Reading to your kids might help them earn an extra half a million dollars.
During a lifetime, a male with higher literacy skills makes an extra $585,000 and a female $683,000.
This is Family Literacy Week in B.C., a good time to reflect on the importance of literacy and its increasing importance in an ever growing technological society.
Reporter Steve MacNaull chronicled the importance of parents reading to their children Sunday in a story about a woman who upped her literacy level at Project Literacy. Literacy, like most things, starts at home.
• Research shows children have a better chance of becoming fully literate adults if reading is encouraged in the home.
• Quality of life for families, including income levels and employment status, is directly related to the literacy levels of parents.
• For a child, the more time spent with a parent reading aloud increases his or her level of attachment, enhances a sense of security and imparts the knowledge that their parent feels they are worthwhile people with whom to spend time.
Canada is a literate society, but the overall percentage of Canadian adults with low literacy is 42 per cent, a level that hasn’t changed since 1994. “Helping someone to read and write effectively or acquire the basic math skills so many of us take for granted, improves the future of everyone in society,” it says on the Project Literacy Kelowna website. “Literacy is critical to economic development as well as individual and community well-being.”
A 2004 Statistics Canada study concluded that a one per cent increase in literacy levels would raise Canada’s labour productivity by 2.5 per cent and add an estimated $32 billion to our annual Gross Domestic Product.
While there are few people who are illiterate, people who can’t read at all, there are about nine million Canadian with low literacy, which involves more than an ability to read.
For many people, a conversation about literacy simply involves stats, but for Tom Wilson, it’s personal. The former managing editor of The Daily Courier and current communications supervisor with the city of Kelowna, was president of Project Literacy for three years and saw first hand the lives transformed by the acquisition of literacy. “It was a real eye-opener to see people who are in post-secondary programs who needed help with assignments or to achieve accreditations that required a level of literacy or numeracy they didn’t get in their regular education.
“I think there’s a double-sided reason for that; people can pass through the education system with basic literacy levels, plus the world of work is demanding higher levels of literacy to perform certain jobs.”
The demand for such a fundamental skill keeps growing at a faster pace than the funding.
If you need help, Project Literacy Kelowna would be happy to see you. If you want to help, Project Literacy Kelowna would also be happy to see you.
It is transforming lives and the economy one person at a time.
— Interim Editor Ross Freake
