EDITORIAL


by/par Evelyn Battell

Once upon a time, in 1980, I had a student. She was a woman of forty, a single mother on welfare. She had dropped out of school in Grade 6 to take care of the younger kids in the family. Finally her own kids were grown up some and she talked welfare into paying her fees to come to Adult Basic Education classes. She had a pretty poor vision of herself convinced she was stupid, sure she couldn't do math, thought she was a waste of my time. Furthermore, she was tired, not in good health, worried and proud. She was determined to get off welfare, a job, and make something of herself.

In 1980 things weren't very good for literacy students in B.C. There weren't enough classes and they were held mostly in large scary colleges. Most classes had fifteen students or more and there no day care or transportation support. Most students depended on the luck of the draw in welfare workers - maybe they would pay their way to school and maybe they wouldn't. Most community organizations and government workers had never heard of the "literacy problem" so potential students didn't hear about classes. Most of the seats in B.C. were paid for by CEIC and of these there was only one class of Level 1 (Grades 1-6) in the whole province. In the outlying areas there were a few volunteers to deal with "beginning" readers. Most published materials were written for children by Americans. Often the stories insulted racial minorities and women. They usually had a moralizing tone and assumed that if you couldn't read or write, you also couldn't think in an adult manner or make decisions. Teachers never had enough time to search out better materials or write their own. About half of teachers were part-time, temporary, isolated, unprepared and therefore everchanging.

My student from 1980 succeeded. She struggled and made sporadic progress. Eventually with a lot of support from teachers and other students she gained confidence and skills, developed a love of' reading and started to relate to her kids and welfare more assertively. She continued studying and when she had completed Grade 10 she applied for sponsorship to a trade course she was refused because a woman of forty-five would be unemployable anyway. When I last saw her she was running the vending machines at the college. We considered her a success because we had never had any fantasies about students all ending up with good jobs. We did have expectations about people becoming less marginal and having some more understanding of and control over their lives

Times have changed in B.C. Now there are twenty to twenty-five in a class. Welfare sponsors fewer students yet sometimes single mothers and unwilling twenty-year-old's come to classes so that welfare will not drop them. Probably half the teachers - have been laid off. Counselors are few and far between. Daycare and transportation are more expensive and class fees have soared. Students are only sponsored for a term or two and then sponsored to enter job training. These opportunities are all wait-listed and many graduates are unemployed. Virtually all "beginning" readers - those that need the most - are dealt with by volunteers. Teachers are burning out from the desperate effort to help students.

In 1980 we knew that literacy training changed people's lives. It changed their relations to people and institutions around them. It empowered them. We also knew it didn't happen in a social vacuum - it depended on their seeing what literacy could do for them. It involved their understanding of society and their place in it. Only incidentally and occasionally did it lead to further training and a job. The availability of further training and jobs did not validate literacy work. People changing their self-concept and their control over their lives validated literacy work. I find myself longing for the good-old days.

Evelyn Battell has been in literacy work since 1976. She has taught in community colleges, or a reserve and in a prison. She is currently on the board of Movement for Canadian Literacy. One major source of support of her work has always been her students who know a lot about "literacy" and its relation to the structure of our society.



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