What can governments do to raise literacy rates in Canada?

[cybercoma]

We should implement the Discovery Reading Method.

They did that years ago when they abolished phonics and grammar classes.

[Second-class Canadian]

There's a lot of misunderstandings about Deaf culture and ASL for sure. I don't really blame people. Most have absolutely no interaction with the Deaf community, so there's a lot of misunderstanding. Even those who do interact with the Deaf community know very little about the history of residential schooling in many countries, but also here in Canada.There's a great misconception that Deaf people are uneducated and suffering from learning difficulties or whatever. While sadly it's true that a lot of Deaf people are uneducated, the reasons for this are, imo, mostly related to the extremely deficient education that they receive growing up. Educators across this country to this day even spend more time teaching them to be accommodating to hearing communities than they do spending time teaching them a proper education with the assistance of interpreters. Deaf students should be given the same education as hearing students and have interpreters so they can receive it in their first language.Most people don't realize how far behind public policy is as it relates to Deaf rights. In the UK British Sign Language is a recognized official language, which gives it certain protections. Neither Canada nor the US recognizes ASL (or LSQ in Québec as an official language). It wasn't even until 1997 in Eldridge v BC that it was recognized that access to interpreters is a human right, particularly in a medical setting. It was 2006 (less than 10 years ago!) in the Canadian Association of the Deaf et al v R that it was ruled federal offices must provide an interpreter for Deaf clients, yet how long have the had to offer services in French?Anyway, yeah. Being Deaf is only tangentially related to literacy and the reason the Deaf community is falling behind is not because Deaf people have problems learning. It's because society has a problem recognizing that signed language is their first language and that learning aural languages does nothing to educate Deaf people, but rather is designed to accommodate the hearing community. If they spent an 1/8 of the effort accommodating the Deaf community by providing interpreters and allowing kids to learn the same things that their hearing peers learn, then Deaf students would be far better off. It's bad enough they have to face discrimination when looking for jobs. It's a god damned travesty that we sabotage their learning environments before they even get to that point.

Though that is true, it is not unique to the Deaf. Finland recognizes Finnish Sign Language as an official language along with Saami. The Swedish voucher programme allows education in any language as long as students sit the national tests in Swedish.

Studies in Canada have show that indigenous Canadians who first learn in their own language perform better in English or French later. Remember that since the written language is based on the spoken, speaking the language reinforces the written. A sign language doesn't. So yes, we need to catch up to other countries and allow children to learn in their own language whenever it is logistically reasonable to do so.

Instead, we'be done the exact opposite by abrogating the right of German and Ukrainian Canadians to send their children to school in their language, though granted the research came out after that action. But yes, learning in the mother tongue first strengthens the learning of the second language later. We ignore the research so as a result the deaf, indigenous, and other Canadians fall behind in literacy. And dyslexia simply compounds the problem for dyslexics, deaf or otherwise, whose parents do not use the school language in the hime.