Adults

Illiteracy and literacy

History of literacy

Prior to 1965:

Responsibility for literacy training for adult Quebecers was essentially assumed by religious organizations, often through charitable services offered to the neediest in society.

There was no mandatory schooling for children, and the socio-economic conditions in which families, often large, lived frequently forced young people to leave school in order to support their families by taking a job or joining the family business. Aside from the liberal professions, few trades required a minimum level of education or vocational training acquired at school.

It was only in 1964 that education became mandatory for all children up to the age of 16.

From 1965 to 1980:

A number of schools in poorer areas began to offer training for adults, in order to teach them to read and write. To begin with, though, they used the same material as in classes for children. Only gradually, and at the request of the adults themselves, was material designed that was more closely geared to their needs and concerns.

At the same time, numerous citizens’ committees and grassroots educational organizations were established in underprivileged neighbourhoods: many set up adult literacy training services, designing adapted material and guiding the training toward an objective whereby individuals and communities took charge of their living environments, an objective of social transformation. In that context, literacy training was associated with fighting poverty.

From the 1980s to the 2000s

From the 1980s onward, literacy became a social issue which school boards’ adult education centres and grassroots educational organizations addressed by offering training whose goals were, however, different, moving from purely learning the code (functional literacy training) to teaching reading and writing as a tool for social transformation (consciousness-raising literacy training).

By 1990, the Ministry of Education had made literacy training a priority, and this commitment was reiterated in 2002 in the Action Plan for Adult Education and Continuing Education and Training. The Ministry recognized and financially supported two literacy networks: school boards, and autonomous grassroots literacy organizations, of which there are now more than 150 spread across the whole of Quebec.

Future challenges

The rapid development of technology has turned the labour market upside down and raised the level of requirements that adult Quebecers have to meet in terms of knowledge and skills if they want a job and hope to advance within a company. The range of essential notions that have to be mastered in order to function well in society on a daily basis is constantly expanding. Beyond the efforts already invested by the two officially recognized networks with respect to literacy training, it is now imperative that corporate basic training be established, as that is an essential condition for enabling workers to take ownership of the new rules and tools of production and contribute to economic prosperity.