Photo by Ken Eckert

At the University of Toronto (U of T), most PhD students are expected to spend at least four years working demanding and often thankless jobs, all while living below the poverty line.

“It’s a very long tradition,” says June Li, finance commissioner at the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU). “You’re a PhD, you’re a starving student, you work hard, you grind, you sacrifice now for the rewards later.”

Li wants to do away with this “rite of passage,” as she calls it. Li, alongside the UTGSU, is spearheading an initiative to guarantee a basic, liveable funding package to all PhD students at U of T. They are in talks with U of T’s School of Graduate Studies with the aim of increasing basic funding to about $23,000 per year. This would be a significant increase from the current average of $18,248.

“We work full-time for our supervisors,” Li says. “If you factor in the number of hours that we work, divided by how much we get paid, we actually make less than minimum wage.”

Li says that between publishing academic articles and working as teaching assistants, PhD students’ labour is indispensable to the university. “Our research directly contributes to funding that the department gets,” she adds.

The UTGSU were inspired by a group of PhD students at U of T’s Faculty of Medicine, who, in 2017, formed the Graduate Representation Committee (GRC) and successfully petitioned for a 10 percent increase to their funding packages. This increase volleyed medical PhD students above the poverty line.
Meanwhile, the situation is worsening for other U of T PhD students. According to Li, funding package increases are “negligible” and not proportional to the increasing cost of living in Toronto. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $1,431 per month, meaning that housing alone may eat up almost 95 percent of a PhD student’s yearly earnings.

This means that only those with a wide financial safety net can afford to pursue a PhD. According to a GRC survey, 85 percent of PhD students at the Faculty of Medicine could not live on their funding package alone—but well over 50 percent of these students received financial support from a parent or partner. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that academics tend to come from high-income families and are disproportionately white: a 2019 report found that a mere 21.3 percent of U of T’s tenure-stream faculty identify as people of colour, as compared to 52 percent of Toronto’s overall population.

This initiative is a step toward remedying these systemic inequalities, as well as student precarity. “This is long overdue,” Li says. “I don’t think that we should have to choose between bettering ourselves versus being able to survive.”

Creative Commons photo by flickr user ecstaticist.

“It has been some time now that I have wanted to speak to you about the youth gang. Since July there has been much conjecture about how the youth gang started, and when, and where, and what exactly the youth gang is, and who belongs to it, and whether its members wear ‘colours,’ and which weaponry they carry, and how to best protect ourselves—Kevlar vs. chainmail, house alarms vs. hounds, landmines vs. prayer— and whether the youth gang represents a simple gap in generational understanding, or a malevolent shudder in the collective morality of humankind, or the death of love, or a mirror, or a warning, or the end.

“But here we are, October, with no real progress or understanding to speak of. Three months of terror have passed and still the youth gang holds us in its clutches. And while we continue to ask how, when, where, even what, no one in our close-knit multicultural community, in which not a soul wants for anything and everybody knows your name, has ever asked why we have a youth gang. And before you go throwing your hands up in despair, Mrs. Heinz-Mercer, and muttering to one another, Sheikh al-Shabazz and Mother, about who the heck does this woman up there think she is, I pose a further question, one that requires serious introspection, analysis, and honesty. Consider: Who created the youth gang if not all of us?

“Grumble, fine! Sometimes the truth is difficult to hear. Although to those, Father Power and Rabbi Berkowitz, preparing to storm out in a huff, hold on. I am willing to acknowledge—okay, confess—something you’ve no doubt been waiting for. (Though have you never considered that I’ve wanted to say it, too, but merely lacked the courage, or the impetus? And sure, maybe yesterday’s tar-and-feathering of the entire security force at the factory outlet mall has provided exactly that.) A solution begins, I think, with each of us accepting responsibility. In that spirit, let me be the first to do so.

“Listen to me now: the youth gang is largely, if not entirely, my fault. Had I not founded the youth group, no youth gang would have ever mutated out of it. It is that simple. And I’m sorry.

“Thanks, Sardarji, nice to see you sitting back down— you, too, Nakamura-san. So there it is, what I’ve wanted to get off my chest since the BuskerFest swarming back in July. Mea culpa. But fault me not for good intentions! Honestly, I believed it was the right thing—following consensus, reached at a town-hall gathering very much like this one, to get the youth off our streets.

