A recent survey reported on by ABC news reveals that nearly half of all Australians are below the acceptable benchmark for understanding their own language. I touched on this data in a previous post, where I expressed astonishment in the size of that number. In a press release I read today Frontier College, Canada’s original literacy organization, is calling for greater attention to be paid toward literacy rates in our country. In the press release they indicate that, “Forty-two percent of adult Canadians don’t have the literacy skills they need to participate in today’s workforce.” The data is drawn from the International Adult Literacy Survey done in 2003, and updated in 2005, that indicates that approximately 42% of adult Canadians fall within Levels 1 and 2. Level 3 and higher is considered necessary to function using technology and information found in many of today’s households and workplaces. This data is again discussed in a recent Toronto Star article ‘Education ministers tackle 40% illiteracy rate‘.
When this study uses the term ‘literacy’ it is not talking about the commonly understood meaning ‘being able to read and write’, because we can see from the CIA factbook, Canada has a literacy rate of 99%. The report uses the term to describe how well a person can read and write. Level 1 on the prose literacy scale indicates below middle school skills, while Level 2 indicates below high school skills. To think that half the population of a first world country, and almost half of Canadians, do not possess the literacy skills to function in today’s society is nothing short of frustrating. Despite these numbers that stupefy me, Canada finishes a solid third in world literacy rankings behind Norway (1) and Bermuda (2), and ahead of Switzerland (4) and the United States (5).
The full report can be obtained online for free from Statistics Canada.
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