Illiterati – call the reading and writing not-line.

How would you feel if you were a football coach and half your players didn’t understand the rules?  Not only that, but half of them fail at tackling, kicking and receiving the ball.  Would your games seem like a lost cause?

Welcome to the playing field of Australian literacy.

We live in a “lucky” country where 46% of Australians DO NOT have the level of literacy required to cope with everyday life.  46%!  Nearly half of our countrymen cannot read and comprehend at the level necessary to successfully navigate everyday work requirements.  That’s before we look at numeracy, where 53% of people are failing to make the grade.

I am appalled and shocked beyond belief.  Despite the fact that Australia is supposed to value a fair go and give everyone a chance at making something of their life, it’s pretty clear this isn’t the case.  An education system (or systems) that fails to close the literacy gap is directly contributing to keeping a large slice of Australians downtrodden, poor and unemployable.  The ABS found that scores in prose literacy alone were reflected in a large gap in median weekly income:

            Highest Levels of prose literacy = $890/week

            Lowest Levels of prose literacy = $298/week

If you told kids at school that excellent reading was valued at $592/week for the rest of their lives, would you see an improvement?  How about if you told their parents, carers and families?  By these calculations, failure to achieve literacy costs the individual $1.2million in a working lifetime of just 40 years.  (That’s $592/wk x 52wk/yr x 40yrs = $ 1 231 360 for those numerate types playing at home.)

If illiteracy costs that much to individuals, consider what it costs companies and businesses struggling to find employees.  The Australian had a great article on this topic earlier this year  – Forging New Strategies to tackle Workplace Illiteracy

In brief, what Heather reports is that:

-       75% employers report being affected by low literacy/numeracy

-       4 million workforce members can’t confidently use typical workplace documents

-       no improvement in workforce literacy in 10 years

-       poor spelling and grammar wastes time and money

-       jobs where low literacy/numeracy levels can get by are disappearing

I for one can’t comprehend why students are allowed to leave school without the basics.  Repeating until you achieve seems to have become a thing of the past and no-one knows why.  We all hear “they need to stay with their friends – it’s bad for self esteem to be kept down” but I’m pretty sure being illiterate isn’t great for your self-esteem either.  Some fingers are pointed at governments, claiming that students are moved on to keep costs down – a student who repeats costs more.  I’m pretty sure that if you looked at it long term, the cost comparisons between literate and illiterate students would come out in favour of repeating.  A year or two extra at school vs many years on unemployment benefits?  I don’t think you have to be super-numerate to figure that one out.

If Australia wants to be a world leader in the economic game then we’d better start teaching our students to read and write properly.  Or else, like so many European soccer clubs, we’ll have to start importing star players from overseas.

PS.

Australian Bureau of Statics – Australia’s Literacy and Life Skills 2006

ABS - Australia's Literacy and Life Skills 2006

PPS.

Act Now – the who, what, when and where of illiteracy

Act Now - Illiteracy

Preaching to the Converted.

The problem with environmentalists is that, for the most part, they preach* to a receptive audience.  In many ways it is similar to a religious minister preaching hellfire and damnation from within the safe confines of his own church.  Presumably only religious people attend church, which would suggest they already know and understand the theology.  That is not to say that such Sunday morning gatherings are not useful in maintaining the flock – by all means environmentalists need to keep networking with other like-minded folk.  If it helps to keep the faith, then so be it.

Environmental Bogan - a rare breed.

What interests me more is the need for “environmental missionaries” to get out there and create converts.  We need to see the hardcore faithful taking extended leave to doorknock bogan** heartlands, to attend schoolies week and hand out green lolly frogs in the name of the planet, to hold stalls at V8 car races and get the climate change elephant on the scene of any Cronulla-style race riots as they unfold.  The “save the planet” message needs to move beyond the pseudo-educated masses and head on down to drop out land.  Because that is where the real change needs to happen.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC – UK) has had a look at who says what when it comes to the environment – I’m assuming Australian studies would say the same thing.  They found “people fall into four categories of environmentalist  - committed, mainstream, occasional or non-committed.”  If we consider it as an environmental continuum, we can assume that the first three groups are somewhere along the way to doing the right things already.  The last group, also called the “non-environmentalists” are the ones who really need a kick in the pants to get started.  In brief, what did the ESRC find out about these environmental heathens?

Non – Environmentalists:

·      younger (lower mean ages than other groups)

·      male (more-so than other groups which were roughly sex balanced)

·      renters, either private or housing commission equivalent

·      low income earners

·      uneducated (large proportion with no qualifications)

·      non-voting (in the UK –  so probably our donkey kings)

The gist of it is that these aren’t the people out there buying books on “green living” or borrowing them from local libraries.  These are the edge of society that many of us prefer not to think about.  While committed environmentalists are already acting and voting Green, these non-environmentalists could really benefit.  The policies of the Greens that relate to taxing the rich and providing more extensive free health and dental-care would appeal to these bogans, if they could be interested in politics.  I’m sure that “affordable housing is a human right” would also interest them – if they could ever afford their own small piece of land to care for, maybe it would give them an insight into caring for the earth as a whole.

I don’t know how big the bogan voting population is.  But I do know they are currently the perfect fodder for the fear mongering of both major parties on a variety of irrelevant issues.  What the Green movement needs is dedicated missionaries heading into deepest darkest bogan-land to convert the natives.  Because preaching to the converted can only ever maintain the status quo. 

*I’m not saying that environmentalism is a spurious belief or a “church” of any kind.  But a church is a common social construct representative of a group of people, and as such, an appropriate analogy.

**I use the term “bogan” in the most loving sense possible.  Coming from a bogan district myself, I understand that there are “bogan environmentalists,” but nothing sums up this stereotypical group of people better than the word “bogan.”

PS. 

Read the ESRC report into Environmental Action - Linking Attitudes and Behaviour