“But now I wonder: were the youth ever on our streets? Prior to the first youth-group meeting at the recreation centre, weren’t they mostly in our basements with computers? And also, technically, this subdivision doesn’t even have streets. There’s an abundance of crescents, courts, and cul-de-sacs, two wide and beautiful tree-lined boulevards, a trail, a path, and I for one live on a place, and there are other places and drives and avenues and ways and passes and even roads—but streets? No. Not one.

“So we had a logistical or at least semantic problem from the get-go. But, people, streets or no streets, it’s insignificant now, when every night our chimneys are being stuffed with fertilizer and the word PWNED burned into our lawns with bleach. What matters is how to stop the menace—the menace of the youth gang. And to do this we need to come together. Now, I know that several of you (Mestre Appleton-Bannerjee, the Honourable G. A. Sabatini, Comptroller Choi, others) have booked the Hall tonight at 8:00 for capoeira practice, so I’ll do my best to be brief. And I’m sure the members of our local roda would appreciate it if everyone helps stack the chairs on their way out. Thanks!

“I’ll add, too, that what follows is not meant as an affront to the Nguyen-Orloffs, whose Reading Instead program happens weekdays from 3:30 to 6 p.m. in the Bookmobile. I see a lot of confused faces. Really? No one knows about this? You’ve never wondered about the repurposed RV up on blocks in the cemetery parking lot? Well, it’s a fine, fine initiative, with as many as six kids diverted, or at least temporarily distracted, from joining the youth gang. As you may have noticed, an empty salsa jar is making the rounds for donations. Please give generously, and now you know what they’ve been up to, let’s give Minh and Jack a round of applause for their efforts.

“Great. Now—Mother, stop muttering—everyone, please listen: in times of communal confusion, truth gets lost amid the clatter of voices—each straining to be heard, each deaf to one another. (You and your research fellows heard me, Dr. O’Connor; no need for the eyebrow raising.) This is how gossip becomes mythology. Much of what you think you know about the youth gang—that they sleep in caves underground and eat small dogs—is spurious and absurd. Remember the

hysteria about the youth gang recruiting babies from the natal ward at Jewish General? In truth only one baby was approached before the youth gang realized they could make their own babies, babies born into the youth gang and as such members for life—though this is perhaps equally worrying, for different reasons.

“Rumours cloud judgment and preclude reason. Please allow me to detail an accurate history of how the youth gang formed and evolved, and explain where they are now in their organization. I’ll conclude with a potential course of what I’m calling ‘proaction,’ contrasted with a picture of what the future may hold for our community if things continue on their current trajectory (i.e., more incidents like the urine-balloon bombing at last Sunday’s Fall Harvest Festival.)

“Here’s how it all began, last June, at the rec centre. About 15 minutes into the first youth-group meeting, through diversionary tactics and trickery, the youth locked me in the supply closet and, commandeering a staple gun, affixed the head lifeguard, Florian Henderson—hi, Florian—to a spinal board by his trunks. That led to a handful of youths unleashing a skunk into the retirement home next door, while another faction spray-painted a lurid mural of male genitalia, mid-climax, in the library parkade; still others stormed CROG FM and, holding the hosts at bay with gardening tools, broadcast a burping contest for the entirety of Rick and Tina’s Commuter Hour.

“Sure, there had been signs of dissent. The youth group was no happy commune, all smiles and sunshine—actually, if anything disorients the youth, it’s sunshine. When I first herded them out of their basements into the Youth Group paddy wagon, generously donated by Captain N’diaye’s 32nd Precinct, they staggered like so many pubescent moles into the light of midday summer, blinded and lost. For a moment my heart leapt at the sight of them, so vulnerable and confused— that is, until I discovered a note (I’m a try-hard fatty) affixed to my back with chewing gum. Oh, that’s just great—laugh it up, Mother. Everything’s so hilarious to you, isn’t it?

“Since June I have dropped 17 pounds, most of it over those traumatic four days locked in the rec-centre supply closet, subsisting entirely on powdered sports-drink concentrate and unpopped popcorn kernels. Through a ventilation shaft I listened to the youth, over a succession of daily ping-pong tournaments, morph from group to gang. By the time I was rescued by the centre’s long-time caretaker, Donato DiFruscia (who promptly fled for the ‘old country’), the youth, in a horde of all-over print hoodies, were descending upon BuskerFest— an episode the talented singer-songwriters whose CDRs were stolen, recorded over with flatulence, and promptly returned, will never forget.

