Despite relatively high education rates, an analysis of international assessments by Statistics Canada in 2013 showed that more than one in six adult Canadians fell short of passing the most basic set of literacy tests.

  • anon6789@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Very interesting article! I’m not Canadian, but while Canadians were the focus, the problems sound pretty universal. More reliance on tech, changing job markets, and people not continuously learning and practicing their more basic skills like reading, composition and math are going to be a major hinderance as tech starts to replace jobs where people have comfortably been able to coast on a lot of these skills and will have problems finding better jobs.

  • Imperious_melange@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Alright the information seems to be from reputable sources, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) and the conference board of Canada. It’s not that people are illiterate but that they struggle with a high school level English reading comprehension test. It seems it was more like 1/6 back in 2013

  • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    That cannot be accurate. I don’t for a minute believe half of canadians struggle with literacy.

    1 in 6 sure.

    This is a bad study, I don’t even have to read about it’s methodology to know that.

    • Godric@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      “This sounds wrong so it must be a bad study, I won’t even bother checking” :(

        • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          Spoilers, Robert Maxwell fucked over Canadian schools too. I’m not sure why Canadians believe they’re so separate from the U.S., but you should probably re-examine that belief.

          • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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            4 hours ago

            Do you think 50% of americans can’t fucking read well? Because if so you are fucking wrong.

            • cheeseburger@lemmy.ca
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              3 hours ago

              Some clown in the 80s decided that learning to read by memorizing what words look like and guessing from context clues was superior to phonics - learning to associate sounds and letters, aka “sounding it out.” It infested some parts of Canada, but I get the impression it was much more widespread and systemic in the states for longer.

            • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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              3 hours ago

              Brother in 2023 54% of adults in the U.S. read below a 6th grade level and 64% of our fourth graders did not read proficiently.

              You need to take a step back, because the only one here who’s dead wrong is you.