Many definitions exist. The dictionary calls literacy “the ability to read and write.”6 But literacy is more than that. It is the ability to read, yes, but it is also being able to understand the meaning behind the words. The International Adult Literacy Survey defines literacy as:
the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities, at home, at work and in the community, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.7
The Canada Information Office (CIO) further refined the notion of literacy as:
the ability to use printed and written information to function in society... [to use] visual information ... based on written texts...[that] calls upon the logic of the written word.8
A school grade level is often used to measure functional literacy. Grade 8 is the level generally accepted as the benchmark by most national and international organizations—organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations, and the Canadian federal and provincial governments.
A Statistics Canada survey reported that, of those Canadians with less than a grade 8 education, 98 per cent have low reading skills. But even grade 8 does not promise a great degree of literacy. For those who have completed this grade, 88 per cent have low reading skills.9 (Other characteristics that could flag possible literacy problems are looked at in Section 4, Step 4, “Communications.”)
6. Canadian Oxford Dictionnary, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 897. Return
7. Susan Goldberg, Literacy in the Courtroom: A Guide for Judges (Ottawa: National Judicial Institute, 2004) p. 9. Return
8. Canada Information Office, Issues and Challenges in Communicating with Less Literate Canadians (Ottawa: Canada Information Office, 2000), p. 1. Return
9. Statistics Canada, et al., Reading the Future, p. 9. Return