“I don’t think I need to detail the humiliating months that have followed: the toilet paperings, the drive-by Slurpeeings, the teabaggings, the hijackings of decency and Segways. We have learned things. If, for example, a flaming paper bag appears at your front door, get the hose. A sign announcing ‘Free Beer’ accompanied by a series of chalked arrows leading to an alleyway is best ignored. For those duped out of their RSP savings by the space tourism/all-you-can-eat surf ’n’ turf scam, my heart goes out to you.

“But enough, I say: enough! Enough shame and terror. Enough peeking out at the world through our mail slots and doggie doors. Enough flights of journalistic fancy such as—with due respect, Karen—Miss Behaviour’s op-ed of September 12, ‘Anyone Know a Good Exorcist?’ Enough tribunals and sanctions, which only waste community picnic funds. Enough vigilante posses prowling the neighbourhood in backcatcher masks with rolls of quarters in their fists—yes, Mme. et M. Letourneau, I’m looking at you. Enough booby-trapping the woods. People, the youth gang don’t even go into the woods; they abhor nature and distrust trees.

“Let’s admit our complicity. We put the youth in tennis lessons, and what was once a forehand buggwhip is now a tire iron smashed through the windows of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. We paid for the karate classes that equipped the youth with the very roundhouse kicks used to destroy, to use a convenient example, the entire back stock of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. How worrisome, then—for all of us, not just you, Mr. Fetisov!—that the video games we bought the youth teach strategies for storming buildings with assault rifles and gunning down rooftop snipers. Thank God for our community’s strident firearms laws—at least for now.

“Friends, neighbours: how can our creation also be our enemy? The youth gang comprises our sons and daughters, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, our paperboys and girls; these kids used to bag our groceries and flip our burgers, rip our tickets at the movie theatre, and, sometimes, even fill the classrooms of our schools. (Where are they now, you ask? God knows. They may even be in this room— it’s impossible to tell, since the hide-and-seek we encouraged has made them so adept at subterfuge.) My point is this: as its architects, aren’t we also part of the youth gang? In this war against the youth gang, whom are we fighting, essentially, if not ourselves?

“Quiet, please. I’m not finished. So what then, some of you ask, if not a punitive response? I suggest talks, dialogue, tolerance, patience, understanding. I have faxed one of the youth gang’s representatives, and she seems willing to negotiate— though who knows for what, and under which terms. But a lull in hostilities is the first step to reconciliation and, perhaps, even a truce. What does the youth gang want, besides crafting scenes of prurient orgy with our garden gnomes and sailing looted futons down the river? Does anyone know? This was a rhetorical question, Mother; please put down your hand. You are a thousand years old. There is no way you have any idea.

“People, we have one week until Halloween—that means Devil’s Night will be upon us in only six days. Does this worry anyone except me? Oh, wow, everyone? I’ve got a whole page here of ‘worst-case scenarios,’ but maybe—right, I’ll skip it. Okay. I hope we can turn anxiety into action—or proaction, as I mentioned earlier. And quickly. If I can broker talks, everyone here needs to participate, albeit, of course, calmly, without shrieking or finger-pointing or the petulant feet-stomping that certain also-rans in last spring’s 5k Jog for the Cure seem to think passes for sportsmanship. And, please, people, no spitting. This has never, ever been okay. Do you hear me? Ever.

“I thank you for your time. Let us do the right thing, let us extend the olive branch—and be prepared that we might be handed roadkill in return. We must persevere. The youth gang is our doing. It is all of our faults. And it is up to us, as those responsible, to work with the youth, to show them the way out of their misdeeds, toward a new path. And as for what this path might be…”

The speaker trailed off. Looking out over the crowd, she flipped through her notes. The room was silent. Everyone waited for her to conclude, to provide definitive and clear instructions. The air had gone brittle with expectation. But instead of saying anything, with shaking hands the speaker plucked from behind the lectern a bottle of Vitamin Water, which she tipped back and drank—the entire thing, rapidly, in a single, open-throated gulp.

The 2009 inaugural class of Dechinta Bush University. Photo courtesy Dechinta.

