Filling the glass?

In Negotiating gaps: adult educators between policy and practices, Tannis Atkinson says,

Around the world, adult educators need to find creative new ways to highlight global inequities in ‘economies of literacy’ (Blommaert, 2008) and to unsettle long-standing patterns of dominance and exclusion. We can start by asking about the origin of our belief that literacy will lead to social inclusion, and that government policies will address inequities. We can also ask how we ourselves benefit from social relations that privilege specific culture- and class-specific literacy practices. But perhaps we also need to ask how we can work towards a world in which it is much more common to ask whose literacies are de-valued, and why.

In Canada, we are looking for partners that will support us in this work. I posted about the Declaration and questions for political parties in September.This network is asking the political parties running in the federal election how they see government policies addressing inequal access to education and their vision of how adult education promotes social inclusion.

The literacy network has received two replies so far.

The first one arrived on September 24 and was from the NDP. They responded in broad terms about the importance of literacy and how they would ensure that money committed to literacy would actually be spent on literacy - no more lapsed funds.

Literacy and basic skills are central to the enjoyment of health, job opportunities and community participation. ...

An NDP government will make adult literacy and skills development a priority, ensuring that the funds devoted to these important programs get spent and working with stakeholders to ensure that Canadians have access the to the skills training and literacy programs they need. ...

Under the guise of directing money to where it was needed most, the Conservatives cut funding for literacy organizations. They argued that resources were being wasted on administration and research, but the reality is that the Conservatives simply allowed a large portion of literacy funding to lapse instead of redirecting it towards new projects.

On the questions of federal leadership and supporting research and professional development, the NDP pledged to return to a model of community development and asset building.They showed that they were familiar with the Conservative arguments for cutting funds and pledged to reverse the cuts.

The NDP recognizes that effective literacy programs require a wide range of activities, including research, information sharing, innovating, and scaling up best practices. We also recognize the reality that organizations have overhead costs, and that without funding for administration many essential tasks can simply not be done. That’s why an NDP government will reverse the Conservatives short-sighted approach to funding and will work with the sector to ensure that core funding is available for the full range of programs necessary. 

On September 30 the Liberals replied. They see literacy as a route to jobs and global competitiveness. They do not mention the role of literacy in community and social participation.

It is critical that Canadians have the opportunity to improve their skills and work credentials, to help meet the needs of a modern economy and to ensure that Canadians have good-paying, middle class jobs.

Lifelong learning and literacy must become a Canada-wide priority to both enhance our standard of living and economic competitiveness in the years ahead because these skills are vital to ensuring employability and success in today’s society.

Today, there are too many hard-working Canadians who are looking to upgrade their skills and find better jobs, but do not have access to the training that they require. A Liberal government will make it easier for adults to get the additional skills they need to acquire and retain good jobs throughout their working lives.

They speak about restoring and increasing funding to the Labour Market Agreements that was cut when the Conservative government implemented the Canada Jobs Grant program.

A $200 million annual increase in funding to be delivered by the provinces and territories and focused on training for workers who are not currently eligible for federal training investment. This will undo Stephen Harper’s cuts in 2014 to the Labour Market Agreements, which help Canadians outside the labour market get the basic literacy and numeracy skills they need to find a decent job.

All the other funding they mention is also tied to employment outcomes.

It is difficult for this party to speak about federal leadership and supporting research as they are the party that closed the National Literacy Secretariat and it seems their thinking hasn't changed since the last time they were in power. They even mention their old cost-cutting justification - accountability - in their response.

Liberals understand the fundamental role that the not-for-profit sector plays in both policy development and program delivery for Canadians. The Liberal Party of Canada is committed to renewing the federal government’s partnership with civil society.

A Liberal government will work in collaboration with non-governmental organizations, including adult education providers and researchers, to explore more effective ways to provide funding for the important work you do. Our party understands that we must improve funding delivery mechanisms to support the not-for-profit sector to achieve accountability, while at the same time providing adequate, predictable, and stable funding.

