Something for all of us

As promised, here is the Reading List from Maria Moriarty.

"Education either functions as an instrument to...bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." ~Paulo Freire

Some of these are linked and some are available at the library or for purchase. 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire (1970; 2007)
(Pedagogy of the Oppressed – what it is and why it’s still relevant
www.practicingfreedom.org/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-what-is-it-and-why-its-still-relevant/
___________________________________________________________

Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community
Barton, D. & Hamilton, M. 2012 2nd Linguistics Classics ed. London: Routledge
___________________________________________________________

Powerful Literacies
Jim Crowther, Mary Hamilton, Lyn Tett NIACE, 2000
___________________________________________________________
 
More Powerful Literacies
Tett, L. (ed.), Hamilton, M. (ed.) & Crowther, J. (ed.) 2012 Leicester: NIACE
___________________________________________________________

Challenging Representations: Constructing the Adult Literacy Learner Over 30 Years of Policy and Practice in the United Kingdom
Mary Hamilton and Kathy Pitt
(Reading Research Quarterly Volume 46, Issue 4, pages 350–373, October/November/ December 2011)
eprints.lancs.ac.uk/54011/1/Hamilton_and_Pitt_RRQ_2011.pdf ___________________________________________________________

Situated Literacies: Theorising Reading and Writing in Context (2005)
by David Barton (Editor), Mary Hamilton (Editor), Roz Ivanic (Editor)
___________________________________________________________

The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa (1996)
Edited by Mastin Prinsloo and Mignonne Breier
___________________________________________________________

The New Literacy Studies: a point of contact between literacy research and literacy work
Guy Ewing
literacies.ca/literacies/1-2003/analysis/2/1.htm

 





Tensions Between Policy, Practice and Theory: International Perspectives on Adult Literacy
CASAE 2010 Conference Proceedings
casae-aceea.ca/~casae/sites/casae/archives/cnf2010/OnlineProceedings-2010/Individual-Papers/Gardner%20Hamilton%20Pinsent-Johnson.pdf
___________________________________________________________

Publications by Mary Hamilton
www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/mary-hamilton(97ff2128-fed7-4c53-858f-1e7066ab82e2)/publications.html
___________________________________________________________

Publications by David Barton
www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about-us/people/david-barton
___________________________________________________________

Publications by Tannis Atkinson
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tannis_Atkinson/publications
__________________________________________________________

The Longitudinal Study of Adult Learning (Portland State University)
Stephen Reder
www.lsal.pdx.edu/reports.html
___________________________________________________________

Adult learning and Literacy in Canada (2001)
Linda Shohet
www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=558.html
___________________________________________________________
 
here is an older reading list from Maria - www.greedymouse.ca/enquirer/summerread05.htm

and here is a little list I (Tracey) started up a while ago - www.greedymouse.ca/papers.html 

The Half Full Glass

It looks as though there is something optimistic in the air these days.

I had lunch with some literacy friends and in the midst of talking about the number of literacy program closures and lapsed funds we suddenly started to see opportunities again. We started to talk about how the election might bring us new federal allies and that we need to dust off the work we were doing to build a pan-Canadian network for literacy workers and learners and for literacy research in practice (see below).

The Canadian Union for Public Employees (CUPE) launched their new book Transformations: Literacy and the Labour Movement and the website Learning in Solidarity (learninginsolidarity.ca) this week. The book looks at the past, present and future of how the labour movement and the literacy movement work together. I, sadly, could not attend the launch but I have heard that the conversation quickly turned to the future and how labour can speak to power (policymakers) about the importance of literacy work in building equity in all facets of life, not just as a tool to ensure labour market participation.

Some people have written a Declaration that "calls on parties to take a stand on seven proposals and to reveal their plans for putting adult education back on track in Canada." I don't know if they were thinking about the Declaration of Persepolis but I like to think that they were because that was written at another optimistic time.

And Suzanne Smythe, one of the Declaration signatories, has written a policy note for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives about what happened when the federal government dismantled any semblance of a pan-Canadian literacy network and shifted funding into private hands through the Canada Jobs Grant.


