Competency in military skills is no guarantee of literacy

The Canadian Forces don't have a literacy problem because these days they mostly accept high school graduates. But illiteracy among recent graduates is 17 per cent, according to the Southam Literacy Survey. Arid what about all those soldiers with just grade school education from 20 years ago?

The Canadian armed forces do not, repeat DO NOT, have a literacy problem. And that's official.

A brigadier-general said so in September, 1986. A lieutenant said so again the next month, after days of checking. Then, in September, 1987, after still more inquiries, both a lieutenant-colonel and a lieutenant-commander said so —emphatically.

Then why are roughly two dozen of the forces' brightest non-commissioned officers about to get weeks of special tutoring in reading and writing from literacy instructor Wendy Burton of B.C.'s Fraser Valley College? Burton says the college has provided remedial literacy instruction since 1981 for one small group among those regularly attending the Basic Officer Training course at Chilliwack.

They're senior non-commissioned officers with 15 to 20 years in the military whose reading ability tests below a Grade 9 level, the official cut-off point to be considered literate.

"We have regimental sergeant-majors who are incredibly competent in other areas and can read their orders as well as anyone else can, but they're labelled as functionally illiterate. I just don't accept that label." But she does accept that many of the two dozen NCOs are at a Grade 6 level and need Grade 12 to graduate among the 100 officers Commissioned From the Ranks (CFR).

And to Burton, that suggests the armed forces do have a literacy problem.

"I see the success stories," she says. "I see the ones who have risen through the ranks. I don't see the common soldier at all but we can see that the military has a problem with reading and writing. It's obvious." Not to the folks at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.

Here's what their research shows:

• The educational levels of recruits have soared in the recession-plagued 1980's. Four out of five recently accepted as non-commissioned members—privates and up—have high school graduation or better.
• Real-life literacy problems have been reported from only one specialized navy category that requires skills in higher mathematics.

"It's not a sufficiently serious problem that it permeates very many of the levels within the military," says a personnel specialist.

But the specialist also points out that much of the Canadian forces training is delivered on-the-job where extra instruction can easily be thrown in to compensate for literacy failings.

Results from the Southam Literacy Survey suggest that such instruction is needed on a fairly regular basis in the armed forces. The survey found that one in six of recent high school graduates tested as functionally illiterate.

Studies in the United States armed forces show that military personnel spend two hours a day reading for their job, almost twice as much as their civilian counterparts. The range of reading tasks is also wider.

Military researchers in Canada speculate the armed forces have a "safety valve" of lateral transfers that probably takes care of literacy problems before they burst out in the open.

"If someone is in a technical trade where they're not happy —maybe it's a literacy problem—then they can do what we call 'remuster' and move into another area," says one researcher.

The same researcher also points out that a peacetime army is a giant training machine. Personnel with low literacy have constant opportunities to get help without entering special programs.

Back in Chilliwack, Burton says low literacy is concentrated among personnel who joined two decades ago with such low education that they can't go anywhere else now.