Five million Canadians functionally illiterate

Five million Canadians cannot read, write or handle numbers well enough to meet the literacy demands of today's society -- and one-third are high school graduates.

Five million adult Canadians are marching against their will in an army of illiterates.

But they are an army in numbers only. They have no leaders, no power, little support, few weapons and no idea where they are headed.

Darkness and hopelessness are usually their banners.

"No one who can read knows our anger," says one illiterate.

"You're left in the dark. You just try to carry on the best you can. We're living in a different world." An exclusive nationwide survey in 1987 disclosed that five million Canadians cannot read, write or use numbers well enough to meet the literacy demands of today's society —and one-third are high school graduates.

Half of these functional illiterates have been left out of past official estimates of illiteracy because they reached Grade 9 or better, the federal government's arbitrary definition of being literate.

The $295, 000 Southam Literacy Survey, financed by Southam Inc., tested 2,398 adults in their homes in May and June with a battery of more than 40 literacy-related questions.

It actually identified 4.5 million Canadian residents who fail to reach a minimum level of functional literacy suggested by a national panel representing a cross-section of Canadians.

But Southam's researchers estimate they did not reach at least 500,000 more illiterate adults among unsurveyed groups of prisoners, transients, the mentally retarded, natives on reserves, people living north of the 60th parallel and all immigrants unable to speak either of Canada's official languages.

Even without this extra half million, 24 per cent of Canadian residents 18 and older are illiterate in English or French. Exduding all immigrants, illiteracy still affects 22 per cent of Canadian-born adults -- more than one in five.

The picture is not totally black. Many illiterates say they are content with their limited reading and writing skills, even though half must get help from family or friends for tasks.

like reading government notices or product labels in supermarkets.

The survey's definition of functional literacy was the ability to use printed and written information to function in society. Experts agree this approach is more relevant today than the traditional definition of just being able to sign a name or read a simple sentence.

That definition produced these survey findings:

• Illiteracy increases from west to east, rising from a low of 17 per cent among adults in British Columbia to an astonishing high of 44 per cent in Newfoundland;
• Illiteracy is higher among francophones than anglophones -- 29 per cent to 23 per cent— but the gap is biggest among the oldest and vanishes among the young;
• Nearly half of the 4.5 million functional illiterates identified in the survey are 55 or older, even though this group only accounts for 29 per cent of the total population;
• Half of the illiterates say they went to high school and one-third say they graduated. One in 12 who claimed to be university graduates still tested as functionally illiterate;
• Poverty and education play major roles in deciding whether illiteracy is transmitted from one generation to the next. The children of the jobless, the working class and the poorly educated are much more liable to be illiterate;
• Illiteracy is higher among men than women, 53.5 to 46.5 per cent.

In eight centres across Canada, additional people were interviewed to provide more detailed results: Vancouver scored best with 14 per cent functional illiteracy and Edmonton the worst with 33 per cent. But Vancouver had twice as many university graduates as the national average while relatively few Edmontonians went beyond high school.

Residents of Saint John, NB., were more likely than the national average to say they needed help with common reading and writing tasks; 30 per cent were classified as functionally illiterate.