The federal Liberals and the Ontario Liberals seem to be on the same page when it comes to literacy - that publicly-funded literacy is for those who are focused on employment outcomes and that while the sector is welcome to pursue research and professional development, we are to do that on our own dime.

The parties weren't asked about exclusion of certain literacies from the dominant discourse but they were asked about the linguistic rights of francophones.

The NDP responded with a commitment to linguistic rights and talking about the abolition of the Court Challenges Program.

The NDP is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and to protecting the linguistic rights of Canadians. For Canadians to be able to exercise those rights, the federal government needs to ensure that the proper resources are there. The NDP has called on the government to increase its support for the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages which includes funds for access to education in the minority language.

The NDP was strongly opposed to the abolition of the Court Challenge Program. This program provided essential resources to ensure the protection and enhancement of minority language rights. We also voiced our concerns with the Languages Rights Support Program, as it seems to respond only in part to communities’ needs.

The Liberals made a similar commitment to linguistic rights and talked about cuts to the CBC.

Canada was built on the idea that Francophones should be able to feel at home in this country, regardless of the province in which they live. It is largely due to our duality that we have become a society in which people from diverse cultures, origins, and religions can come, live, and feel at home. ...

Further, a Liberal government will look for opportunities to promote French language and culture, both in Québec and also for Francophones and francophone communities across the country. CBC/Radio-Canada is also a vital national institution that brings Canadians together, promotes and defends our two official languages, and supports our shared culture. Our public broadcaster reflects minority communities and is a vital voice throughout the country. 

They were also asked about using a literacy lens for cross-sectoral policy-making.

The NDP focused their response on working with Indigenous peoples.

Certain populations struggle more with literacy and basic skills than others. Literacy levels and training are certainly of great concern among Indigenous peoples, for instance. That’s why an NDP government supports policies to increase literacy and basic skills among Indigenous peoples, including support for education and ASETS. We will also ensure that literacy and essential skills are considered in other sectors as required.

The Liberals spoke about working across juridictions rather than across sectors and included Indigenous governments as one of those jurisdictions.

A Liberal government will work in partnership with provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous governments to integrate literacy and essential skills development into sectoral policies, where relevant.

So what is it to be literacy people? How should we try to fill our glass on election day?

Hoist by their own petard?

Here is some financial literacy from Unifor for the long, hot election campaign.

You you know that old literacy equals GDP trope that has become the bane of our existence? Perhaps it is true after all and the Harper Government™ financial management woes are a result of lapsing so much of our literacy funding - bwahahahaha!

The PDF of the report is here: http://www.unifor.org/sites/default/files/documents/document/909-harper_economic_critique_eng_0.pdf

Colouring inside the lines

After slashing funding to literacy organizations and chastising the field for not being prepared for the cuts and for way it has frittered away taxpayer dollars on "countless" research papers, the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES) has put out a Call for Concepts for Innovative Training models. As Brigid Hayes points out, it is the first call in two years.

In her most recent post Brigid documents how difficult it is to assess proposals for innovation when the field has very little information about what projects have been funded and the outcomes of those projects. OLES has not done a very good job of posting details and outcomes of the projects they fund.

In any case, as the first of the "innovative" training models involves replicating proven programs in a new place or for new people and the second is about integrating Literacy and Essential Skills (LES) into existing programs, it is only the third option that would allow for any innovation at all and as that model is tied to labour market outcomes rather than educational ones, it is a fairly boxed-in innovation.

Concept Papers must fall under one of the following Innovative Training Models:

• Expansion of a proven LES model: this would include models that have been successfully applied within Canada or outside of Canada that could be replicated in a different region or with a different target audience and/or increased in scale;
• Integration of LES into other programs: application of LES into an existing employment and/or training program; or
• New LES model: development and testing of new approaches with the potential to improve labour market outcomes for Canadians.

Always with the labour market outcomes. Long gone is the idea that literacy is about culture, self-directed learning and community development.

I don't have much more to say. The main point of this post is to tell you to follow Brigid on this issue just in case you missed her blog.

It was a hoax...

Parents need to stop raising their children on the principles that they must beat everyone in their class, that their school needs to rise up the league tables, or for their country to defeat every other nation on Earth in global education rankings.