It is looking good out there. Our people are getting their mojo back. The ice is cracking. We are hoping for an early spring. We are getting ready to seize the moment.

Here are some of those earlier works on pan-Canadian networks:

Building a Pan-Canadian Strategy on Literacy and Essential Skills: Recommendations for the Federal Government (2002)

A Framework to Encourage and Support Practitioner Involvement in Adult Literacy Research in Practice in Canada (1999)

Developing a Framework for Research in Practice in Adult Literacy (2005)

Focused on Practice: A Framework for Adult Literacy Research in Canada (2006)

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.

Being Disruptive

I just got this message from a literacy colleague and thought I would share it with you.

"The Not Business as Usual documentary has launched."

[Not Business As Usual is a provocative look at capitalism as envisioned by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, the most influential economist of the late 20th century. The film explores why he only measured success by one metric: Greed. And how that narrow view has resulted in environmental destruction, human rights abuses and ironically enough, unsustainable business practices. This feature length documentary tracks the changing landscape of business with the rising tide of conscious capitalism and features the inspiring stories of several subversive entrepreneurs from Vancouver who are redefining what it means to be successful.]

"You can access it here [or embedded below].  It is 60 minutes long.  Food for our souls!

Terms that stick with me after a first viewing are:

• conscious capitalism
• unreasonable entrepreneurs (which I think we should re-frame as unreasonable educators)
• be disruptive
• you can live by your values and meet success

I would like to propose that we watch this documentary together and perhaps extract from it strategies that could work for us in terms of the social change that we want to effect.

We may want to consider hosting a literacy wide screening of this documentary to generate wider discussion and perhaps tap into the disempowerment feelings that educators are experiencing as a result of literacy delivery being subsumed by unbridled capitalistic pressures and expectations."

An Icy Alexandria

One of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's most famous quotes is "You won’t recognize Canada when I’m through with it."

There is some debate as to whether he actually said it but Noah Richler cited the quote in his book What We Talk About When We Talk About War and an excerpt from that book, including the quote, was published in the National Post.

Whether he said it or not, or whether he meant all the meanings that have been ascribed to the quote, the idea that Stephen Harper would say and think such a thing resonates with many Canadians.

This week it is resonating, once again, with people who do research.

In the wake of the announcement that seven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries will closed this year, the  CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)'s Fifth Estate published a list of the federal programs and research facilities have been shut down or had their funding reduced by the federal government.

It is a long list. People are comparing this to the burning of the Library of Alexandria but a more Canadian metaphor might be the one Tannis Atkinson used in 2009 to describe the prospects for research that could support literacy practice and programs in her last editorial at Literacies: Nothing but ice, ice, ice as far as we can imagine.
 
What about the Canadian literacy library and research list? What would it look like?

Well, it might start with the National Literacy Secretariat - NLS (2007) and include, among others,

• Phase 2 of the Framework for Adult Literacy Research in Canada project to develop an infrastructure for research in practice that would bring together all the organizations, databases and networks currently supporting research initiatives and create a cohesive, sustainable pan-Canadian research network (2007);
• the AlphaPlus library which housed a pan-Canadian collection of adult education resources many of which are not available digitally (2007);
• the Festival of Literacies which was a pan-Canadian research in practice knowledge centre based at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (2008); and
• the Literacies research journal (2009) where much of the research conducted with NLS funding was reported and discussed;
• the database of Canadian literacy research, The Directory of Canadian Adult Literacy Research (2009); and
  
• RiPAL-BC (Research in Practice in Adult Literacy), a grass roots network of individuals and organizations committed to research in practice in adult literacy in British Columbia (2009).

The former National Adult Literacy Database (now Copian), another essential part of the pan-Canadian research in practice infrastructure, saw it's federal funding cut 25% in 2012 and another 15% in 2013 (PDF).

