Challenge

Although the "literacy for Canadianization" perspective was the dominant one during the early decades of the 20th century, and enjoyed the sponsorship of elites, it did not go unchallenged. For example, a writer for the militant Ukrainian socialist newspaper Robochny Narod (working People) provided an answer to this perspective on illiteracy, with its anti-leftism and idealization of conformity to the values of the dominant classes:

Canada is one large country of literate illiteracy.... There are mostly Englishmen in Canada. All of them are literate, that is true, but after scrutiny, they are worse than illiterate. They aren't interested in a single progressive thought--the only thing they know is the dollar .... They are hardly interested in politics, except when it is a matter of how many dollars it will bring them...when one considers the English (Canadian) working class...they have no class consciousness and their social democratic movement is very weak, greatly weaker than the Ukrainian. In truth, the greater part of them are organized into unions, but these unions are not interested in anything. Each of them belongs to a union because the union assures him of higher pay. He doesn't think of anything but his pay.86

This biting satire ("literate illiteracy") was no doubt occasioned by those anglo-Canadian educators and elite representatives referred to militant and class conscious immigrant workers disparaging terms like "ignorant", "illiterate" and "easily misled". (For example, in calling for a halt to immigration from Central Europe, the President of the Canadian Manufacturers Association stated in 1929 that, "Large numbers of unemployed and illiterate people are liabilities and not assets".) 87 It is clear that the writer did not fetishize the mechanical skills of reading and writing, obviously placing a higher value on the capacity for critical thought independent political action on the part of the working class.