Literacy skills not a static commodity, they can decline

Shannon Proudfoot, CanWest News Service

Most Canadians, but especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, experience "significant" literacy loss as adults, a Statistics Canada report shows.

The decline in skills begins at age 25, peaks around 40 and then tapers off around 55 years old. For example, adults aged 40 scored an average of 288 on a standardized literacy test in 1994, but in a second survey nine years later, that had dropped to 275 -- a loss of reading ability equal to half a year of schooling.

Over their lifetime, the average Canadian will lose about one grade's worth of literacy skills, the report estimates. "Literacy is not a static commodity that is acquired in youth and maintained throughout life," it concludes. More education mitigates the decline, with university graduates scoring about 30 points higher than high school grads. People who didn't complete secondary school scored nearly 50 points lower than those who did, while employed Canadians scored 12 points higher than those not in the labour force.

The reading people do at work helps, but not nearly as much as reading a variety of materials for pleasure at home. The data came from a series of international literacy surveys conducted in 1994 and 2003, with StatsCan gathering the Canadian component. This report focused on native-born Canadians, though other surveys show immigrants have significantly more literacy difficulties.

Two in five Canadians age 16 to 65 (42 per cent) have inadequate reading skills to cope in our knowledge-based society, according to previous StatsCan data. When adults over 66 years of age are included, that proportion rises to 55 per cent. Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Nunavut scored significantly below the national average, while the Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan are above.

Canada is "in the middle of the pack" in international literacy terms, says Margaret Eaton, president of the ABC Canada Literacy Foundation, behind countries such as Norway and Bermuda, but ahead of Switzerland, the U.S. and Italy.
She notes that people think of literacy as simply the ability to read words, but it's about a broader ability to read a document and understand its complexity, vocabulary and significance. "In a global economy, Canada needs to be able to compete and its workforce needs to be able to compete at a high level," Eaton says. "Literacy can become a trade advantage."

On an individual level, there's a connection between literacy skills and standard of living, community involvement, health and workplace safety, she says. Studies show people with poor reading skills are more prone to accidents and illness. Gloomy statistics about literacy can easily be taken out of context, says Fran Zimmerman, a literacy worker at the St. Christopher House adult literacy program in Toronto.
"People sort of panic and think this means Canada is doing terribly and we're all undereducated," she says. "People overreact to these numbers, but to us in literacy programs, we don't see that happening."