We need to stop pushing our kids, by Tanith Carey, The Guardian

I read this earlier today and immediately thought about those of us in adult education and our battles against the reduction of student achievements to the human capital profit margin. Here are some excerpts from A Layperson's Guide to PIAAC by Brigid Hayes that explain how this process works in Canada.

We live in an age of accountability, performance measurement, the adage that whatever can be measured matters. PIAAC and its predecessor surveys define what matters for literacy practice in this country. ...

In this country, we seem to have an extraordinary emphasis on the five levels to the exclusion of alternative ways of measuring progress demonstrating progress. Literacy discourse relies heavily on questions of literacy levels, how many hours will it take to move somebody from one level to another. ...

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a shift to have benchmarks that speak almost exclusively of literacy as a work-related practice. Now I would agree that work is where many of us spend most of our time and that workplace practices can contribute to or inhibit the development of literacy practice. But the political discourse in this country has placed literacy as only a workplace and economic issue. Literacy’s role in social cohesion and societal stability is ignored. Other venues for literacy practice and growth, venues such as the community and the family, appear undervalued. ...

We’ve set up a dichotomy between literacy as a social good and literacy as an economic good. Here in Canada, with the jurisdictions split between federal and provincial responsibilities, we have the federal government leading the charge on the economic value of literacy with the provinces focusing on literacy as a form of adult or second chance education. Provinces have been dividing responsibility for literacy from responsibility for workplace training, the latter which is now, more often than not, focused on essential skills.

At the national level, government is focused on results, not necessarily educators or practice. It seems more important to show movement from one level to another. For example, we have funders asking that curriculum focus on one essential skill at a time.

IALS was easy to understand – it mimics grade levels. Levels resemble the grade system that certainly policymakers understand. When I was in government I had a director general say to me, and I quote, “IALS is the ultimate report card,”– he was planning to use it as a means to determine whether we had been successful. ...

PIAAC puts the attention on the individual. Yet the environment in which we are being asked to use the skills is just as important as the skills we have. I could have all the skills in the world only to find that the work environment or personal environment do not demand that I use them. In that case, I am not going to value those skills. By the same token, it’s imperative that we not create barriers of unclear writing and unnecessarily complex text. It’s not just about the individual.

PIAAC and its focus on the individual give short shrift to the challenges faced by adults who are trying to improve their skills. This is not some sort of mechanical process. We need quality programs that are accessible with sufficient funding, teacher training,and resources. Learners need support such as income replacement, childcare, transportation. We need adult friendly programming and institutions. The culture here in Canada values youth education and formal education. This is why adult education sits at the margins. This is why informal education is not valued.

Layperson’s Guide to PIACC, by Brigid Hayes, As I was saying...

Alan Watts

#bringbackcopian - They did!

Copian is back!

It came back in a somewhat reduced state, but it is back.

And thank goodness for that. I finally heard back about my query to Jason Kenney's office on Friday but the letter was a quite disheartening I did not share it with you.

Dear Ms. Mollins:

On behalf of the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism, I am responding to your email of July 27, 2014, concerning funding for Copian and access to a doctoral thesis.

Until recently, a portion of the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills’ (OLES) annual budget was allocated for core funding that supported several literacy organizations. In order to enhance transparency, maximize the impact of available funding and level the playing field for stakeholders, OLES has shifted from core funding to project-based funding.

Please be assured that Employment and Social Development Canada remains committed to helping Canadians develop the literacy and essential skills they need to succeed at work and to contribute to a strong and competitive Canadian economy and prosperous society. OLES continues to accept proposals that support this objective. In 2014-2015, Employment and Social Development Canada has allocated approximately $27 million to support projects that lead to Canadians improving their literacy and essential skills to get and keep a job and be successful in the workplace.

In addition, please note that the paper you are seeking, Illiteracy and Poverty in Canada: Towards a Critical Perspective, is available from the University of Toronto Library.

Thank you for writing.

