Winter 2005

Literacy, the universe, and everything …

Literacy as an Integrated Issue

LITERACY WORKERS! Are you frustrated at seeing your learners struggle with a range of barriers that undermine their ability to achieve their literacy goals? Do you ever think that if literacy students had decent living wages or social assistance incomes, affordable quality childcare, accessible health information and support, counselling and so on, they could make more consistent progress on their learning goals? Do you spend time helping your students find their way through systems – getting housing, getting legal aid, getting social assistance, getting health information they can understand, relating to their kids' schools, and so on, even if it's “not your job”?

Most literacy workers feel they have no choice but to address literacy as an integrated issue. Even if our mandate is clearly limited to teaching reading and writing, we usually end up helping our students with a range of real-life challenges that can and do undermine progress toward learning goals. Vital social services that used to help people with these issues have disappeared or been cut back. Unfortunately, from the funder's perspective helping students clear the deck for their learning doesn't usually count as a legitimate activity even though it is a necessary step in acquiring the skills they need.

Most educationally-disadvantaged people are disadvantaged in other ways as well. Low literacy is interconnected with systemic issues such as poverty and discrimination as well as other social disadvantages like unemployment, disability, abuse, lack of family supports, homelessness, poor physical and/or mental health, regional disparities, and more. Trying to address it in isolation from other issues – in the lives of individual students and in the policy development process at every level — makes it an uphill battle to say the least.

The need for integrated approaches to literacy has implications for individuals, families, communities, regions, provinces and territories, and our country.