Back in the 1960s, a group of high-minded northern and southern Canadians had a collective revelation: if the North ever wanted to succeed, it desperately needed a university. Toronto-based lawyer and retired Air Force general Richard Rohmer spearheaded the idea, first lobbying locals and politicians, and later penning a draft for a bricks-and-mortar institution. While the resulting plan led to the creation of colleges in all three territories, 50 years later all that is left of the University of Northern Canada is a couple of failed proposals, a worsening brain drain to the south, and an acute need for higher education and trained professionals in a booming region.

Dechinta Bush University Centre for Research and Learning is looking to change all that. Its goal: to provide a post-secondary liberal arts education to northerners at home. Founded in 2009, the aboriginal-run centre offers five courses in a 12-week semester, combining academic standards with indigenous knowledge to offer a comprehensive look at northern politics and land preservation.

“Living off the land and the land-based approaches are really integral to all the courses we deliver,” says Kyla Kakfwi Scott, program manager for Dechinta. In learning and using land-based practices, she adds, students come to understand the material being taught through the academic portions of the course.

Subjects covered include the history of self-determination of the Dene First Nations, decolonization practices, writing and communications, environmental sustainability, and community health, with undergraduate credit granted through the University of Alberta. Each course is taught by academics from the north and south and cultural experts, such as resident elders and guest lecturers.

Each term, up to 25 students, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, northerners and southerners, recent high school graduates to retirees, kick off courses by spending five weeks at home working through assigned readings. After that, they travel by plane to Blachford Lake Lodge, located about 220 kilometres east of Yellowknife, NWT, where classes are held outdoors. While not a degree-granting institution, the bush university is expanding to host one master’s and one PhD student per year who want to do research based out of the Dechinta program, with the goal of having their own masters programming down the road.

“The North has a lot of really interesting insight and expertise to offer, not just to its own residents but to people from around the world,” says Kakfwi Scott. “But for northern people the idea of being able to stay close to home and learn about the things that you’re dealing with every day and have that be recognized as being valuable and teachable at home would be phenomenal.”

In many ways, this tiny classroom was just like any other: rows of young students looking up at their teacher, the day’s lesson displayed on the dusty chalkboard overhead. But this day was not about grammar or arithmetic. It was about the long fight for freedom. In South Sudan, it is rarely about anything else.

I watched as a small boy walked to the front of the room. “This is the Leer Primary School Drama Club,” he announced, unexpectedly firm for a child. “I hope you will enjoy.”

Then the teacher took centre stage, behind him, a chalkboard cluttered with notes on the local harvest, Jesus, and salvation. In his hand he grasped the long wooden stick that would act as his conductor’s wand. He thrust it upward and the children rose at its command. The call and answer was about to begin.

An invisible border split the class, forming a group of students on either side. The teacher pointed his wand to one section. “Yes!” the children cried out. Swung now to the other, his wand signalled the reply. “Yes for what?” the students boomed. This time in unison, each child rang the final call. “Yes for separation! Yes for the independence of Southern Sudan!”

The mood was hopeful, but solemn. The children seemed so young and I wondered how much they could possibly understand about the words they dutifully recited. To see a primary classroom charged with nationalist emotion was jarring at first, but in context, not surprising. In late 2010, the same sentiment permeated the entire region, spreading far into remote villages like this one, touching young and old alike. It was a sentiment that had been building for decades.

Starting in 1983, civil war between the central government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) persisted for more than 20 years, resulting in nearly 2 million deaths and one of the largest and most gruelling displacements of refugees imaginable. A peace agreement ended the war in 2005, but six years later, as its terms came to a close, the South remained one of the most undeveloped regions in the world, and relations with the North had not improved.

Though the roots of Sudan’s problems are complex, for Southerners the solution became clear—secession from the North, independence, and freedom. In hopes of growing up in peace, these children sang for a nation of their own.

On July 9, 2011, that nation arrived. Following a referendum on January 9, 2011, in which a reported 99 percent of South Sudanese citizens voted for their independence, the Republic of South Sudan was born. Celebrations in the new nation’s capital of Juba lasted for days.

Still, the trials are not over for North or South Sudan. Leading up to the split, discourse in the South left room for little more than a simple separatist cry—a resounding Yes for independence. Now, unresolved issues of oil-sharing, citizenship, and border demarcation loom while the Northern government has started a new campaign of violence in its state of Southern Kordofan. The Republic of South Sudan may have gained the independence for which its children sang, but for North and South Sudanese, separation does not yet mean peace.

