graphic of a girl holding a book

THE LITERACY ENQUIRER

 graphic of a boy holding a book

Concerned Literacy Workers speak out about...

OCTOBER 2004

The Official Story: Whose story is it anyway?

by Guy Ewing

Inside

p.2: Official Stories
...The Official Story: Whose story is it anyway?
...The IALSS: Whose story will it tell?
...The Adult Education Review: Another home, another official story?
p. 3: Literacy Work
...Literacy One Book at a Time: A literacy worker's story
...Can I Be Replaced by Technology? A literacy worker's query
...Defying Categories: A literacy learner's story
...What is the Question? Research-practitioner queries

p. 4: Philosophical Enquirier
...Derrida: What does Jacques have to do with literacy?
...Literacy for Social Change
... PoMo Cloze Contest

p. 5: Alternative Workplace
...5 Salaries
...Teacher-Activists: A story about education reform
... Learning about worker rights
... Practitioner Knowledge: A story about translation
... Masthead: who made this newspaper

The official story

People come to literacy programs, receive training services, and, for the most part, go on to employment or further training and education. (See the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities Literacy and Basic Skills Program 2003- 2004 Annual Report.)

An unofficial story

Mira comes to a literacy program, joins a learning group, gains confidence, learns to find the town that she comes from on a map, participates in an ongoing discussion about moral relativism at her learning group, starts keeping a journal, reads out loud in the group, starts finding it easier to read the flyers and notices from the city that come in her mail, starts sharing picture books with her grandchild, drops out of the program for a while to take care of her sick sister, comes back. (See Mira.)

Some questions about the official story and all of the unofficial stories

  • Why is Mira's story invisible in the official story?
  • Wouldn't people value literacy programs more, and understand them better, if Mira's story were visible in the official story?
  • What can we do to make Mira's story, and all of the other unofficial stories, visible?

Two ideas for making the unofficial stories visible

  • Tell the unofficial stories
  • Work to change the current policy framework so that it can officially validate and support a broad range of learning opportunities and programming flexibility in literacy programs.

Literacy is an integral part of lifelong learning, not just a prerequisite set of skills. Change the official story so that it can acknowledge this reality.graphic - end of article decoration

EXPERIENCE IS KNOWLEDGE

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

EXPERIENCE YOUR POWER

...SPEAK OUT