The federal government still participates in research about literacy statistics through Statistics Canada and occasionally the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills invites "eligible organizations" to

"submit proposals to indicate their interest in being part of a Pan-Canadian Network (PCN) focused on improving the labour market outcomes of Canadians through strengthened LES."

which represents quite a shift from the NLS' focus on these 4 types of research

• Understanding the literacy skills of the Canadian population and assessing the implications of these findings (including statistical and demographic research).
• Investigating new ways to assist various groups of Canadians in developing literacy skills (policy research).
• Assessing the nature and effectiveness of efforts to address literacy needs (program-related research).
• Understanding better how people develop literacy skills (pedagogical research).

and on

Research support provided by the NLS should help to develop Canada's capacity for literacy research. This means funding for research projects, for infrastructure, and for the training of future researchers.

Enhancing Literacy Research in Canada
A Framework for the Research Support Activities
of the National Literacy Secretariat, (PDF)
Human Resources Development Canada,
February 1998

The closing of libraries and the defunding of research diminishes us all. Not only do we lose our capacity to recognize ourselves but we lose our ability to wave across the room at international colleagues. 

Occasionally literacy researchers were funded by the NLS to attend international conferences to share research questions and findings and to learn about what was being asked and explored elsewhere. Now if we were to show up, we would show up with a much narrower offering. 

Canada's strength was not only that is supported 4 areas of research that captured a wide range of interests and needs but that it supported both academic and practice-based researchers as well as collaborations between the two groups.

Given the real possibility of dialogue between literacy workers and New Literacy researchers, literacy workers will be able to use the New Literacy research to clarify and further develop models for literacy work. New Literacy researchers will, in turn, benefit from accounts of literacy learning by literacy workers and from ideas by literacy workers about how the New Literacy Studies might apply to their work.

The New Literacy Studies:
a point of contact between literacy research and literacy work
by Guy Ewing, Literacies #1, spring 2003 

A new kind of research is emerging which is close to the ground and speaks directly to practitioners. It is worth reading, critiquing and applying to our practice. As well as reading, we need to write about our work. We can better support our learners and ourselves if we use our own literacy abilities to shape this work that we love.

Practitioners Making Time to Read and Write
by Sheila Stewart, Literacies #1, spring 2003

The pages of Literacies reflect the efforts, from 2003 to 2009, of the research-in-practice community to expand the range of practitioners who contributed to research and to discussions about research and the last issue reflects, well, the end of all that.

What was lost was not simply the NLS but the capacity of the federal government to play a catalyst role in creating a more literate society through developing and nurturing partnerships.

From community development
and partnerships to accountability:
the case of the National Literacy Secretariat (PDF)
by Brigid Hayes, Literacies #10, spring 2009

Right now the climate is not particularly conducive to genuine education. We are no longer allowed to ask literacy for what, literacy for whom. We are no longer allowed to say that literacy is a right rather than a charitable enterprise. Instead, in many parts of the country (those where basic literacy programs still exist), we are told we should be saying essential skills for all, so that the GDP will grow. So these are frozen wastelands, as far as genuine education is concerned. … As far as research that could support practice and programs? Nothing but ice, ice, ice as far as we can imagine.

What is to be done? (PDF)

by Tannis Atkinson, Literacies #10, spring 2009

Okay Literacy people, what will spring 2014 bring?

So why do I hold the image of spring in my mind? When I think of ice, I remember that it breaks by cracking. The huge dissonance between what is happening in programs and the ridiculous rhetoric that seeks to define literacy are creating cracks. Cracks can only lead to change. So let us consider that dissonance as rich in potential to foment change. Let us keep naming what doesn’t make sense. Let us keep clear about what we know to be true and real, and what is just nonsense. And let’s keep speaking out.

What is to be done? (PDF)

by Tannis Atkinson, Literacies #10, spring 2009

Looking Upstream

"Our ability to realize what government is truly for, to improve the lives of people, is hampered by the terms of discussion. Whatever brilliant ideas may come forward to improve lives and health, whatever arguments may be brought forward, they are quickly dismissed if they counter the current frame."

Dr. Ryan Meili, Upstream thinking, healthy society and reviving Canadian democracy, Centre for Policy Alternatives

Sound familiar?

If this frustration is one of your frustrations, perhaps Upstream will be of interest to you.

"Upstream seeks to propagate a new frame, one that focuses in on the decisions that will make the most impact on the quality of our lives. By gathering the best evidence available, academics and advocates will promote decisions made on the basis of practicality rather than ideology. Using storytelling through multiple forms of media, Upstream will help to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice. By connecting individuals and partner organization through common language and goals, Upstream will help to create public demand for policies and actions consistent with the new frame, and ultimately mobilize citizens and our government to build a truly healthy society."

