Foreword

This booklet contains articles about literacy that originally appeared in newspapers across Canada during September, 1987. Many are based on the extensive findings of a national literacy survey of 2,398 Canadian adults commissioned by Southam Inc. While the survey provided the first real statistic about the state of literacy in the country, interviews with more than 100 literacy workers and learners also put a human face on a problem that affects one in four adults.

Illiteracy has often been called the hidden problem. In Canada, it's not so much hidden as ignored. As these articles make clear, both the provinces and the federal government have received repeated warnings about widespread problems with reading and writing.

But Canadians don't have to wait for government to act. Individuals can make a difference. Some ways you can help are described in this booklet.

What the reader won't find here, however, is a simple answer: that low literacy can be blamed on a lack of phonics in the primary grades, or on immigration, or on some ill-defined "learning disabilites".

If the solution to literacy were that simple, Canada wouldn't have five million adults who need help.

Peter Calamai

ISBN 0-9693221-0-0

C.l.P. 374.01