Sunday May 21, 2006
Literacy means more than reading words
Canada has one of the highest literacy standards in the world. The CIA World Factbook gives Canada 99 per cent literacy for both males and females over the age of 15.
That might make one wonder why Canada Post would offer Literacy Awards. (Nominations close May 26; to learn more, try www.canadapost.ca/literacyawards=\”#000000\”> or your local post office.)
Other organizations are less optimistic. World Literacy of Canada estimates that 22 per cent of Canadians have difficulty dealing with written materials.
I asked my wife if she knew anyone who was illiterate. “I don\’t know anyone who can\’t read,” she replied. “But I know people who have trouble understanding what they read.”
You\’re reading this column. You wouldn\’t if you couldn\’t read, or couldn\’t process the ideas conveyed by the words I use. You will, therefore, find it almost impossible to imagine the world inhabited by those who lack literacy.
A friend who has taught in China, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, Stephen Roney, helped me understand what illiteracy can feel like. Despite being an English teacher, he said, “I have experienced illiteracy quite often in my life. Any of us who travel to a non-English speaking land may have had the same experience. Trying to figure out how to manage bare necessities when you cannot read shop signs; being asked to fill out and sign forms you cannot read, involving legal consequences you cannot guess; being lost and unable to read maps or street signs…
“To get the full effect, you have to travel to some place that does not even use our Roman alphabet…”
Steve referred to locations that attract few tourists, such as the interior of China, or Laos. But you can get equally bewildered deciphering Greek or Russian alphabets. Or in tourist-happy Thailand, which uses 72 characters in its script, none of which resembles any letter you ever saw before.
You feel helpless, vulnerable.
“You learn to get by,” Steve says from experience. “You develop strategies. But it sure limits your life.”
Ways of thinking
Statistics Canada estimates that as many as eight million Canadian “do not have the literacy skills necessary to prosper in a knowledge-based society and economy.”
Let\’s put that in plain words. The challenge today is not simply to decipher a text, but to understand and work with it.
I had a boss once who insisted that people thought in words. Before hiring any new staff, he tested their vocabulary. “The more words you have, the more tools you have to think with,” he insisted.
I wouldn\’t go that far. Even then, I believed that it was possible to think in graphic and visual terms, as well as verbal. Indeed, today, computer graphics expect users to respond to icons, not to words.
But he was right that words enable us to organize our thoughts – whether we conceive those thoughts in words or in images. We need words to explain to ourselves why those images matter, and why they make sense, before we can attempt to explain them to others.
Ottawa writer Antonia Morton fulminates against sloppy writing, and the sloppy thinking that it reveals.
"In North America today, we have this seductive notion (probably some hangover from the \’60s) that baring the heart with true sincerity excuses all defects of style. The idea, apparently, is that even if your letter, web site, brochure, report, or whatever is ill-spelled, grammatically inept, and almost incomprehensible — still no reader should be so churlish as to complain, because your writing is a faithful representation of who you really are inside.”
Perhaps, in fact, it faithfully represents your inner ineptness and lack of comprehension.
Economic consequences
People with low literacy typically also have low income and low responsibility. Compare the unemployment rate for Canadians with the lowest literacy skills (26 per cent) with the highest literacy (four per cent).
That inequality is even more evident on a world scale. Literacy levels and average per capita incomes walk hand in hand. In Nepal, for example, 50 per cent of the people live on $1 a day or less. Nepal also has the world\’s lowest literacy rate for women (13 per cent) and the fourth lowest rate for men (28 per cent).
Tragically, poor countries often pour twice as much into their military as into their education. Throughout South Asia, education averages 1.9 per cent of GNP; military spending averages 3.8 per cent. In Pakistan, it\’s 7 per cent; Pakistan has 50 per cent more soldiers than teachers.
But Canada should not feel complacent. Economic forecasts suggest that half of new Canadian jobs will require at least 16 years of education – high school graduation plus four years additional training.
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As technology changes, so does the nature of literacy. Increasingly, it is more than just words. “Numeracy, the ability to interpret numerical data, is a key communications skill,” writes Beatrice Baker of Ottawa.
Baker teaches workshops on numeracy. “It helps individuals make decisions — whether they involve buying a car, acquiring a mortgage, or deciding to retire early,” she explains.
“Governments, organizations and businesses use numbers not only to make decisions, but to persuade populations. And the individuals in those populations need to be able to assess the worth and validity of arguments based on numerical data, so that they can participate in the decision making, protest the decisions, or reject the arguments.”
She concludes: “If numerical data is poorly presented (or worse, deliberately and unethically misrepresented), people who lack numeracy skills (a great many, even highly educated people) simply accept the arguments based on those presentations.
“As with verbal illiteracy, many people are too embarrassed to admit that they don\’t understand.”
Canada Post\’s Literacy Awards – for individuals, educators, community and business leadership – won\’t solve the problems eight million Canadians have in understanding words and numbers. But at least they draw our attention to the problem.
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Copyright © 2006 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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