Literacy and the Sustainable City
Guest Blogger! Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Bradley, who has been a professional librarian for twenty one years, eighteen years with Windsor Public Library where he is currently employed.
There is a lot of talk these days on and about sustainable cities and what makes a city sustainable, Scaledown is the only organization in this city of Windsor putting forward with some urgency the public conversation of what is a sustainable city and what isn’t a sustainable city in all its aspects, as manufacturing and populations decline in Windsor and urban sprawl is weakening us rather than strengthening us.
There is walkable cities, denser cities, a better use of public transportation, recycling, mix-use, infilling, smart and creative cities, Richard Florida’s, “Whose Your City,” Kunstler’s Peak Oil and Jane Jacobs’ “The Economies of Cities.”
But there is something else that underlines all the above that isn’t part of the conversation at this moment in this city and that is education and literacy. Yes, the mayor is trying to lure development to core of this city from our two post-secondary institutions, with the hope of keeping our graduating students to learn, live and stay in the city plus turn the wasteland of the core into a vibrant city.
Yes there is talk and programs for massive retraining of our workforce to meet our present and future needs but reading is hard, learning is hard and it takes time! And there is no guarantee that when you do graduate, that there will be job for you! Times, they are a changing!
Yes, our two school boards and teachers are trying to leave no child behind but is that enough and what about the population that is neither in school nor in post-secondary studies but need to upgrade their skills and education, let alone the ability to read! What about those that have lost their jobs but haven’t cracked a text book in ten, twenty and even thirty years. How do we convince those that have dropped out of school or are thinking of it, that their best interest and survival is to get an education!
Literacy and just not the simple ability to read, it is now the demand of the new economy. We in Windsor aren’t in transition, or a cyclical mode, we are in a dramatic paradigm shift. A shift away from under educated, unskilled labour force that has sustained us for almost a hundred years.
But is that enough to sustain this city well into the future?
A new report; Reading the Future from the Canadian Council on Learning doesn’t paint a very good picture of Canada right now and into the future. Reading the Future’s Fact Sheet states emphatically that;
Myth: Canada doesn’t have a literacy problem.
Fact: Almost half of all Canadian adults have
(48%) have low literacy skills!
Myth: Adult literacy will improve over time as more and more people acquire higher education.
Fact: The proportion of Canadian adults with low literacy skills
will virtually remain unchanged through 2031!
I will let you read the rest of the report, it isn’t pretty, it does hold some light but to have a Smart, Creative and Innovative city we must first address the great need of getting all our citizens above the lowest common denominator.
Statistics Canada just published the Composite Learning index for 2008, Windsor doesn’t fair well except for Montreal with the other cities in Canada, with a an actual decrease of 0.02 from the last report. Only Hamilton and St. Catherine’s matched Windsor in the decline for the whole province in this latest release.
Opinion – Mine!
For one hundred years almost, this city has almost ignored education at any level, as long as the once Big Three and the feeder plants hired the majority of its citizens to work the line, life was good, it very good! The city hummed along and grew. A hundred years is a long time for basically a one industry city, it isn’t anymore!
Since I joined the Windsor Public Library, eighteen years ago, the Library has struggled to keep a Literacy program going, knowing that there is a great need for it in this city. No other institution is addressing the problem of literacy amongst the general population that have left school, either as drop outs or those that didn’t need to read to get a job assembling a gizzo on a whatchamacallit! The demand for help is skyrocketing, but there is no funding, there aren’t enough volunteers to tutor those wanting to learn to read! Yet the City of Windsor keeps cutting the funding to the library, when the numbers produced today, scream that full funding is needed now more than ever in this city.
And it is just not literacy help that is needed, more people are seeking basic computer learning skills but yet the computer lab at the Central library sits empty for the lack of funding. People are looking for learning resources and are turning to the library for help but the money isn’t there to buy the books because the city continues to cut the funding to the library. Those that are unemployed who once had the internet at home, now rely on the library for their internet connection but there aren’t enough computers to meet demand!
When we desperately need a literate, smart and creative citizenry, this city ignores the fact and cuts the budget of the one institution that can save this city or at least assist those that need help! And the numbers for this city indeed state that we need help!
Oh! And if you are wondering were I am coming from, after getting out the Canadian Army and drifting around Canada for a few years, I came home to Windsor, got my grade twelve through St.Clair College, worked seven years on the line at Ford. When I saw my first robot on the line malfunction in 1974 and it was engineers in white coats that came to fix it, instead of the millwrights, I got my butt into university as a mature student then! Six long years after that I now hold a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. But the redeeming factor for me was always my life long ability to read and read well! And it was always the Windsor Public Library that supplied me with the life long rows of books that got me here now!
A literate society can’t be beaten into the ground! A literate society will sustain a city! A literate society will create the jobs it needs!
Tags: guest blogger, literacy, sustainable development, Windsor Public Library
Post Feedback
These stats surprise the hell out of me. Is the prospects of winning the “auto lotto” and the expectation of “something for nothing” (SFN) really holding this city that far back?
And we look to a casino as saving us from ourselves - the Cadillac of the SFN mentality.
You should read the whole report, then sit here at the referenced desk everyday or for several shifts and you will see the skills that we need in this new economy, they aren’t here in Windsor. One major factor or statistic in the study was the reluctance of people with low literacy skills was their low or almost nonexistent computer skills.
What I find but not really, is the low literacy skills of those who have graduated from university or college!!!!!!!!!!!, in Canada! While India graduates the minimum of 30,000 PhDs every year!
Whats interesting is that most downtowns market the attractiveness of their demographics to lure business by the education level of the residents. Instead of asking income level, they ask education level and simply derive the attractiveness.
