Cause for celebration

January 27 is the day ABC Literacy Canada has declared Family Literacy Day. Schools, libraries and family resource centres celebrate literacy with storytelling, song and dance.

Literacy is something to celebrate, but we feel a little uneasy when we hear something more than 20 per cent of Canadians have serious problems dealing with printed material. Add to this the prediction 45 per cent of new Canadian jobs created this decade will require 16 years of schooling and you've got a recipe for something a little stronger than “unease.�

Certainly, sellers have found ways to publish their message so purchasers know something about the product - even if they don’t know how to read! In “branding,� advertisers make every effort to invent ways to build a relationship with the buyers, ways that involve as many senses and values (tricky thing, this, attaching value to an object!) as possible.

In addition to printed words - in which the very letters likely have been given their own unique look - other senses get pulled into the act. Colours, sounds, logos and other symbols are used to create in the buyer desire to own this product, connecting buyer to product on several levels.

We are a purchase-oriented society as a result. The sellers woo us, make us feel catered-to; and we reciprocate by parting with our hard-earned cash. This is such a rich deal for them, they are willing to spend millions to find out what makes us tick, to find new ways to connect with us.

We are starting to look at this kind of research to explore how to connect our children to text literacy. We’re a little concerned, with all the schooling we’ve offered for so many years, a disturbing number of our young adults can’t write a shopping list or follow a job-related agenda. There are no surprises here!

Care to guess what connects kids to literacy? Regular conversation with actual people really does the trick. Sure, it turns out the example of seeing grownups reading encourages a child to read, but what really boosts the ability to give and get meaning from print is... someone, on a frequent regular basis, going eye-to-eye, gurgle-to-gurgle, giggle-to-wiggle and word-to-word with that new being.

We aren’t completely aware of how this works, but just as surely as infants only survive their first year of life when someone cuddles them (in the 1950s, we learned touch is essential to infants), we now know the early give-and-take of conversation activates the connection we call literacy.

No wonder literacy rates are slipping. We now have a generation of parents who were raised with Mr. Dressup instead of the expressive face of someone near and dear. These parents, with some exceptions, know how to do lots of interesting things - but not how to talk with their babies. Lots of new parents have seldom had someone bounce them on a knee or heard a silly rhyme.

All you folks who’ve been around since before TV, help us really celebrate, please?