The Movement for Canadian Literacy

The membership of the Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) is made up of various categories of individuals and organizations, principally instructors, tutors and administrators in adult basic education drawn from a variety of school boards, community organizations, community colleges, etc. It also includes staff members of voluntary agencies, unions, government organizations, community agencies, libraries, as well as interested laymen. Its membership numbered 500 in 1979. 15 It is presently the only national organization promoting literacy, and can be described as the most influential force in the struggle for increased literacy opportunities. The MCL can be considered as politically involved in the sense that through both its national organization and through its provincial local affiliates, briefs are presented, lobbying goes on, etc. However, it seldom addresses partisan political, social and economic issues relating to illiteracy and literacy education. Instead, its stance is pragmatic and liberal, and confined quite narrowly to advocacy of increased provision of literacy opportunities. This is indicated in its neutral, apolitical-sounding objectives: "promote basic education and literacy in Canada", "sensitize the Federal and Provincial Governments as well as the general public to the importance of the problem of illiteracy", and "try to activate the human, physical and financial resources to eliminate illiteracy".16 The Movement does contain activists who adhere to a critical perspective on illiteracy. However, at its inception, the organization was designed to act as a broad umbrella organization and decentralized communications network for groups and individuals working in the area of literacy, and as such, is not amenable to political objectives and stands which might be considered controversial by any of its members.

The action of the organization with regard to its endorsement of the Adams Report was consistent with its goals of sensitizing governments and the public and activating resources to eliminate illiteracy. As well, Adams' conclusions could be considered noncontroversial in a political sense, appealing as they do for action by governments, business and industry and unions to provide opportunities for employed adults who are illiterate. Yet I would argue that the arguments in the report are highly partisan in their basic assumptions, and in endorsing the report, the organization implicitly accepted Adams' political stance.

Political Stance

For example, the report makes one reference to literacy making possible the exercise of "democratic rights and duties",17 but otherwise treats the question as part of the seemingly purely technical and neutral context of economic efficiency , industrial productivity and individual social mobility. Literacy education is seen primarily as a means of adaptation and conformity to the requirements of business and industry, as they are defined by them. Poverty, underemployment, inadequate wages, a bleak occupational future--these are taken to be related to illiteracy only in the sense that illiteracy is one of the important causes of them. No suggestion is made that illiteracy, like poverty and these other conditions, are together symptoms of the way the private enterprise economic system is structured, and that regardless of changes in the distribution of literacy and job skills, they will persist. By conceptualizing the question in the way that he does, Adams avoids any consideration of the structure of inequality, and reduces the question of the source of economic difficulties to defects located inside individuals, implicitly denying the validity of an active role for literacy education in supporting collective action to fundamentally alter that structure. Adams' arguments are highly partisan in favour of the interests of dominant classes, but this is not apparent because these values are widely shared in Canada, and seem like "common sense".