CHAPTER 4

A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ILLITERACY

A View From the Left

It is clear that the political right has been highly successful in responding to the crisis in liberal welfare state doctrine and policies engendered by the continuing economic difficulties of the 1970's and 1980's. However, a response to the crisis of liberal views and approaches has also arisen on the political left, beginning in the late 1960's and continuing to the present day. One minor but significant aspect of this has been the emergence of a critical perspective on illiteracy. We will now explore the background to this, and outline the perspective as it has developed in Canada.

Radicalization

As was noted above, the unemployment and poverty which persisted during what was otherwise a period of economic growth during the 1960's stimulated political and social discontent. The period was a watershed in the recent history of the Canadian left, most dramatically represented in the anti-poverty movement, the student movement and the popular mobilization against the Viet Nam War. It was in part the fear that this discontent would 'Impel radical middle class youth, the poor and groups like the Quebecois and Native Indians to more fundamental, i.e. revolutionary, solutions that led the federal government to institute new social programs, including the Canada Manpower Training Program. 1 However, while the new programs succeeded in incorporating many actually and potentially dissident groups and individuals into the liberal mainstream, 2 leftist ideas and initiatives continued to play a significant role in struggles both within the new government programs, as evidenced in the stormy history of the Company of Young Canadians, 3 and outside them, as exemplified in the Nova Scotia fishermad's strike of 1971 4 and the Quebec General Strike of 1972. 5

This activity on the left had an impact on literacy work as well. By the early 1970's, the development of the Canada Manpower Training Program had more or less by itself created a large new professional group of adult basic educators, 6 many of whom had received their political formation in the period of the 1960's and were sensitized to the facts of poverty and social injustice. As well, modifications that were introduced in the early 1970's in the educational environment of the Manpower programs to make them more effective as anti-poverty strategies, e.g. the breaking down of authoritarian student teacher relationships, had the effect of putting instructors closer in touch with the economic and social problems faced by their students ,and no doubt contributed to the radicalization of some of them. 7