> Nearly half of adult Canadians struggle with literacy — and that's bad for the economy<p>Sad that this be couched in monetary terms in order to seem "relevant." As with so many other things, there is a massive qualitative benefit to reading regardless of it's obvious utilitarian or financial advantages.
I think the problem is wider. In Poland average Pole doesn't read even one book a year. I don't think we can keep having modern society if most of the people do not read.
It's great they linked that actual data, to often the media does not do this.<p>And it seems like Canada is exactly the same as the OECD?<p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1.1-eng.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1....</a><p>I don't feel like "Nearly half of adult Canadians struggle with literacy" is justified.
> Poor reading, writing and numeracy skills in adults make up a literacy gap... the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not require the daily use of reading comprehension and information synthesis skills.<p>The problem is identifying children with learning disabilities and/or low IQ early enough and steering them into effective programs tailored to core literacy/numeracy. This is a non-trivial problem in rural and remote communities.<p>Our disdain of IQ style tests, assumed to be associated with marginalization, has probably backfired. The key question is what level of literacy/numeracy is expected for a given IQ and then identifying individuals that fall below this range of expectations. If you don’t recognize the natural distribution to begin with it is hard to improve outcomes.<p>A second problem not addressed in the article is individuals with above average IQs that are functionally innumerate and lack "information synthesis skills”. Journalists generally fall into this category. We need quality information filters especially during a pandemic.
I think you need to look at different ways on how we consume information these days. Books, yes, but what about Netflix documentaries, Youtube, Science blogs, etc. We live in a modern informational era, full of opportunities to consume relevant and educational information.
Does anyone have examples of the tests used? Reading the description I can see why only 1% are expected to perform at a top level - just interested in the actual
By reading the description of these tasks on <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1.1-eng.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1....</a> it feels like it is more of a intelligence test then just straight literacy one.