relevant period of time? What was the level of literacy, say, for the estimated 100,000 Goan migrants in Bombay of the 1960s? If this were taken into account, would the figure work out differently? Assuming that " by 1961, 90% of Goan catholics were either illiterate or quasi illiterate" how did Goa become on f the States with the highest literacy in India? Was it just because of the expansion of primary schools (and a few colleges) in the 1960s and thereafter? Lastly, you might well be right, but aren't you assuming that the prime responsibility of the priests was to educate society? I'm not sure this was the case, or even that the attitude towards the unquestionable necessity of education for all was the same as it is now. FN