After Patrick Furey, a heartbroken and bullied gay student, hangs himself in his bedroom, there is no minute of silence, no special assembly. Instead, his school’s closeted principal forbids staff to share any information, fearing a teen suicide would damage the school’s reputation and possibly spawn copycats. Furey’s death may happen in the first few pages of Suzette Mayr’s fourth novel, Monoceros, but it echoes from cover to cover. His empty desk forces students and staff to contemplate the finality of his death, and the fact that they hardly knew the troubled student at all.

Suzette Mayr skilfully crafts each chapter from the perspective of one member of her colourful, but flawed, cast of characters. Furey’s secret boyfriend, Ginger, suppresses his grief to keep their relationship hidden, especially from his jealous girlfriend, Petra, who had scrawled “u r a fag” on Furey’s locker before he died. There is also Faraday, Furey’s unicorn-obsessed classmate, who wishes she had done something nice for Furey before he died, like written him a note saying “Hi” or donated her virginity to him.

In a tragedy laced with humour, Mayr engages readers with her meticulous attention to detail, providing vivid descriptions of not only her characters, but also the heavy emotions—grief, confusion, aching—churning inside them. Monoceros may spark a visceral reaction in some readers, especially as the unnerving words “faggot” and “homo” roll off characters’ tongues with teenage ease. But mostly, it is a thought-provoking tale of a boy who chooses to take “charge of his own ending” and the interconnected web of lost souls he leaves behind.

Illustration by Evan Munday.

On a cold mid-February afternoon under overcast skies, a school bell rings. The halls of Toronto’s Agnes Macphail Public School flood with children dressed in puffy jackets and schoolbags. Although a swift exodus befalls most schools at day’s end, Agnes Macphail still pulses with high-pitch chatter. Students linger in the foyer while others flock towards the school’s library. Amidst the rows of bookcases and computers, a group of students, ranging from grade six to eight, sit around tables as they talk animatedly and await the start of their book-club meeting.

The students burst into cheerful greetings as Diana Maliszewski, Agnes Macphail’s teacher-librarian, walks into the room. Dressed in a black cardigan, white dress shirt, and black pants, Maliszewski sits at the table amongst the intermediate students.

“So, which book are we going to talk about first?” Maliszewski asks. The children’s voices overlap and echo throughout the library. The group settles on Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, a paperback book boasting a turquoise-coloured cover and a yellow smiley face.

“I have to warn you,” Maliszewski says, “I didn’t get a chance to read this one.” The students erupt into playful jeers. “I know, I know,” Maliszewski says, hands on her face in mock embarrassment. “But it’s okay because you guys can tell me all about it.” The children rifle through the pages as they talk excitedly about the novel. “I read it twice,” chirps one girl seated to the right of Maliszewski.

During the club meeting, a group of boys amble into the library and linger in front of a shelf of colourful books. “I’m sorry guys, but the library’s closed. We have a club meeting going on,” Maliszewski says apologetically. The boys groan. “I know. I’m sorry, but I’m glad you guys love this place. I really am.”

Students jokingly scolding their teacher for not reading; children looking crestfallen when told the school’s library is closed. It plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone, one that parents and teachers across the country would love to see replicated. But what accounts for the kids’ enthusiasm is the type of books they’re reading: graphic novels.

Maliszewski is one of the few teachers in Canada who dedicate a student club to graphic novels. But she is one of a growing number of educators and literacy advocates who believe the often-misunderstood genre could be the key to unlocking literacy for reluctant readers.

A staggering 48 percent of Canadians over 16 struggle with poor reading skills. Literacy is commonly measured on a five-level scale, with levels three and up considered adequate to function well in contemporary society. The Canadian Council on Learning estimates that 12 million Canadians do not meet that standard, meaning they cannot cope with many basic reading tasks — things like interpreting simple graphs, reading short text, and integrating pieces of information. The absence of such rudimentary abilities make it difficult to complete high school, acquire new job skills, or even decipher a medicine label.

The current statistics are bleak, and the number of adults with low literacy is actually poised to increase by 25 percent over the next 20 years just based on population growth. Literacy organizations, parents, educators, employers — everyone is looking for new ways to get Canadians excited about reading and improve these troubling numbers. But there’s little hope for change — unless we try something new.