Tannis is our doctor now!

Here is good news for Literacy Enquirers! Our dear friend and esteemed colleague Tannis Atkinson has received her doctorate from OISE. Congratulations Tannis and congratulations to us for having this excellent ally in the academy.

Here is an excerpt from a blog post by Tannis that will show those of you unfamiliar with her work why it is so important to literacy learners and workers. Read more of Tannis' writing here: http://utoronto.academia.edu/TannisAtkinson

My dissertation examined how IALS (the International Adult Literacy Survey) -informed policies are changing what it is possible for educators to do when they meet adults who want to improve their reading and writing.  I’ve become convinced that it is vital to consider the historical and political contexts in which statistical accounts of literacy have come to dominance.

What happens when we turn our attention away from the calculations and statistics, and focus instead on the moments in which the numbers were developed?   We notice that calculative practices have been introduced as mechanisms for governing a host of other social realms, as discussed by post-realist scholars such as Higgins and Larner (2010).  We observe that the psychometric framing at the heart of IALS, despite its claim to be reliable “across cultures and languages”, carries forward a troubling history of efforts to rank people and justify inequalities at the heart of liberal democracies (Baum 2012, Fendler & Muzaffar 2008).  And we remember that the IALS statistics were developed to address concerns about shifts in the global economy. The explicit aim of these surveys was not to measure the relative access to information in print-saturated societies. Rather its goal was to inform a range of policies which would bolster the competitive advantage of OECD member nations. The relative wealth and political dominance of these same geopolitical regions, we would do well do remember, was itself historically produced in and through colonial relations.  That position was not substantially altered when colonialism formally ended (Duara 2004).

Perhaps it is possible for me to make these larger connections because I live in Canada. This settler-colonial state is in the midst of a process of truth and reconciliation about the devastating effects of residential schools designed to force indigenous children to adopt European culture and values. These schools were part of a broader strategy to construct Canada as a nation by dispossessing indigenous peoples of their land. Although there have been formal apologies for this history, the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission faces daily battles over access to records, information and resources. The legacies of residential schools, and the ongoing colonial relations in Canada, get erased each time someone repeats the decontextualized ‘fact’ that literacy levels are “consistently lower” for indigenous people compared to non-indigenous people (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada). Such larger questions are not the focus of my research, but do provide essential context for my investigation. They remind me that it is imperative to continue to question what we take for granted about literacy. One powerful way to do so is to investigate the historical, political and economic contexts in which ideas—including the idea that literacy can and should be counted—have developed.

Canada Job Grant Monitor

It has been a while since we have posted anything over here. If you blog, I don't have to explain. It happens to all of us.

As this blog was following the Job Grant Program, I thought you might like to know that there is a Facebook page called Canada Job Grant Monitor. It was started at the end of October 2013 and is posting stories about the somewhat rocky road to implementation.

As the introductory post on the Canada Job Grant Monitor states, "Changes to the Labour Market Agreement impact many individuals employers, potential employees, labour/advocacy groups, service groups and employability and training providers. The Canada Job Grant Monitor looks to capture community perspectives on the impact to their programs to help influence LMA negotiations."

Jason Kenney (Canada's Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism) is facing blowback from provincial governments reluctant to give up the Labour Market Agreement dollars in favour of this privatised program, from labour organizations similarly reluctant about this funding shift and from some small business owners who are reluctant to pony up their share of dollars in required to benefit from the program.

Read about all this and more at the Canada Job Grant Monitor page.

Policy Wonk

Brigid Hayes has posted part of a keynote speech she gave at the Saskatchewan Literacy Network's Knowledge Exchange session last November on the Saskatchewan Action Research Network blog.

If you don't know Brigid, she has over 30 years of experience working in the Canadian literacy scene. In 1989, she "joined the NLS [National Literacy Secretariat] to build literacy partnerships with business and labour organizations. Our marching orders were to engage every aspect of society in whatever ways would prove useful."