I'll just leave this here for now. I think all the readers of this blog will understand immediately how it demonstrates that the Minister is not interested in working with the not for profit sector on adult literacy education or creating a pan-Canadian literacy strategy that provides "all Canadians with the support and empowerment that so many of us take for granted" without me parsing every line. 

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

And readers of Brigid Hayes' blog will know that the Harper government has allowed allocated literacy funds to lapse year after year.
 
But for all of us who do not have access to the University of Toronto library, Illiteracy and Poverty in Canada: Towards a Critical Perspective is again available here.

Joy, joy, joy!

Copian still needs our help. Instead of buying a University of Toronto reader card, I donated a bit of dosh to Copian. The literacy community is not a good place to find extra funds these days - or ever :) - but if you have any rich friends, send them over here.

And just to cheer us up, I'll also leave this here. It starts on chapter 4, page 2 of Illiteracy and Poverty in Canada: Towards a Critical Perspective:

A Critical Perspective
As we have seen, both the liberal and conservative perspectives see deficiencies and shortcomings of the poor as a primary cause of poverty and unemployment. According to this "deficiency model", labour markets and the economy in Canada distribute success and failure more or less 'fairly' based on effort, abilities and qualifications. Therefore, the difficulties experienced by individuals in achieving adequate employment and income can in large measure be attributed to their personal shortcomings, which in the view of liberals mainly consist of lack of basic education, life skills and job skills ("human capital"), and in the view of orthodox conservatives consist of more fundamental deficiencies which cannot be easily or efficiently corrected, if at all.

In contrast, the critical perspective rejects the personal deficiency model. Its adherents share the view that the Canadian economy and its labour market are far from fair, and that in fact they constitute the primary source of poverty and unemployment. In effect, a new explanatory variable--i.e. the capitalist economic structure--is introduced into the discussion of illiteracy and poverty. For example, Canadian adult literacy specialist Anthony R. Berezowecki argues:

Much attention is given to the characteristics and deficiencies of the disadvantaged themselves .... Little or no consideration, on the other hand, seems to be given to what effect the operation of the existing Canadian socio-economic system has on the disadvantaged.... far greater attention must be paid to the hypothesis that the existence of such a large number of economically disadvantaged people in a rich country like Canada is the direct or indirect result of the present socio-economic system

Paul Belanger of the Institute Canadien d'Education des Adultes in Montreal suggests that the Canadian economy is based on what he terms a "structure of inequality". On one hand, there are adults with opportunities to pursue their academic and occupational goals. On the other hand there are those adults who inhabit a "socio-economic desert". For example, Berezowecki cites statistics which show that the national income share of the latter group actually shrank between 1965 and 1971. The top 20% of income earners increased their share of the total income 'pie' in Canada from 45.% to 48.5%, while the bottom 20% of income earners lost part of their already meagre share, dropping from 3.7% to 2.9%.

Reflection
Belanger recognizes that there is indeed a high correlation between illiteracy and poverty, but he questions the interpretation put forward by the liberal perspective, i.e. that it is a causal association:

A high proportion of illiterates was... revealed in many ... reports on poverty and social inequality.... It was felt that, if there was unemployment, it was because the workers lacked the necessary skills. Hard-core poverty was attributed ... to poor social integration and the absence of channels of communication with society as a whole. The answer was clear: massive literacy and occupational programs.... But are education and training the answer?

He argues that illiteracy does not cause inequality; rather, it reflects it, and to some degree helps to reinforce it. He says, "cultural handicaps reflect, rather than produce, structures of inequality," and "...illiteracy is not a causal factor, but rather, a symptom of a more deep-seated problem: that of maintaining the structures of inequality.

 Plus ça change...

#bringbackcopian - Writing to @JinnySims

I  wrote to Jinny Sims and Sadia Groguhé on July 4, 2014:

Hello there,

I looked up the NDP shadow cabinet and saw that you are the Employment and Social Development critics.

I am sending along a link to Carol Goar's article from today about the cuts to the adult literacy database at Copian because she has collected a lot of interesting information there: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/03/mainstay_of_canadas_literacy_movement_topples_goar.html

That is me quoted in the column. I know that there is little hope of getting the government to reverse this funding decision but I want as many people as possible to know about it.

