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National Reading Summit kicks off in Toronto
The inaugural TD National Reading Summit kicked off on Thursday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Approximately 150 attendees, comprised mostly of librarians, teachers, and a handful of publishers and academics, gathered to discuss the possibility of developing a national reading strategy designed to make the federal government take an active role in improving literacy. Such strategies exist in countries all over the world, but organizers say that Canada, where 40% of adults possess low literacy skills, is falling behind.
According to c0-organizer Tom Best, vice-president of marketing at H.B. Fenn and Company, the two-day summit is the first of three annual gatherings. “For the first summit, we decided to invite [speakers] from around the world to provide great examples of what’s going on [with reading strategies] internationally,” he says. The inaugural summit kicked off with a talk by Ana Maria Machado, a Brazilian novelist, children’s author, and essayist who spoke about reading strategies in Latin America, where every country has a national reading plan.
The summit planned for next year, Best says, will “focus on what is going well in Canada, drawing together practical examples from across the provinces.... The third session will be a practical one – getting agreements from a broad range of people.”
The buzz among the summit’s participants was palpable on Thursday as the event got under way. “I think people are pretty optimistic,” Best told Q&Q. Still, he readily admits that creating a national reading plan will not be easy, as education is a provincial – as opposed to a federal – issue. When asked about the Harper government’s potential resistance to such a strategy, Best said advocates will approach the subject in language the goverment will understand, discussing the impact of literacy on the economy.
At one of yesterday’s panels, “Why We Need Readers in a Democracy,” Toronto poet laureate Dionne Brand, novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin, and novelist Anosh Irani discussed the issues of literacy and propaganda, the difference between reading and reading critically, and the notion that books encourage democracy. While differences of opinion led to some debate, all three panelists were equally wary of e-books, privileging the act of reading actual books over reading, say, on an iPhone.
The summit continues on Friday with a keynote speech by Cory Doctorow, co-editor of the influential pop culture blog BoingBoing, who will likely challenge that tech-phobic stance. The event will wrap up with talks delivered by author Thomas King and John Honderich, chairman of the board of Torstar.
Best told Q&Q that the summit’s steering committee is “moderately” pleased with attendance, but would like to see more people from out of province in future years. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure it’s not seen as Ontario- or Toronto-centric,” he said, adding that organizers are looking at hosting the next summit outside of the province.
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