Although an avid reader as a child, Maliszewski didn’t discover graphic novels until her adult years when she took the course “Comics and Graphic Novels in Schools and Public Libraries,” at the University of Alberta, where she received her masters degree in the teacherlibrarianship program in 2010. The genre quickly hooked her: “The skies parted and the light shone down,” she says.

She joined the TinLids Greater Toronto Area Graphic Novels Club, a group of educators and publishers who gather to discuss the educational potential of graphic novels. In 2004, Maliszewski established a graphic novel section at Agnes Macphail’s school library. “It took off like a rocket,” says Maliszewski. “It was insanely popular, especially with the boys. A whole bunch of people just loved it.”

More and more graphic novels have ascended to respectability in literary circles lately, but the whiff of pulp entertainment — given the genre’s roots in 20th century comic books — has tended to make teachers wary of their usefulness. For every Pulitzer-winning Maus, Art Spiegelman’s haunting allegory of his Jewish ancestors fleeing the Nazis, or Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s poignant adolescent memoir of revolutionary Iran, there seemed to be thousands of mindlessly violent, sexually retrograde, and narratively bankrupt superhero yarns. Novels are regarded as educational and nourishing; comic books as depraved trash.

Of course, there are also plenty of lousy books without drawings in them. As the depth and breadth of good graphic novels available has grown over the last few decades, some educators have started to see how a more visually dynamic presentation can boost reading skills without feeling like a chore.

In an article entitled “Expanding Literacies Through Graphic Novels,” [PDF] comics scholar Gretchen Schwarz argues the benefits of using graphic novels as a way to expand and strengthen literacy skills. Schwarz says graphic novel readers have to pay attention to conventional literary elements of plot, character, and dialogue as well as interpret visual elements such as colour, shading, panel layout, and even lettering style, making graphic novels an engaging and sophisticated form of reading.

Maliszewski also believes the combination of word and image can help reluctant readers who have short attention spans or problems visualizing. “Comics are great for so many different areas in which people have struggled with literacy issues,” she says. “They’re the great equalizer because they’re enjoyed by kids who are not strong readers as well as kids who are strong readers.”

At 70, Ellen Szita knows firsthand the perils of low literacy skills. While growing up in Brighton, England, Szita was relegated to the “D” class throughout school because of her difficulties with literacy. When Szita was 13, a teacher unexpectedly asked her to solve a math problem during class. Unable to read, Szita froze.

The teacher ordered her to stand in front of the class. “You’re not even trying to do this,” he bellowed. Szita stood motionless as the teacher insulted her in front of the other students. As she walked back toward her desk, the teacher grabbed the blackboard eraser and threw it at her head. A year later, Szita dropped out of school.

After immigrating to Canada at age 18, Szita eventually moved to Vancouver, married, and had four children. For decades, she hid her literacy difficulties from her family. When her children asked for help with their homework, Szita asserted she was too busy. She couldn’t understand her children’s report cards and dreaded parentteacher meetings.

The one time Szita did meet with one of her children’s teachers, she dressed up and emphasized her British accent as a way of masking her challenges with literacy. “I would tell the teacher, ‘Oh, yes I understand,’” Szita recalls. “But I didn’t understand what the teacher was even saying. She was talking about algebra. I never even heard of the word ‘algebra.’ I didn’t know if she was talking about English or math.”

The turning point for Szita emerged after she and her husband divorced in 1979. Unable to support herself, Szita searched for employment. She applied to two jobs but was fired from both because of her low literacy skills. By 1987, Szita’s psychiatrist diagnosed her as dyslexic and referred her to the Victoria READ society, a non-profit organization that helps youth and adults develop and hone their literacy skills.

There, at age 46, Szita accomplished something she thought improbable: she learned to read.

As a way of promoting literacy awareness, Szita spent years sharing her experience at speaking engagements with high schools, colleges, universities, prisons, and other organizations. In 1994, the Governor General presented Szita with the Flight for Freedom Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literacy for her advocacy work. Today, Szita is the chair of the Canadian Adult Literacy Learners, an arm of a non-profit organization called the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network that supports provincial and territorial literacy coalitions across Canada.

For Szita, graphic novels and comics contain engaging and compelling stories that can encourage reading and learning amongst those with low literacy skills. Szita believes comics are an effective teaching tool that can help children and adults perceive reading as something to enjoy, instead of dread. “I think it’s a huge help,” says Szita. “You need to be happy about what you’re learning and if it’s interesting, it’s going to make a huge difference.”

