ABSTRACT
Man is programmed biologically to speak, with parts of the brain pre-wired for speech and language. This is why children learn to speak when in an environment where they can listen and speak and are spoken to. Speech evolved over 200,000 years but writing was invented about 4,000 years ago. Writing and reading are not innate skills which is why they have to be explicitly taught. Throughout history only a minority of individuals were literate. During the twentieth century universal education became the norm and compulsory in most industrialised and developed countries. Basic literacy is now considered a birthright for the majority of humanity. However, various international studies show that a quarter of the population of some of the world’s richest countries still have low literacy levels.