I am sure you are following this issue and may already know about the article but I also know that you are very busy people. Thanks for that by the way. You may not hear it a lot but we appreciate it. I cheer along every time I hear Jinny on Power and Politics.

Cheers,
Tracey Mollins

 And Jinny wrote back on August 7 (sorry - I have been away):

Tracey,

Thank you for writing to me and passing along a copy of that article.  I sincerely apologize for not responding earlier.

I have already written to the Minister with my concerns over the number of organizations I have heard from who have faced funding problems because of delays and cuts.  The organizations provide invaluable services to youth and new immigrants, who often find themselves even more alone and in need of greater support with literacy. We all too quickly overlook the services that are crucial for providing all Canadians with the support and empowerment that so many of us take for granted.

Again, thank you for bringing the article to my attention.  Please feel free to contact me again should you have any other comments.

Sincerely,

Jinny

A Quick Rest by Joshua Rome

Ah yes ... support and empowerment. Remember those days...

#bringbackcopian - Writing to Minister Kenney

I took up Tracy Defoe's suggestion and sent a message to Jason Kenney with a cc to my MP, Peggy Nash.

Hello Minister Kenney,

I hope this message finds you well.

I am looking for a copy of a paper called Illiteracy and Poverty in Canada: Towards a Critical Perspective, a doctoral thesis by Harold Alden who worked for many years for the Literacy and Basic Skills Program at Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. This paper was formerly housed at Copian.

I understand that funding cuts by ESDC have resulted in the closure of the online library. Can you please tell me how I can find this resource, and others, now that Copian is closed? My online search has come up empty.

Regards,
Tracey Mollins

I included my address but won't post that part on the internet :)

I have heard back from workers in Peggy Nash's office and Jason Kenny's office.

Jason Kenney's office go back to me on Monday and told me that my message has been forwarded to the people at Employment and Skills Development Canada who can help me. I'll let you know when I hear from them.

A person from Peggy Nash's office got back to me on Tuesday. She told me that she had had searched the web for the paper and also been unable to find it. She called Copian to see  if there was any other way to get the paper. She found out

Unfortunately at this time, the Board of Directors has not decided what they are going to do with the materials they used to house – if they are going to make them available another way, for example. I suggest that you contact them for further information. I called their toll free number, 1-800-720-6253, and found them very helpful.

She let me know that

I have taken the liberty of forwarding your email (without your street address) to [a staff person] at Copian. [The Copian staff person] wanted your email to show the CEO of Copian, as the Board is deciding how to go forward after the loss of funding. I have also shared your concerns with Jinny Sims, the Official Opposition Critic for Employment and Social Development.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Ms. Nash, [my colleague] or me if there is anything else we can do on this issue. If you do get a response from Minister Kenney, we would be interested in seeing it, if possible.

I certainly will.

We have seen a lot of losses in our field over the past few years (An Icy Alexandria).

I was the publisher of Literacies and we lost eligibility for funding with the demise of the National Literacy Secretariat.

The editor - Tannis Atkinson - and I looked at ways to keep the journal going but found none. One of our concerns was that, as a journal that brought information about research in practice projects to our community and our international partners, with the cuts to research in practice that accompanied the closing of the NLS, our pages would be a little bare. We wanted to keep a focus on the Canadian context and as the Canadian government has opted out of the international conversation on this (Counting Research), it was not just a funding issue for us.

We now realize we should have been in touch with the NDP a lot sooner :P

Thank you NDP for supporting a community building approach to literacy learning and political engagement.

Bringing Copian to Question Period

My colleague and Parkdale - High Park riding mate wrote to our Member of Parliament, Peggy Nash about the cuts to literacy funding and the resulting closure of Copian (#bringbackcopian). We have permission to publish her words here and I wanted to share them with you.

Dear _____,

Thank you so much for reaching out to my staff about the recent funding cut for COPIAN. I know that this database was a tremendous resource for many in the literacy community. The government’s changes in this area have not gone unnoticed. I have worked with Parkdale Project Read and others around changes to the Labour Market Agreements in the wake of the Canada Jobs Grant’s rocky implementation. I have also written Minister Kenney on this to voice my opposition to any loss of federal funding for literacy programs.

