Team Inquiring Minds

Edmonton Journal (Alberta) January 22, 2012 Sunday Final Edition A lament for the future of meaningful reading; Why bother with serious books when Angry Birds is a tap away? BYLINE: Brett Josef Grubisic, Vancouver Sun SECTION: SUNDAY READER; Pg. B9 LENGTH: 1036 words Reading the 21st Century Stan Persky McGill Queens University Press 278 pp; $29.95 In an article about the good deeds of E.D. Hirsch, the recently deceased American cultural literacy superstar Christopher Hitchens dropped alarming findings from a nationwide survey: "The chances of a 17-yearold American being able to say anything meaningful about Thomas Jefferson are disconcertingly slight. The chances of the same student knowing anything significant about Poe, or slavery, or of being able to translate the most elementary Latin . or even being able to define the word 'ironic' are slighter still." Published shortly after Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind and Hirsch's Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, Hitchens' New York Times piece drew references from a 1988 survey. Since the ensuing two decades have witnessed the explosive growth of the Internet and gadgets for every occasion, it is tempting to wonder about the cultural literacy of that former disappointing test-subject's teenage son. A professional philosopher at Vancouver's Capilano University for nearly three decades and the author of more than 20 books that range from sexual politics (Buddies: Meditations on Desire, On Kiddie Porn) to Canadian politics (Fantasy Government, Delgamuukw), Chicago-born Stan Persky has been studying the data. He cannot be labelled an optimist. Persky's latest work - which he calls a "jeremiad, as defined by the writer Brian Fawcett: as accurate a description as possible of the present situation" - expands his impressive range while remaining close to an ever-keen interest in the cultural landscape of the here and now. Page-wise, Reading the 21st Century is dedicated primarily to signifi

Edmonton Journal (Alberta) September 8, 2010 Wednesday Final Edition Literacy rates expected to worsen BYLINE: Postmedia News SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A6 LENGTH: 399 words DATELINE: OTTAWA Current low literacy rates in Canada's biggest cities are expected to be about the same in 20 years unless some serious efforts to improve them are made now, a new report released today warns. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa are all on track to see the number of adults with low literacy levels in their populations soar because of demographic shifts, according to a report from the Canadian Council on Learning, and it should be a major concern for the cities, the group's president says. "It's surprising for people who think that the problem of low levels of literacy among Canadian adults will improve over time, because they won't," Paul Cappon said in an interview. "And that includes in the bigger cities where people might have thought you'd get the most improvement." The latest numbers from the CCL indicate that about 48 per cent of adults have low literacy rates and projections show little is expected to change over the next 20 years. By 2031, about 47 per cent of Canadian adults are projected to have low prose literacy skills, as defined by the OECD's International Adults Literacy and Skills Survey -- which means they'll have difficulty reading, comprehending and functioning effectively with written material. While the percentage is expected to stay the same, the total number of Canadians with low literacy is predicted to jump 25 per cent to 15 million between 2001 and 2031. The major factor behind that trend is the projected growth in the number of senior citizens and immigrants, the report said. In Toronto, a slight decrease of five per cent in the share of the population with low literacy is expected by 2031, but the absolute number of residents who need help is expected to go from 1.9 million to 3.2 million. The change in Toronto is being driven mostly by immigrati