In this article, Brigid looks back on how literacy came to be part of the policy picture, discusses how accountability requirements started to shape literacy policy, and makes recommendations for the future.

We’ve won the argument that literacy matters to labour force participation. Now perhaps it is time to look out at the “margins” again and present a vision of literacy that embraces a more holistic view. One that views literacy as integral to civic engagement, equity, participation in all aspects of life. Literacy as a human right, not a privilege.

Perhaps it is time to become activists again while leaving the well-developed institutional approaches to continue. To till new fields, plant new seeds, and grow a vision that acknowledges and complements what has been created. To go beyond labour market outcomes. Canada once embraced literacy as a multi-faceted concept to ensure full participation in our society, but literacy’s focus has since been narrowed, rules have multiplied, and the locus of power has shifted.

We can’t go back, but we can take what we’ve learned over the past two decades and craft a vision rooted in today’s realities—realities that speak to the needs of all adult learners. A vision that squarely places literacy within the wider values and norms that define us as a nation.

Well said Brigid.

Horse's Mouth

Well you don't have to take my word for it - as if you would :) Or Juliet Merrifield's.

Here is Rona Ambrose, Federal Minister of Public Works and Status for Women, talking about how the Canada Job Grant program will serve the needs of employers.

“It will transform the way we do skill training. The problem here was the taxpayer has been funding $500 million for every province, to the tune of almost $3 billion in skills training that’s delivered through the government. What employers have told us is that skills training that people are taking through the government are not to fill the jobs that they need."

“What we’ve done is something really bold, that the Chambers of Commerce have asked us to do, and employers have asked us to do. We’re going to offer the grant directly to the employer. The Government of Canada will pay $5,000 in job training grants if it’s matched by the employer. The province can then match another $5,000, for a total of $15,000. The province doesn’t have to participate but if they want, they can use their existing Skills Training Fund that they have."

“We’re going to work with them over the next year to see if we can align these programs but that job grant will still be available from the Federal Government and the employer. It just won’t be the maximum $15,000; it’ll be $10,000.”

“We decided to take this out of the hand of government, out of the hands of bureaucrats, and give that money directly to employers so they can dictate the training they need.”

Gord Montgomery, Spruce Grove Examiner

thanks to @Brigid_Hayes

You might assume that I would be okay with taking education out of the hands of bureaucrats but how about putting at least some of in the hands of educators and learners.

I wonder how unemployed workers will access this program, especially those who are currently in literacy programs. (In Ontario, literacy programs get 22% of their funding from the Labour Market Agreement funds that are being allocated to the Canada Jobs Grant program.) Will employers be encouraged to make these programs accessible to people who need to upgrade reading and writing skills as well as job skills? How will the government ensure that access to this program is equitable? For example, how will Ms. Ambrose in her role as Minister for the Status of Women, ensure that women have equal opportunity in this program? Quotas? Daycare? A Women in Non-traditional Trades program?

Hmmm. Maybe we need the bureaucrats after all.

In this Centre for Policy Alternatives Fact Sheet, Fast Facts: Literacy, Women and Poverty, Margerit Roger writes about how "many of the women living with lower levels of literacy and low incomes are also single parents" and "Not part of the workplace perspective or economic agenda, low-income women are at risk of being forgotten in literacy programming."

"It is important to distinguish labour's conception of literacy from corporate conceptions of literacy for workers. As far as corporations are concerned, worker literacy is defined in the context of corporate goals regarding productivity and profits. Where the production process, and more recently, the participatory management process, requires workers to use literacy skills to follow instructions, say, or fill out reports, then corporations may be interested in worker literacy.... This corporate conception of literacy is a narrow one. It is based on a limited understanding of the worker and of the worker's need for literacy in terms of his/her role as a cog in a workplace."

 Seeds for Change, Jean Conon-Unda

"Important as work-skill acquisition is, we do our society a huge disservice if we do not value personal, family and community health as much as increased employability or income. Unfortunately, literacy programs aimed at producing productive employees are exponentially more common than programs designed for people who are farther removed from the economy and labour market. Since 2006, the national literacy agenda has shifted so significantly towards work-focused programming that literacy for family, social or political participation has all but disappeared from our educational discourse. We have become so accustomed to measuring success in economic and statistical terms that we are seriously at risk of forgetting that literacy is also about individuals being able to “read their world”, inform themselves about choices, engage in community projects, or just help their children with homework."

