We must fight for students’ right to read

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/02/2025 (216 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s February, “I Love to Read Month,” but many Manitobans struggle with reading. We can say that everyone has the right to read, but our province needs to make changes to make that happen.

In November, 2024, I attended a forum led by Dr. Jon Gerrard, former River Heights MLA, on “How can we do better?” in terms of learning disabilities, including dyslexia, autism, and ADHD.

As a relative of people with disabilities, it felt essential to attend. I’d previously attended an event about dyslexia at the Human Rights Museum.

After the November forum, I wrote the premier and minister of education, providing information, because along with specific suggestions, my biggest concern was the huge distress that I saw.

Many students receive inadequate help until their disability challenges became dire mental health issues. Perhaps if elementary schoolchildren received adequate disability supports, they wouldn’t end up in such a dark place.

However, at some public schools only the mental health concerns are addressed, while ignoring the underlying disabilities. Parents feel exhausted, due to financial strain and endless advocacy efforts. Their children need more help to access literacy and contribute to society.

Years ago, the Manitoba Human Rights Commission began to collect information about Manitobans’ right to read, but this effort has stalled out. Meanwhile, the human rights commissions of Ontario (2022) and Saskatchewan (2023) have released reports that describe, “how early screening and evidence-based literacy instruction can help nearly all students become proficient readers.”

Yet, many Manitoba divisions still rely on discredited programs such as “Reading Recovery,” which fail students, according to research documented by the Manitoba and Canadian Pediatric Associations, among others.

As pointed out in Maggie Macintosh’s January 2025 article, A new read on literacy, there are Manitoba school divisions, like Evergreen, leading the way with research-based change. Unfortunately, Manitoba leaves everything up to school divisions.

Many Manitobans still cannot learn to read because their divisions aren’t using assessment and teaching methods that work.

Reading Macintosh’s article reinforced my conclusions after I received an email response sent in early January “on behalf of Allan Hawkins, executive director, inclusion support branch; student achievement and inclusion division, Manitoba Education and Early Childhood Learning.”

This email quoted from the Public Schools Act and referenced laws pertaining to appropriate education and disability and human rights. It listed how Manitoba provides access to screening tools available in the Pearson Digital Library. Note that Pearson is an educational company that provides assessments. However, just because educators in Manitoba have access to this, it doesn’t mean that its tools are recommended by the research or that school divisions consistently use them.

That official word salad response boiled down to this: We’re meant to help every child. We’re defending ourselves.

Yet, Manitoba doesn’t have universal, standardized assessments in place for kindergarteners.

Manitoba doesn’t provide structured literacy coursework in its teacher training programs.

Manitoba relies on a hodgepodge approach. Assessments aren’t consistent or universal provincewide. Manitoba teachers aren’t taught to teach based on recent research on the “science of reading.”

Struggling students in many divisions are still redirected into outdated programs like “Reading Recovery,” which fail to help.

When my child had difficulty reading, Reading Recovery only frustrated him further, though he tried hard and wanted to succeed. Relying on my long-ago education training in the U.S., I remembered this: “Until Grade 3, students learn to read. By Grade 3, students read to learn.” I panicked when I realized, at the start of the pandemic, that I was the parent of someone who desperately wanted to read but couldn’t. Without being able to read, he would fall further behind.

My child finally accessed reading through many hours of private training. He had daily support at home from a parent who used to be a teacher. If a family cannot afford private intervention, their child might not get the help they need. The right to read is one of our human rights. Yet in Manitoba, there’s no forward progress as a province to create universal early assessment, instruction that relies on the science of reading, or even coursework for new teachers in methods that work.

Evergreen School Division is one of a few districts which have taken matters into its own hands. I applaud the division. However, total student enrolment in Manitoba schools in September of 2023 was 219,245. In February, we want everybody to say, “I love to read.”

We fail many Manitobans when there is no provincewide system to enable this. Yes, some students learn to read without trouble, but without universal assessment and systemic change in the ways we teach, we deny many others one of their human rights: the right to read.

Alberta is expanding universal screening to kindergarteners. Ontario and Saskatchewan’s human rights commissions have already made the case for early screening and evidence-based literary instruction. Our neighbours have figured this out. We shouldn’t wait for the Manitoba Human Rights Commission to make a change.

Manitobans, as you celebrate reading this month, please speak out about how we must share the gifts of reading access and the love of reading. Demand literacy for all right now through early assessment and science-based instruction. It’s February, but let’s not limit ourselves. Every month, Manitobans deserve the right to read.

Joanne Seiff, a Winnipeg author, has been contributing opinions and analysis to the Free Press since 2009.