What works to combat illiteracy

From books to broccoli, literacy groups have devised dozens of approaches that work.

1. YES CANADA

Sally is reviewing calculations for volume and area, Tom is practicing fractions, Daryl is laboring at prepositions, Lee is brushing up sentence composition, Robert is finding reasoning a breeze, Diana is getting help on the colon and semicolon and Doug is marking test answers on a card that can be read by a scanner.

Heather Armstrong is teaching all seven, helped by one human assistant and several hundred microchips in 10 computers.

Just as the publicity claims, YES (Youth Employment Skills) Canada in St. Catharines, Ont. operates like an electronic one-room schoolhouse, right down to the instant marking.

"Only 35 per cent," says a downcast Doug when the scanner spews out his test grade.

It's just a temporary setback in the newest approach to tackling the problem of jobless youth between 16 and 24. Similar projects started in spring 1987 in Halifax, Winnipeg and Vancouver, largely financed by a $3.1-million federal grant.

Early results are encouraging. The dropout rate is 13 per cent and about two-thirds of the first participants in the three-month program now have jobs.

"We don't subsidize the associates to attend—that's almost an article of faith with us," says spokesman Karen Englander.

Literacy is only part of the YES Canada package, which also emphasizes job skills and leadership.

"I sell motivation and attitude to employers very strongly. They're not getting just another person off the street," says employment coordinator Dianne Granacki.