Fast Facts: Literacy, Women and Poverty, Margerit Roger

The Centre for Policy Alternatives blog post,  New Shoes and a Haircut: Budget 2013 not so pretty for women in Canada, points to the ways the 2013 Federal Budget leaves women out of the Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! agenda. Are women being remembered in the Jobs Grant program? What about other groups of workers that face discrimination in the workplace?

And I guess we can give up any hope that the federal government is going to fix the problems the Temporary Foreign Workers program is causing for permanent, domestic workers - here is Ms. Ambrose again:

“There’s a new program through Immigration Canada that going to allow for employers, provinces and territories, to pick from a pool of (immigrant) skilled workers,” the people they need to match job requirements.

“That gives them much more control over the kinds of immigrants that they need to fill their labour market need. We’ve been working on this for some time and there is still work to be done but I think this is something that will be really welcomed by *Alberta businesses.”

*She was speaking in Alberta.

Grade 12 or Die...

Grade 12 or Die - ‘Literacy Screening’ as a Tactic of Bio-power by Tannis Atkinson in Canadian Education- Governing Practices and Producing Subjects from Sense Publishers.


Download the PDF here.

In this chapter, I consider how the OECD’s 1994 definition of literacy was taken up during neoliberal reforms of welfare in Ontario, Canada. Starting in 1997, the province began a process of restructuring through which welfare shifted from a social program that guaranteed a minimum income to a system that required recipients to sign contracts outlining the responsibilities they were required to fulfill in exchange for benefits. Reforms to welfare were designed to reduce the number of people who apply for, are eligible for, or continue to receive welfare benefits (Herd, Mitchell, & Lightman, 2005): the maximum benefit amount for a single person in 2009 was $7,020 a year, while Statistics Canada calculated that a single person in Toronto could not live on less than $17,954 (Monsebraaten, 2009).

My aim in this chapter is to mobilize Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power, bio-power, and governmentality to consider how the mandatory literacy test, and the regulation governing its administration, operate as technologies of neoliberal governmentality. To undertake my analysis I sketch how a particular kind of literacy became one of the conditions that people seeking social assistance were expected to meet, outline how prevailing discourses of literacy and of entrepreneurial subjects emerged in tandem in Ontario in the 1990s, and analyse some effects of these changes. Looking at the role literacy plays in the current welfare regime in Ontario can, I believe, shed some light on the role of literacy in constructing neoliberal subjectivities and can illuminate how normative literacy produces and reproduces social inequalities.

Some definitions:

neoliberal
Here is an often cited definition by Paul Treanor: “Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services . . . and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs.”
(“Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, Definition.”) taken from here.

(More from Wikipedia.)

3 Foucault concept definitions from here.

biopower
Foucault argues that biopower is a technology which appeared in the late eighteenth century for managing populations. It incorporates certain aspects of disciplinary power. If disciplinary power is about training the actions of bodies, biopower is about managing the births, deaths, reproduction and illnesses of a population. (More from Wikipedia.)

discipline
Discipline is a mechanism of power which regulates the behaviour of individuals in the social body. This is done by regulating the organisation of space (architecture etc.), of time (timetables) and people's activity and behaviour (drills, posture, movement). It is enforced with the aid of complex systems of surveillance. Foucault emphasizes that power is not discipline, rather discipline is simply one way in which power can be exercised. He also uses the term 'disciplinary society', discussing its history and the origins and disciplinary institutions such as prisons, hospitals, asylums, schools and army barracks. Foucault also specifies that when he speaks of a 'disciplinary society' he does not mean a 'disciplined society'. (More from Wikipedia.)

governmentality
Foucault originally used the term 'governmentality' to describe a particular way of administering populations in modern European history within the context of the rise of the idea of the State. He later expanded his definition to encompass the techniques and procedures which are designed to govern the conduct of both individuals and populations at every level not just the administrative or political level. (More from Wikipedia.)