Breaking Chains

Immigrant Women Workers and Literacy

Literacy in its most encompassing definition is the right to PARTICIPATE, the ability and confidence to articulate concerns, to pose questions, and above all, to get involved in one's own workplace, union and community. Being literate is knowing that you have a choice. In this great land of opportunities, many immigrant women are walking in chains. These are chains of dependency, chains of being treated as hands rather than as a person with a brain, and chains of having doors closed right in your face in the name of Canadian experience. It is a sense of vulnerability and helplessness, of being stripped of one's own historical, cultural and linguistic roots once you set foot on Canadian soil. It is also a sense of humiliation for having to rely upon a relative, a friend, a child or at times even a stranger to "speak" and "think" for you. Being illiterate for a non-English speaking immigrant woman is like "doing time" in a prison without walls.

The marginalization of immigrant women is more apparent when we walk into any garment, textile, food processing or electronics manufacturing factory in Metro Toronto to set up the English at the Workplace Program (EWP). What do you say to an immigrant woman worker, who has been working on the line for the last twenty-five years, and who told us we came twenty years too late because she had lost her hearing! What do you say to a Punjabi-speaking woman assembler who speaks flawless English and whose Master's degree in Education in Punjab was given a mere Ontario Grade 13 equivalent? What do you say to a Chinese sewing machine operator who keeps saying that she can't learn because she does not even read Chinese!

The Metro Labour Education & Skills Training Center, a project of the Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto, has been trying to break some of these chains. Since its inception six years ago, the English at the Workplace Program has attempted to address the functional ESL literacy needs of immigrant women workers. Inspired by educational campaigns like the Nicaraguan literacy crusade and the work of Paulo Freire, the philosophy of the Program emphasizes the need to develop worker/participants' critical consciousness of their work situation, their society and position in it, and ways of effecting changes through action, hopefully through participation in their union.

The content of our Programs is very much learner-centered. Workplace functions, such as how to report a machine breakdown, what to do in an emergency situation, how to read the health and safety labels, etc., are integrated into the training program. The learner's own life experiences as an immigrant, a worker and woman are very much acknowledged. We strongly oppose teaching approaches that patronize, and materials that infantilize the learners. The following, from one of our EWP participants, further illustrates this shared sentiment:

I came to Canada from Monteleone , Italy in 1957. The boat arrived in Montreal. I took a train to Toronto. After 3 weeks, I looked for a job. After a couple of months I went to school to learn English. The teacher said the same thing every night. ‘This is my pencil. This is my apple. I give it to you. You give it to her.’ She made me sick when she said the same thing every night. I stopped after two months. I didn't want to hear her say the same thing every night, Now I am learning English again. I like this class because I learn different things every week.