Ontario Human Rights Commission launches Right to Read Public Inquiry to benefit Ontario Students
In early October, 2019, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched a formal inquiry into the Right to Read.
This October, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched a public inquiry into the Right to Read. The inquiry was spurred on by the data collected from recent EQAO – Education Quality and Accountability Office – test results, which showed that more than 25% of grade 3 students and 53% of grade 3 students with special education needs did not meet the Ontario’s reading standard.
We don’t all learn to read and write the same way. LiteracyQ is different.
These numbers are staggering – regardless of your stand on the efficacy of standardized tests – when we consider what we know about the correlations between literacy and social development. The Ontario Human Rights commission stated in its press release that “[s]tudents who can’t read will struggle in all aspects of school, and are more vulnerable to mental health disabilities, behavioural issues, bullying and dropping out. Life-long consequences can include under-employment, homelessness, involvement with the criminal justice system, and even suicide.” These things, though intangible, are relatively easy to prove correlations between, and there have been plenty of interesting articles – both of the scholarly and editorial variety – on the subject. What’s harder to quantify are the intangible things that are directly affected by literacy; basic things like self-esteem, happiness, confidence, and sense of belonging are all harder to track, but are directly related to social development. For example, did you know that “[m]any children with difficulty in learning to read develop a negative self-concept within their first two years of schooling[1]”? So, by second grade a child can already view themselves as less than their classmates, because of difficulty reading or reading below their peer groups.
When we consider this, along with the fact that “studies on children and adults with reading difficulties suggest that these readers show elevated level of anxiety,[2]” it makes a lot of sense to us here at Quillsoft that literacy is, in fact, a basic human right and that everyone should have access to the tools that will allow them to bridge the gap in their literacy at home, at work, and at school. The Ontario Human Rights Commission will be releasing its findings and recommendations in 2020, but for now they are asking parents, students, educators, and others to email legal@ohrc.on.ca or call 416-314-4547 or 1-800-387-9080 them with their experiences.
If you’d like to read the press release from the OHRC, you can do so here.
[1] Chapman, J.W., Tunmer, W.E., & Prochnow, J.E. (2000). Early reading-related skills and performance, reading self-concept, and the development of academic self-concept: A longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 4, 703–708.
[2] Katzir, T., Young-Suk, G.K., & Dotan, S. (2018). Reading self-concept and reading anxiety in second grade children: The roles of word reading, emergent literacy skills, working memory and gender. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(1180), 1-13.
Right to Read
Public Inquiry
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