Literacy funding woes

Re: Literacy funding outrage, May 22.

Literacy advocates are expressing outrage over the government’s withdrawal of funding for them. There may be some alternatives to the multiple agencies that oversee, but do not actually provide these services. It is not clear that the preponderance of middlemen in this system provides significant benefit to improve literacy. As someone who has done training in basic literacy, among other things, there is another option to this model.

I voluntarily provided on-site literacy training for employees of a large hotel chain, arranged by a community social services agency. The company recognized that their employees improved with a short six-month program that focused on improving their literacy, because it requested similar training later for another group of employees whose knowledge of English was far more limited than the first. However, the company only wanted the training for free.

If such training is truly valued, both the employee and employer will invest in it. If neither has “any skin in the game,” perhaps we are just fooling ourselves. “Programs” abound that offer help to people who may not even venture outside their home. How motivated are these students? How motivated are people who drop in and out?

We cannot fault companies that would like to offset direct expenses onto the shoulders of the government/taxpayers or onto volunteers.

But something is wrong in this equation. When we create a culture in which many feel entitled to demand or expect something — be it a job as a consultant, or a customized class free of charge — we have a problem, not a solution to an issue. Barbara Okun, Ottawa