Poziom wczesnej alfabetyzacji a jakość życia w dorosłości

Abstract

The basic functional literacy, i.e. understanding simple textual relations in native language written texts, is an elementary ability which determines access to the resources of the symbolic culture. The author of the article presents the results of research conducted among persons who left the elementary school in 1972, in the Torunski and Włocławski poviats. The majority of those persons were surveyed in 1988, at the age of 30, and after ten years, at the age of 40. The author shows the direct and indirect effects of high and low levels of literacy, observed and reported in the survey. The presented data includes the events of life, level of life, elements of life quality and world-experiencing, and the respondents’ changing positions in the social structure. The research shows that the level of education, including the elementary-school-leaving level of functional literacy, was a determinant of the later placement of the respondents in the social structure. It was also a determinant of the level and quality of adult life. Moreover, this factor influenced the educational and life paths of the respondents’ children: they were significantly more advantageous in the group of subjects who in 1972 presented a high level of literacy.