To suggest that nearly one out of four women in Canada is illiterate is to enshrine the divisions of education by class with a morality that blames women for their own situations. To be labeled "illiterate" smells of irresponsibility, immorality - "they" choose to be that way - what is that? poor? to drop out of school at 16 because of pregnancy? to move from one's country of birth? to spend every hour of the day in the isolation of one's home with kids?

Choice? How much choice when we look at the material and social relations in which women are enmeshed? How does the wall established by "illiteracy" further divide us as women, creating a barrier across which it is impossible to speak or to hear one another?

In the opening passage of this essay, Alix reflects upon how, when her husband drowned and she was plunged into poverty, she came to see the women with whom she now had to live as more like herself than not; in time, she lost her fear of the "other city". How to hold the tension of sameness and difference; how to listen as well as speak? To label women as illiterate is to create an "other"; it is a form that defines difference in the terms of reference of the dominant language and practices; as such, it is to perpetuate domination, separation and fear. We have enough of that. To talk of reading, writing and education - and how to think critically, that is, through the ideological "truths" with which we are confronted day after day - is perhaps a way out of the ideological trap of (il)literacy, and the institutionalization of difference through dominance.

¹ All references to the Southam Survey are taken from "Broken Words: Why Five Million Canadians are Illiterate," the Southam Literacy Report. It is available for $2.00 by writing to Literacy, Southam Newspaper Group, Suite 900, 150 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2Y8.

² This jury of peers, or "representative Canadians" as the Southam refers to them, consisted of executives in business and industry, 2 rights advocates, executive officers of various organizations, 2 nationally-acclaimed authors, other professionals, 3 literacy workers, and 3 who were listed as various forms of" workers". Literacy students were also included, but they did not count as one vote per person, as in the case of other jurors, but passed "collective" judgment which counted as one vote. Note, the jurors were not, apparently, told to assess illiteracy, but desirable functioning.

³ Linda Brodkey, "Tropics of Literacy", Journal of Education, Vol. 168, No.2, 1986, pp. 47-54.

⁴ Jenny Horsman, "Something in My Mind Besides the Everyday." Ed. D. dissertation, OISE, June 1988.

⁵ Kathleen Rockhill, "Literacy as Threat/Desire: Longing to be SOME- BODY," in J.S. Gaskill and A.T. McLaren (eds.), Women and Education: A Canadian Perspective (Calgary: Detselig, 1987).

Kathleen Rockhill teaches in the areas of feminist research theory and methodology, and feminist approaches to adult education at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE). She is interested in questions concerning the effect of gender-power relations on learning and education.