Rampant illiteracy

Category: Newspaper article

I sent this article to 'The Ottawa Citizen' on Wednesday, March 14, 2007

I recently read some shocking statistics on how few people read newspapers let alone books.

A May 2005 survey conducted by ABC Canada has shown that 42 percent of Canadians, aged 16 to 65, scored at literacy Levels 1 and 2. This is deemed below the minimum of what is suitable for coping with the demands of everyday life and work.

Level 1 literacy skill means a person is unable to read, for example, information on a medicine bottle. Level 2 means the person can only deal with simple printed material, and has difficulty facing new demands or tasks at work or in the community.

These statistics don’t even take into account the low proportion of Canadians who can’t do simple arithmetic.

Given that the results of a similar study released in 1994 which showed near identical results, there is no reason to believe this problem is going away.

With low-skilled labour, such as production or assembly line jobs, gradually being farmed out to foreign countries such as Mexico, China and India, and as unemployment soars, low literacy rates will become a huge burden on the public purse in the years to come. This alone should give incentives to Governments at all levels to tackle this very serious issue.