• Canuckistan claims Untermenschen "should" be able to read

    From Byker@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 19 12:19:27 2021
    XPost: alt.politics.democrats, talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
    XPost: can.politics

    The article doesn’t explicitly state it, but we all know that "people who can’t read" is a codeword for "people of colo(u)r." This goes back to the days of slavery, when slavemasters would get mad because their slaves couldn’t
    read the instructions about what they were supposed to be doing around the house. "A lot of untapped potential." LOL! Go ahead, get educated -- and
    then be turned away for being "overqualified." "Low literacy affects making informed democratic decisions." Hear THAT, Democrats? --------------------------------------------------
    Nearly half of adult Canadians struggle with literacy — and that's bad for the economy

    CBC Radio
    Jan 17, 2021

    Poor reading and writing skills make up a literacy gap in Canada. Experts
    say the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not require the daily use of reading comprehension and information synthesis skills.

    Nearly half of Canada's population has a big roadblock ahead of them when it comes to post-pandemic economic recovery — and it's not the novel
    coronavirus but a fundamental set of skills for daily life.

    Poor reading, writing and numeracy skills in adults make up a literacy gap
    in Canada with consequences for both democracy and the economy. Experts say
    the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not
    require the daily use of reading comprehension and information synthesis skills.

    In short, literacy is not like riding a bike. While Canadians tend to leave
    the high school level with these skills, it takes practice to retain them
    and Canada's economy does not provide the opportunity to do that for many workers.

    Despite relatively high education rates, an analysis of international assessments by Statistics Canada in 2013 showed that more than one in six
    adult Canadians fell short of passing the most basic set of literacy tests.

    The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) looks at how adults process information and how they use literacy,
    mathematics and problem solving both at home and at work.

    If you're working in a particular role, whatever it is, where reading and writing isn't necessarily a big part of the job, those skills may erode over time.
    - Michael Burt, Conference Board of Canada

    Canada's results, which have not substantially changed since the first
    PIACC, show that many in this country are unable to complete ordinary tasks, such as filling out a job application, reading a news article or sending an email.

    About half the adult population fell short of passing a high school level of assessment, by testing the ability to digest lengthier and more complex
    texts while processing the information accurately.

    "Generally speaking, we're below average compared to other OECD
    [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries in terms
    of adult literacy, numeracy skills," said Michael Burt, an economist with
    the Conference Board of Canada.

    Conference Board of Canada economist Michael Burt points to the country's resource-based economy as one reason for lower literacy rates. Canadians
    aren't always forced to read and write as much to support themselves economically. (CBC)
    The not-for-profit research organization gave Canada a "C" grade in adult literacy back in 2014.

    "I think it really boils down to [Canadians] have a competitiveness
    challenge," he told CBC Radio's Cost of Living. "We cannot stand still
    because our competitors certainly are not."

    Countries that score higher than Canada in the international skills
    assessment, which Statistics Canada participates in, include Japan,
    Australia, Sweden, Finland and Holland.

    The literacy gap is not limited to immigrants

    Unsurprisingly, new Canadians with a native language other than English or French appear in the lowest literacy category at a higher rate than their Canadian-born counterparts.

    In some provinces, immigrants with a very high literacy score actually represented a higher proportion than the Canadian-born population.
    Statistics Canada's analysis of the PIAAC data indicated that more
    "established immigrants," who had been in Canada longer, were represented in the lowest literacy groups at roughly the same proportion as those born in
    the country.

    However, the lowest-scoring groups also include a significant number of Indigenous people in Canada, as well as English and French speakers born in this country.

    It's important to separate out those born in Canada from those born abroad, because while some immigrants may struggle with a new language, a
    significant number also have extensive job experience and education and are highly skilled in their original languages.

    Those born and raised in Canada who struggle with language, math and
    computer proficiency, on the other hand, are less visible because, as
    advocates put it, they're very good at "faking it."

    "They tend to hide this fact from everyone because of the fear of being
    called names," said Monica Das, executive director of Project Adult Literacy Society (PALS) in Edmonton.

    "'Dumb, stupid, crazy, handicapped' and other words are used to describe you
    as soon as you identify yourself as someone who struggles with reading and writing."

    Deep 'shame' felt by native English speakers

    Native English speakers make up about half of the clients who turn to PALS
    for help, Das said.

    Eddy Piché, 59, is one of them.

    The Edmontonian spent nearly 30 years driving trucks all over Ontario and Alberta before coming to terms with what he called his "shame."

    "Some people, like, come out of college, university, they use big words and
    all that stuff," Piché said. "They make you feel you really can't do this, can't do that. You feel shame."

    Eddy Piché's options for work were limited because with lower literacy
    skills, he couldn't fill out job applications. Retraining allowed him to
    move from driving a truck into a job as a social worker, but he had to
    overcome the 'shame' of illiteracy. (Submitted by Eddy Piché)
    As a child, Piché said, it always took him 10 extra minutes to learn everything. He describes those extra minutes, every time, as enough to set
    him back for life.

    "In the old days, like in the 1970s, if you had a hard time learning and
    stuff, like, they put you back. They put you in special ed classes," he recalled.