This issue of literacy funding has been brought up by the NDP in Question Period, as recently as May 30 (http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/5/30/sadia-groguhe-1/). I will continue to raise this issue, including the loss of COPIAN,  both directly to the government and through our Official Opposition Critic for ESDC.

Again, thank you for contacting us about this.

Kind regards,

Peggy Nash
Member of Parliament - Députée | Parkdale - High Park
______________________________________________________

peggy.nash@parl.gc.ca

We at the Literacy Enquirer thank Peggy Nash for her work on the LMAs and the Job Grant Program and we thank the NDP for helping us to shine a light on what these cuts mean to our community, our field and people engaged in lifelong learning. Click on the link on the letter to see the NDP question and the response from the Employment and Skills Development Canada Parliamentary Secretary, Scott Armstrong or read the screen grab below. You can see that Scott Armstong is right on talking points here and is reading from the same script as Alexandra Fortier.

#bringbackcopian

Debating Literacy Funding

WE LEARN is a place where we can hear learner ideas about policy and practice.

WE LEARN Board Secretary Shellie Walters has written an interesting piece on government funding for adult education and literacy programs. She writes about the US context but Canadadians will relate to much of what she says especially in light of the recent toppling of our mainstays.

Here is Shellie's Board bio:

“I am a student that started with my local program in 1999 reading at a fourth grade level and then got involved with WE LEARN and then started working on Women’s Perspectives. I am now on the board and my role is the secretary. I have come a long way and I am currently in my second year of college. ”

And here is a little of what she has to say:

Looking back at the question of why the government is giving money to Adult literacy programs both to college and community based programs. On the pro side, currently the tax payers are only providing enough money for 3% on the individuals that require the assistance to get help. 43% of individuals with a lack of skills are living poverty. If the adults in a household have necessary skills the children of that household are more likely to have the skills too. When I started looking at the con side, even I thought that I would find more evidence to support that side. What I found, the more that I researched these arguments that I have heard, was that they are based on rhetoric and fallacies.  

Read more here.

Bring Back Copian

Carol Goar wrote about the latest round of federal funding cuts and the closing of Copian.

For Ottawa, it’s all about productivity, competitiveness and enhanced efficiency. For the people who run shoestring literacy organizations, it is about sharing knowledge and spreading hope.

You can read her column here. She quotes one of us and some of the people who posted on the Copian page.

Read her column and leave a comment.

Here are some other things you can do:

• Connect with Copian - leave a message on the message board.
• Join the #bringbackcopian conversation on Twitter.
• Connect with your local literacy program or provincial coalition to find out what advocacy is happening locally.
• Write to your M.P. (We have written to Peggy Nash.)
• Write to Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney M.P
• Write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
• Or write, as Tom Sticht did, to

M. Elisabeth Barot,
Education Programme Officer,
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO
(http://unesco.ca/en/home-accueil/contact)

Or, as Tracy Defoe suggested on the Copian message board, when you are looking for a resource that you used to be able to find on Copian, contact the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES).

Mailing address

Office of Literacy and Essential Skills
Employment and Social Development Canada
140 Promenade du Portage, Phase IV
Mailstop 515
Gatineau QC
K1A 0J9

or use this online contact form:

http://www.esdc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/edsc-esdc/contact/contact_us.asp?section=lek 

They won't know we miss it if they don't hear that we are looking for resources and publications.- Tracy Defoe

Counting Research

Without an announcement or any consultation, it appears that the federal government has decided to quietly collapse Canada’s national literacy and essential skills network. This is happening at the same time as community literacy programs across Canada experience a seismic shift and uncertainty of sustained operations, while millions of dollars in federal funding is being effectively diverted from federal-provincial Labour Market Agreements and redirected to the unproven Canada Job Grant program.

Canadian Literacy and learning Network, May 29, 2014

“Our government is committed to ensuring that federal funding for literacy is no longer spent on administration and countless research papers, but instead is invested in projects that result in Canadians receiving the literacy skills they need to obtain jobs,” said Alexandra Fortier, a spokeswoman for Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney, in an email.

