Literacy

Health, literacy and education levels are concerns in Inuit communities.

Health is affected by factors such as education, employment, access to services, housing, support systems, etc. In today’s world, literacy is essential in meeting these health-related needs. All over the world, people with lower levels of literacy have lower levels of health. [1]

High-level literacy is essential for the best personal and community health. Good literacy skills include:

• the ability to read quickly and easily so that information can be better stored in the mind;

• the ability to understand written vocabulary, concepts, and ‘between the lines’ information; and,

• the ability to remember, make connections, compare, analyse, summarize, and make inferences from different information and ideas, so that knowledge can be used appropriately in a wide variety of situations.

Good literacy skills develop only through increasingly complex reading, comprehension, and writing experiences, and through much practice in reading different kinds of written materials.

Complex literacy activities create more and stronger connections in the brain, and therefore help develop thinking skills.

The wide amount of knowledge which is necessary in the modern world cannot only be acquired orally. It must also be acquired through reading and understanding what is read. Since much ‘modern’ knowledge is not yet available in Inuktitut, Inuit must develop good literacy skills in English while maintaining their cultural knowledge in Inuktitut.

Literacy experiences must start early in life, even before children start school. It becomes harder to learn to read well as a person gets older. Reading must be a way of life. It must not only begin at home but be continually encouraged and supported at home, at school and in the community.

Children who do not learn to read well fall further and further behind in school. Good-quality formal education is the major tool in the development of high-level literacy in the modern world.

The long-term goal of high-quality literacy in Inuktitut and English or French will enable Inuit to make maximum use of the knowledge that is necessary today in developing and maintaining communities that are healthy in the most holistic sense.

1. All information on literacy is based on the following: Ajunnginiq Centre. Literacy and Health: The Importance of Higher-Level Literacy Skills. 2006.