Scott Tingley, a grade-three teacher at Riverside Consolidated School in Riverside-Albert, New Brunswick and founder of comicsintheclassroom.net, noticed the difference in his students’ attitudes toward reading and writing after he used an Owly comic by Andy Runton and a Monkey vs. Robot picture by James Kochalka as story starters for a grade one and two class he taught five years ago. Prompted by his students’ enthusiasm, Tingley incorporated a comics section in his classroom. “I have kids reading them all the time and I have kids from previous years coming over to borrow them,” says Tingley. “For some, comics are a joy to read. They can’t get enough.”

In his 12 years of teaching, Tingley has never encountered a student who didn’t enjoy creating comics. “At the early years they are so used to joining their drawings with their words that comics come naturally to them,” says Tingley. “I don’t try to trick kids into thinking they aren’t writing when they are creating comics; on the contrary, I make sure they are keenly aware that making comics is just another form of writing.”

While Tingley and Maliszewski use graphic novels and comics primarily in elementary school settings, the genre is equally pertinent in other educational stages. Guy Demers, an English teacher at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School in Vancouver, first thought about using graphic novels and comics in the classroom during the mid-1980s when they started to mature as an art form.

His first attempts at using graphic novels in the classroom occurred after he noticed a few of his students struggled with reading. He gave the students copies of Usagi Yojimbo, a comic series created by Stan Sakai. “It got them so excited about reading that they burned through all 20 volumes that were out at the time,” says Demers. “They started reading books along the same lines.”

The medium is finding uses in post-secondary education too. Rob Heynen, a professor in York University’s program in social and political thought, is one of the many professors at the university who has used graphic novels as course material. In his fourth-year course, “Visual Culture: Histories, Theories, and Politics,” Heynen incorporated Alan Moore’s Watchmen, an influential deconstruction of the superhero narrative, into his lecture on comics and graphic arts in popular culture.

Heynen says graphic novels, which depend on the reader’s ability to interpret and create meanings out of sequential images, are a useful way to develop a person’s literacy skills. “Even for people with low levels of literacy, images are still things that they can read,” he says. But Heynen believes the types of literacy skills required for graphic novels is different from that of traditional prose material, although both are related through their use of text. “They’re two different kinds of literacy in a way,” says Heynen.

However, Maliszewski says the idea of graphic novels as a “transitional medium” is one of the stigmas hindering the genre. “It’s a little elitist to say comics will lead us to ‘real’ reading,” says Maliszewski. “If you just read comics, that’s okay. Your parents might not think so, but it really is.”

Graphic novels still labour under the stigma toward comic books that swept North American culture in the 1940s and ‘50s, when censorious researchers sounded alarms over comics’ sexual and violent content. Most notable was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book, The Seduction of the Innocent, which dubiously but sensationally correlated real-world “deviant” behaviour with the kind of crime stories depicted in pulp comics of the time.

Although that kind of moral panic is no longer widespread, Maliszewski says she still encounters misconceptions about the genre. She overheard a fellow teacher proclaim that all manga (the massively popular Japanese comics) are pornographic—decidedly not the case—and still runs into resistance from teachers and librarians who believe sex and violence is still pervasive.

In general, the feedback to Maliszewski’s graphic novels collection has been positive, but not without some controversy. Some parents complained their kids only borrowed graphic novels and dismissed more traditional prose books.

Guy Demers says he also hears complaints that graphic novels, by adding visual elements, rob readers of the ability to imagine a book’s narrative themselves. “This is the comment that, to me, speaks to the general public’s ignorance of the form,” he says. “Would Citizen Kane have been better as a book? Would the Mona Lisa have made a better poem? It’s a different form and needs to be examined on its own terms.”

If the stigmas and misconceptions about reading graphic novels are common, the ones facing people with low literacy are even more widespread. Advocates believe illiteracy is a silent epidemic, misunderstood or, more commonly, simply ignored. Canada, for instance, is one of the few developed countries in the world without a national reading strategy. “The general public still doesn’t understand literacy and what it means to have low or poor literacy skills,” says Lindsay Kennedy, senior manager at the Movement for Canadian Literacy. But the social and economic effects are deep and widespread: low literacy is strongly associated with poor health and poverty. “When your literacy skills are low, you’re at risk,” says Kennedy.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. A common misperception is that people with poor literacy cannot read at all, which is seldom the case. Far more common is low literacy, in which people can glean the bare minimum from a text. “Literacy is very much like a muscle,” says Kennedy. “If you don’t use it at all, you tend to forget how to use it.”

