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The Canadian Council on Learning recently released Reading the Future, the first national report that provides detailed estimates of Canadian adult literacy levels through 2031.
In 2008, almost half of adult Canadians (48%) are estimated to be below the internationally accepted literacy standard for coping in a modern society. That proportion will remain virtually unchanged over the next two decades, and with population growth, the number of Canadian adults with low literacy will rise from 12 million to more than 15 million.
“How did we get to this point?” is the common reaction to this study. Four answers to that question will provide cautionary tales. They will help us in future to avoid pitfalls of the past. All four answers are based on faulty assumptions that our society has made.
First assumption: demands on essential skills, including literacy, will be similar in the future to those of the past and present. In fact, as economies and societies evolve ever more rapidly and adapt new technologies, the skills bar is raised ever higher. The level of literacy and related skills that sufficed in the post-war period may not today.
Second assumption: continuously improving education systems would remedy deficiencies over time because younger, better trained cohorts will displace their parents and grandparents.
In fact, while it is true that each generation is more highly educated in Canada than its predecessor, this does not solve the issue. That younger cohort is smaller and shrinking; the older cohort is large and growing—and will grow more as life expectancy improves.
Gains through more education, then, are insufficient to outweigh demographic shifts.
In addition, loss of skills among adults occurs at a rapid rate: skills, including literacy, that are acquired through a firm educational foundation at school are not retained unless reinforced in homes, communities, and workplaces throughout the lifespan. Lifelong and life-broad learning must take wing in Canada.
Third assumption: continuous transfer of skills and intellectual assets from developing countries to Canada through immigration would obviate the need for cohesive, long-term development of homegrown human capital.
In fact, many immigrants do have higher levels of educational attainment than those who are Canadian-born; however, they have significantly lower levels of literacy in the languages of this country. Therefore, the highest levels of immigration in the world still would not suffice to provide the skills Canada will require over coming decades.
Fourth assumption: governments have the capacity to remedy all these shortfalls and problems. In fact, we live in an era in which there is increasing emphasis on self-management and self-direction. People today are striving for much more autonomy and self-sufficiency. A prime motivation, for example, for seniors to retain essential skills like literacy is their desire to remain autonomous and dignified.
Governments can only solve an issue as profound as the literacy challenge with strong partnerships across society. For this reason, the literacy challenges in modern societies should be spurs to all—beginning with parents reading to children; moving to individual readers; municipalities providing the infrastructure for learning communities; employers and worker advocates collaborating on workplace learning opportunities; and educators supporting all these with their accumulated wisdom and expertise.
The literacy projections of CCL reported in Reading the Future are based on current demographic trends and current conditions. We fervently hope that these conditions change for the better through expression of a Canadian culture of lifelong learning—so that CCL turns out to be wrong in its estimates for the future.
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