International Literacy Day

Today, September the 8th (!!!) is International Literacy Day, a day recognized around the world to celebrate literacy and life long learning, and bring attention to the importance of these skills. While it's something that is more or less taken for granted here in Canada (we have one of the highest literacy rates in the world here) it's something so fundamental and essential to every aspect of living. Reading, writing and counting lend so much to skills all across the board: education, work, parenting, health, finance, recreation and entertainment - and more. Worldwide it's estimated that 774 million people live without basic literacy skills (two-thirds of whom are women) and 75 million children are not in school, a number on the rise. In a 2003 survey of Canadian adult literacy, 58% of adults came in at the minimum level required to succeed in a knowledge-based economy, a number I thought would have been higher. There's some really neat information about literacy out there - check out the National Adult Skills and Literacy Database if it interests you... and/or if you have time.

Last night we watched Test the Nation: Canada, eh? It was interesting and informative but SO DORKY! I'm not sure if any of you watched... but seriously, why? Why do Canadian TV shows have to be so gorpy? There were lots of bad jokes, a few Canadian celebrities (only one of whom we recognized, oops) and, oh! there was a BODY BREAK. Hal and Joanne McLeod - remember the TV body breaks? - show up in sparkly track suits and get the entire audience on their feet to walk it out! They had everyone marching on the spot, with pearly whites, cheesy smiles and enthusiasm a'blazing - I couldn't not change the channel. It was horrrrible. So that part was mega-cheese... and then everything else was just so politically correct with equal representation of men and women of all colours and shapes and sizes and abilities and disabilities - I wonder if they gave each team (I think there were five or so) an equal representation of people that knew nothing about Canada. There were some good questions though: What famous board game did two Canadian journalists invent? What tool was invented by Canadian Steve Witte in 1894? What is the only official bilingual province? What is the best-selling Canadian hip hop single of all time? So we had fun answering the questions but the dorkiness was overwhelming. What was also extremely dorky was Kurt Browning and the way that the Canadian Walk of Fame was set up. Last night's show and award ceremony (yup we watched several hours of TV last night) had some super drippy and awkward scripted commentary, and the jokes were... you got it! DORKY! I don't know. But it was neat to watch some great Canadians be honoured: Michael J. Fox, Steve Nash K.D. Lang and more. Are we, as Canadians, innately gorpy and dorky? I hope not, but I'm not looking for any answers around here!!

"Keep fit and Have Fun!"