II
Literacy work and the literacy issue — historical sketches
Literacy work, responding, within the context of societal attitudes
and government policies, to the realities of limited literacy, develops
over time. That development is the topic of this section. The nature
of interests in the literacy issue and the forces driving it change
over time. Sponsors and funders of programming change. The activities
at the leading edge of literacy work change. A little history may help
to clarify where we are by showing how we have got here.19
Literacy work 1960-85
The oldest large-scale governmental effort to address literacy and
basic education was organized by the federal government. In the 1960s
the federal department then called Canada Manpower began a general program
of labour force training called the Canada Manpower Training Program
(CMTP), one component of which was a program in adult pre-vocational
academic training, BTSD (Basic Training for Skill Development). Canada
Manpower provided funding for adult basic education, up to a secondary
equivalency certificate, through its system of "seat purchases"
for BTSD in provincially-run community colleges and vocational schools,
or school boards.
This Canada Manpower Training Program activity was developed in response
to the high unemployment of the early 1960s, and the perceived need
for a more highly trained labour force for an industrializing economy.
It also showed the influence of "human capital" theory,
which, stated roughly, understood education as both an individual investment
(that would raise an individual's lifetime value on the labour market),
and a societal investment (that would increase a society's capacity
for economic growth). The Canada Manpower Training Program also had
de facto social objectives, since it emphasized
training in regions of high unemployment; it was even widely if unofficially
understood as a remedy for high unemployment rates — as it made
people "trainees" rather than "unemployed." |