The Ottawa Citizen, May 20, 2014

For years, federal funding “was going to the same organizations to cover the costs of administration and countless research papers, instead of being used to fund projects that actually result in Canadians improving their literacy skills,” said an email from Alexandra Fortier, Kenney’s press secretary.

“These organizations were advised three years ago to give them ample time to prepare (for) the federal government changing the structure of funding through the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills to make it more effective. Canadian taxpayers will no longer fund administration of organizations, but will instead fund useful literacy projects.”

Calgary Herald, May 20, 2014

Hmmm. I wonder what Ms. Fortier means by useful?

Here is something that did get funded:

Establishing the Business Case for Workplace Essential Skills Training: UPSKILL - A Pan-Canadian Demonstration Project

Research conducted over the last decade shows significant gaps in literacy & essential skills among the Canadian workforce. In addition to having negative impacts on firms’ productivity, research suggests that workers suffer consequences of low literacy in the form of lower wages, reduced job stability & even higher health risks from workplace injury. While anecdotal evidence suggests that LES training may be helpful in eliminating these skills gaps, a strong business case for its use in the workplace has yet to be established.

In light of this, the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills aims to fill this gap by evaluating workplace LES training with the most rigorous evaluation methods & helping determine its ROI. Thus, in partnership with the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), the Pan-Canadian research and demonstration project, UPSKILL was launched in 2010. UPSKILL utilized a random assignment design to provide the most reliable measures of the impacts of LES training in the workplace.

from Essential Skills Ontario webinars page

One of the partners for this project, OTEC (Ontario Tourism Education Corporation) describes their mission as:

Improve your business’ ability to attract, retain and develop high performers – let OTEC’s experts help to identify skill gaps, set goals and develop a customized training or standards program to achieve them. 

I guess it is no surprise that what this current government finds useful are projects that serve to meet the needs and goals of businesses and employers rather than those of learners and practitioners.

One tiny silver lining in this funding cut is that perhaps literacy organizations will no longer have to twist themselves into such odd shapes in order to secure funding from a government that views learning as valid only when it is tied to productivity gains defined by employers. On the other hand, many of these organizations may cease to exist at all.

from the Copian website on June, 9, 2014

These will be grim days for literacy learners and practitioners but we are used to grim days.

Ms. Fortier  speaks of the funding of "countless research projects." In some days that were not so grim, the federal government did fund research projects, many of them conducted by practitioners who seized the opportunity to develop, explore, test and validate promising practices. These projects were not countless. They were counted, documented and counted upon by literacy workers across Canada and internationally.

In Canada, adult literacy is a field with no formal accreditation system for practitioners. In the days of research in practice, we did better than that. We came to the field from a diversity of educational backgrounds and used all our knowledge and skills to propel our field forward. We used research in practice as our system of professional development. It worked to strengthen the work of individuals and entire communities of practice.

Granted, we were not much interested in making the business case for literacy learning or determining the impact of literacy learning on firms’ productivity. Our projects focused on how to work with literacy learners to meet their goals -- goals such as participating in their communities and communities of practice differently and gaining access to the information and resources essential to a fulfilling and joyful life.

We proposed and conducted these projects because we love our work and we believe in justice - and because justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public. We knew that this was a kind of crazy wisdom and our ROI was assessed by what learners told us about the joy of learning and about the power of learning:

Unfortunately, because of the cuts Copian has closed the database and the documentation of all this learning and wisdom is no longer available to us. Another library bites the dust.

This work belongs to us. By us I mean all Canadians because it was publicly funded and all literacy practitioners and learners because that is who who did and needs the work. Much of this work does not exist anywhere outside this database.

Please Government of Canada, and Mr. Kenney in particular, return our work to us. This is our university and you just closed it down. Is that really what you meant to do?
 
You can still learn about some of these projects at Literacies but, of course many of the links to the actual project reports will no longer work.

To see what others are saying about the funding cuts, see the Beyond 'Literacy as Numbers' in Canada blog and the comments on the Copian page.