"The hotline has been extremely successful," Jim was pleased to tell me "We have, as far as I know, the second most calls of any hotline in Canada. (There's a provincial hotline in Vancouver and several in Ontario.) We average about 100 calls per month (although I am more concerned about the quality of the calls and not the numbers) mostly from local people interested in tutoring or finding out more about programs in their area."

"So now we have the calls coming in, but having a hotline raises a real ethical question for me. Should we be recruiting people and encouraging them to phone hotlines when all the literacy programs are full?"

"Most of the programs Calgary have waiting lists. At certain times of the year I can say to the person on the phone, 'If you go to this program you should have no trouble getting in because there are five spaces left. That's sure a positive and encouraging way to end the conversation. The person usually says, 'Thanks Jim, I'll phone right away.'"

"Other times I have to tell the person that they will have to wait (when they've been waiting all their lives). When you say that to them you can hear in their voices, 'Oh great, another bureaucracy' and I hate that."

The phone rang suddenly, almost as if on cue. With a wry smile Jim excused himself to take the call. It was someone from the media with questions about literacy. Jim was full of facts and information, articulate and pleasant in his manner.

When he hung up the phone I asked Jim what he did before he took on this job. "I was a successful junior high teacher," Jim told me, "but I decided I needed to find more meaningful work. At age 21 I found I could still identify with the crises that beset adolescents (like - 'Everyone else has pink shoelaces and I don't' - disaster) but by age 25, I found I related more to adults."

After returning to University to enroll in a Masters Program in English, Jim taught ABE at Keyano College in Ft. McMurray and Lakeland College in Cold Lake. Now, at age 41, Jim has his Ph.D. in Adult Education and teaches a distance education course in literacy for the University of Calgary. He has also just begun to tutor a fellow from the BEAD Program at AVC because "tutoring is the area of literacy I know the least about."

Very few of my interviews have been with men. I have become increasingly interested about why there aren't more men in the literacy field so I asked for Jim's opinion, He paused a long time before he spoke. "I don't know but I have to admit it's been coming to my attention the last couple of months."

"To answer your question depends on whether you're talking about professionals or volunteers. As far as the professionals go there are very few men in education to begin with. The statistics vary but it's usually about two-thirds women and one third men. And most of those men are in administrative positions (which pay an awful lot more than any literacy positions would). So the education field has traditionally been of greater interest to women."

"But you know, we get people calling to volunteer who think that they will be 'helping' in great big capital letters, They think that they will have a major influence on 'saving this person', or 'helping this person grow', The women I talk to seem to have that attitude more than the men. They think their mothering and love of reading will magically transform the student into a better person. Men don't have that illusion so they don't volunteer as readily. In many cases tutoring is better suited to men. They can be caring but they are more matter of fact and have a more business like attitude towards teaching."