Adult Basic Education for Women: A Model for Policy Development

8.	Information provided to the undereducated adult about adult basic education programs
	must be of a higher quality than that provided to any other educational group. However, the reality is that more often the available information is of a much lower quality. The saga of the telephone company, the CBC and the literacy movement points this out. (1)

In January 1978, the CBC's Fifth Estate did an intensive look at literacy in Canada and what was being done about it. Before the program the various agencies involved requested from Bell Canada that they be given a Zenith phone line to take calls from persons wanting information who might call in from all parts of Canada. The telephone company refused to provide only one line since it knew that the number of calls which would come in would overload the system. After the program, Bell Canada estimated that 10,000 calls were received in the first hour, plus many more calls which could not be handled. Only a fraction of the calls were received by the literacy volunteers.

The CBC staff were so amazed at the response that they decided to assist the Movement for Canadian Literacy in doing a follow-up program and Bell Canada agreed to provide more adequate phone service. Volunteers were drafted to take calls, the phone number was advertised and was to be the same for all of Canada. The Literacy Movement counted on the expertise of the CBC and Bell Canada, two leading experts in the field of telecommunications. The CBC provided a three-minute spot on the final program of the Fifth Estate which consisted of film clips from the previous show and the telephone number superimposed. The telephone company midway into the second week of the project announced that the incoming telephone line had been improperly connected and extended only as far as Quebec and excluded the Maritimes. When the problem was finally corrected, the service consisted of one telephone number for Ontario calls and another for out-of-Ontario calls. The information about the change in telephone numbers was not distributed adequately. Many, many potential callers did not receive the assistance they needed. All who did reach the volunteers answering the phone calls received assistance or were referred directly to someone who could be of help.

This type of inadequate quality in the information services provided for the undereducated segment of the population is typical. The providers of the information dissemination services and the providers of the information appear to be totally unaware of the difficulties which arise from such poor service and of the ways in which their procedures alienate the undereducated adult.

Basic problems

1.	Comprehensive, up-to-date information is not readily available in a form which is
	useful to undereducated women. There are no public or community agencies explicitly charged with the responsibility for providing such information.

2.	Information which is available is often incomprehensible except to highly educated persons.

3.	Individuals are not entitled to all the information available. Service-providers often
	withhold information from potential users because they believe that: (a) the user is not capable of using the information properly; (b) if the information became common knowledge too many people would want to obtain services; (c) some other service-provider has already disseminated this information or should be responsible for disseminating it; (d) information cannot be given until a specific request has been made for specific information (general requests are not responded to); (e) redundant information is a bad thing (communication theory would suggest otherwise); and so on.

4.	Information is not necessarily provided in a symbolic form familiar to the potential user,
	at a time convenient to the potential user, or in a style comfortable for the potential user.

5.	Those who develop information resources tend to vastly over-rate the reading or 'skill
	level of potential users.

6.	The type of information preferred by potential users is quite different from the type which
	service-providers prefer to disseminate. As a result information is most often disseminated in the form preferred by the service-provider.

(1). A. Coulter, Telephone referral project report" Literacy Alphabétisation Vol. 3:3, 1978, p. 12


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