I agree with the SFN comment … I lived in the GTA for 10 years and coming back to Windsor, I have been constantly amazed at the continued reliance on the auto industry and the long heard cry for greater economic diversity … and the saviours from above who will solve our ills … think … big 3, Ford bailouts, ceasars, global sutherland, and now we have a mega highway /bridge project …
maybe … just maybe, using some local ingenuity and brainpower we could take the billions dumped into these industries? and use them for some new ideas … local based initiatives, that serve Windsorites … like work towards environmental initiatives - reduce waste, alternative energy, public transit …
And yes, education and literacy are cornerstones of this … the ability to dream and use knowledge of the world around you to create a better world … but, ???? there is no money for them??? Hello ???
I was heading out to Wheatley yesterday and followed one of those monstrous wind turbine blades down hwy #3 most of the way. Awe-inspiring it was. But then my buddy told me that those collosal wind turbines were made in China!
Why isn’t Windsor, with it’s wasting manufacturing sector, building these products of the future instead of looking to Queens Park for auto handouts?!?
Where are our leaders - you know, the educated minority? I know Allan Rock and Ross Paul are taking their golden handshakes and fleeing the city, but there must be someone left. Isn’t there?
Chris, I think the same thing looking at the turbines just passing through… And, like Willy says theres a whole industry to be tapped into. With the countless N.american cities reverting back to their streetcar transit and adding new, I always wondered if Bombardier could not find an opprtunity for the engineering or even the manufacturing light rail vehicles right here in Windsor.
Re: the Mikhail Holdings proposal. Looks like a 1960s cartoonist’s idea of a futuristic, over-sized gas station. Probably about as long-lived as an ErectorSet model as well. To think that as a society we even consider razing builings of quality like the BofM at Ottawa & Walker when the sheer awfulness of the things we accept as newbuilds is so in evidence. It’s another cartoon of a building - we don’t even bother trying to hide the fact that they’re cheap and crappy anymore.
While harping on about the BofM, here’s a novel way of trying to save an undesignated craftsmen-styled house in PEI. Anyone up to proposing a similar strategy to the owner of the lovely strip plaza streching behind it?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2008/06/25/heritage-house.html
The reason those are made in China is because it is so damn cheap to do business there.
If those were made here the workers would demand $30.00/hr+. It would then make the turbines too expensive to be utilized.
Don’t get me wrong I am all for having alternative energy built here (including light rail but we know that won’t happen) but we demand far too much against a country that offers slave labour wages. In other words the comparison is too great.
Just look at Mexico. It will surpass Canada shortly for the number of vehicles made because everyone is turning to sub-compact cars. These cars cannot be built in Europe nor N. America and still make the manufacturer a profit.
I say tax the hell out of SUVs and large pick-ups and to a smaller degree mid-sized cars and also make the sub-compacts a bit more expensive so that they CAN be built here to make a profit. That way our reliance on oil is substantially decreased (win for environment and foreign policy in the middle east goes out the window) but jobs stay here.
The end of cheap energy will take care of it for us, ME. Let’s see what the end cost of those turbine blades will be once oil ratchets up in price again.
Check out this article from the Globe and Mail to see where we’re headed on this cheap oil orgy!
If we don’t start listening to those experts, “alarmists” and “naysayers” who keep harping on this fact and begin to reinvest in our manufacturing infrastructure, we’re all going to be up a creek without a paddle.
And it will take an educated population to comprehend exactly what’s at stake here.
ME, also in the star today was a new building for the core:
http://www.mikhailholdings.com/property/BankCenter/BankingCenter.html
Is it possible that the renderings may come to life and we’ll some 100 ft high stuccoed peice o’ crap downtown ???
Sporto,
If it has to do with banks it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. When is the bank shell game downtown going to end? They have levelled most of our older structures for their new HQs only to do it again a decade or so later.
The sad fact about this is that it isn’t attracting new business but just moving from one site to another. I am sure “last minute” Eddie will say it is the dawning of a new day downtown. We know otherwise…
Chris,
Cheap oil is long gone, I agree. But the reason renewable energy isn’t at the forefront yet is due to costs. One way to bring those costs down is to have it built in slave labour countries like China. Do I agree with it? Absolutely not but that is the reality.
What I don’t understand is why our gov’ts are not giving gobs of money to accelerate the technology and have it built here?
I would rathe rthey subsidize renewable energy than a car manufacturer building large SUVs.
For almost fifty years China and other communists countries, stole ideas and goods from the west by reverse engineering because of things like the Cultural Revolution under Mao, who ruined the intellectual class of China, but in the last twenty or so year China is now doing a lot of original scientific and engineering research and developing their own goods for sale in the country and for export. Their universities are overflowing with the best and the brightest that that country produces. In other words they have concluded that an education is the fastest way to the 21st century.
India is doing the same thing, massive amounts of family and private mony goes to educating their children as the only way out of poverty. All the while our under educated and low functioning literates are sitting on the curbs of Ontario towns waiting as Chris says “auto lotto” AND our various levels of government twiddle their whatevers bemoaning the lost of jobs and our best and brightest to the rest of Canada or the world.
I am also going to point something out to you that is what I and others have found when we went after an education while we worked the line in this city (I worked steady afternoons, while I went part time during the day for six years!) And that is a very open hostility to anyone advancing their education in those plants! I and others have had our books drilled, ripped up, spray painted, welded shut and so on. I’ve heard fathers speaking to their children to get out of university or college, that they can get them a job on the line, you don’t need no stinking education to make a big buck, so why bust your ass and go into debt!
And for a hundred years in this city that was the attitude of a good number of our population. SFU mentality is still relevant in this city, others call it “entitlement” How do say laughing their asses off in Chinese, Hindu or Mexican!