    Piché said because he was in special education, no one ever bothered to
    teach him how to read and write.

    As a truck driver, he excelled by memorizing landmarks instead of reading
    road signs.

    At the age of 48, Piché decided to go back to school to become a social
    worker after overcoming significant setbacks in his life — including mental illness and addiction.

    At first, he relied on his wife to help write his papers. Eventually Piché enrolled in Edmonton's PALS program and met with a volunteer tutor each week
    to work on his reading comprehension and writing skills.

    Today, he works with homeless and other marginalized populations.

    "Some people never gave up on me, so I do the same thing. I don't give up," Piché told The Cost of Living. "My motto is never leave anybody behind.
    That's why I do social work."

    Eddy Piché's ability to retrain and pivot is a success story, but on its own it does not scale up to solve Canada's problem with literacy.

    For years, Canada had an abundance of high-paying jobs that didn't require
    high levels of literacy, such as natural resource-based work, said the Conference Board of Canada's Burt.

    "Because of the nature of our economy, things like mining and forestry are
    more prominent in our economy than some of our OECD peers," he explained in
    a comparison to countries such as Japan or Sweden.

    Due to these economic factors, even if the Canadian education system is producing graduates with high enough literacy scores, these skills sets can atrophy.

    "If you're working in a particular role, whatever it is, where reading and writing isn't necessarily a big part of the job, those skills may erode over time," Burt said.

    Financial incentives also distort whether Canadians complete their
    education, which would impact the level of their literacy skills as they
    enter the workforce to try for higher wages.

    Ontario pours $185-million into adult literacy

    At the height of the oil boom, Alberta had a higher high school dropout rate than several other provinces. But the portion of the population with less education now has fewer places to go as changes to the economy accelerate,
    Burt said.

    "The oil and gas sector is not the growth driver for the economy as it was
    five years ago," the economist said. "The dynamics around that have changed considerably in recent years. On top of that, we're looking at the impacts
    of digital technologies and automation on the workforce."

    As many as one in five jobs in Canada are at risk of being automated,
    according to the Conference Board of Canada.

    Some Canadians filling those "high-risk, low-mobility" jobs most susceptible
    to automation would have difficulty shifting to work that requires literacy; they tend to come from some of the country's largest industries, such as manufacturing, food services, accommodation, retail and construction.

    Literacy advocates worry some children will fall behind

    "These are people whose jobs are at risk to automation, and they have
    limited ability to move over to other jobs that are at lower risk," Burt explained.

    "Basically, there's a real need to to think about how skills requirements
    are changing in the workforce," he said. "How do we adequately prepare
    people for entering the workforce and how do we ensure that there are good transition pathways available for people already in the workforce today?"

    Low literacy affects making informed democratic decisions

    Another challenge that comes with low literacy is the difficulty in understanding information needed to make informed decisions, both in daily
    life and at the ballot box.

    Forty-nine per cent of the Canadian population does not hit a level of
    literacy that can "disregard irrelevant or inappropriate content" to
    accurately answer questions about something they have read.

    The impact of this has, perhaps, become more clear with the rise of online disinformation. On the internet, there's no shortage of bad information to
    push people into making badly informed decisions. Researchers say those who struggle with reading and writing tend to also perform poorly on the digital front.

    Samantha Bradshaw, a a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab
    at Stanford University in California, studies the impact of social media misinformation and told Cost of Living that tackling digital literacy is
    just as important as traditional books on paper.

    Stanford University researcher Samantha Bradshaw says low literacy makes it harder to understand digital information — and that's a problem for making decisions in a democracy. (Fisher Studios Ltd./Submitted by Samantha
    Bradshaw)
    "Consuming content digitally is increasingly more a part of our media diet
    and how we get information about politics," Bradshaw said, adding that big
    tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to face more
    government scrutiny from regulators.

    According to Bradshaw, it's critical for anyone making decisions affecting today's democratic institutions to understand both how the information they
    get online is delivered to them and the biases that are present.

    "So being able to understand both the mechanisms through which information
    is delivered to us through these online systems, the biases that exist
    within the technology, as well as having the literacy skills to communicate,
    to interpret, to understand the argumentation and the ways in which content
    and narrations are being told through an online digital media," she said.

    A lot of untapped potential

    There's no magic solution to narrowing Canada's literacy gap.

    Education and training play a role, but workers and employers also need to
    put a higher premium on soft skills, such as reading comprehension and communication, Burt said.

    "I think part of it is understanding what skills make people more
    resilient," he said.

    The good news is those with low literacy skills — who are most at risk of losing their jobs — have a lot of untapped potential, according to those working in the sector.

    Eddy Piché serves as an example.

    His skill set in problem-solving was a great fit for social work, even
    before he returned to school to upgrade his credentials.

    But because he was unable to fill out a job application, write a caseload report or respond to emails, his options to capitalize on those soft skills
    to gain employment were severely limited.

    "People forget to realize that this adult has been able to support himself
    all this time without someone else knowing that he can't read or write,"
    said Monica Das with PALS in Edmonton.

    "You should appreciate the amount of skills that this person has."

    https://tinyurl.com/yysrjcwd

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