The Canadian government’s failure to address the country’s low literacy levels isn’t just a disconcerting issue for literacy organizations; educators like Maliszewski are also rallying for awareness and change. A national reading summit in 2009 assembled educators, librarians, academics, and publishers alike to discuss plans for a Canadian national reading strategy.

Although Maliszewski supports this movement, she says one of the problems the summit faced was the “prioritizing of literature,” which placed so-called “alternative reading materials,” such as graphic novels and comics, below that of traditional prose. She’s troubled by the implications of that.

“If you want to have a national reading strategy, you can’t be elitist about what people are reading,” says Maliszewski. “Reading comics is still reading. And depending on the comic, it’s really sophisticated reading.”

While the idea of graphic novels and comics as a legitimate means to combat low literacy levels in Canada is still contentious, there are educators across the country hoping people will see the merits of the graphic novel genre, in its ability to act both as a link to many other kinds of reading, and as a fulfilling and meaningful pastime in itself. Maliszewski wants to see all kinds of reading “not just tolerated, but celebrated.”

With so many Canadians facing literacy problems, and all the attendant difficulties that follow, it seems irresponsible not to try. Lindsay Kennedy believes the stakes are about as high as they can be: “Literacy is about giving people power. It’s about giving them freedom.”

Tamara Dawit. Photo by Nabil Shash.

Tamara Dawit co-founded the 411 Initiative for Change, a non-profit public education program, to tackle the problem of community disengagement among young Canadians. Through 411 she produces and tours 90-minute school assemblies on social issues such as human rights, HIV/AIDS, and girls’ empowerment to encourage students to learn about and get active in their communities.

Unlike some adults who bemoan the apathy of “kids these days” and put the blame on trash TV, rap music, and social media, Dawit embraces pop culture as the spoonful of sugar to make her educational message go down. Her assemblies are a mash-up of TV talk show, newsy video clips, and musical performances featuring an impressive roster of artists and personalities (past tours have included the likes of K’naan, Eternia, Anita Majumdar, and Masia One). But Dawit’s successful formula is no fluke, but a method she says she learned “through trial and error.”

As one of only four black students at her Ottawa-area high school, Dawit, now 30, found herself bullied because of her Ethiopian heritage. “I just felt that people were really ignorant about me—who I was and where I was from,” she explains. She decided to put together a Black History Month assembly to set the record straight. That first year featured a local academic and an African drummer. The show bombed—so she went back to the drawing board.

The following year, she packaged her message in contemporary music and dance, and brought in younger speakers. Fourteen years and 400,000 students later, it’s still the basic model she says works best to create an engaging, safe space for students to learn some tough messages. In fact, Dawit was reminded of how powerful the experience remains for audiences just last month during the girls’ rights tour, when a young woman stood up and confessed to the group that she was thinking of killing herself because she could no longer deal with bullying from her classmates.

Admissions like this girl’s might not be the norm, but they’re far from rare and, most importantly, they spark dialogue and promote understanding between youth. In the end, Dawit says, “those are the things that lead to change.”

Creative commons photo by Flickr user strangedejim.

That Catholic schools do not always look positively upon homosexuality may not come as a great surprise, given their collective track record. But in the past week, two news stories have brought new and unique anti-gay measures taken at Catholic schools to light.

First, officials at Missisauga’s St. Joseph’s Catholic  Secondary School allegedly restricted students’ use of rainbow banners at an anti-homophobia fundraiser, and then forbade them from donating the event’s proceeds to a gay rights charity.

In a second, separate, and more bizarre incident, comedian Dawn Whitwell was booked to speak at an anti-bullying assembly at Bishop Marrocco-Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School in Toronto, but her performance was quickly cancelled when, she says, it was discovered she is married to a woman. Both schools say their actions were not motivated by an anti-gay bent and it is doubtful anything more will come of these allegations. But the Catholic school boards of Canada should recognize, in these stories, the need for them to reform, and return to theology as opposed to policing sexuality, lest their students abandon Catholic schools altogether.

Church attendance in Canada, and indeed around the world, went into a tailspin in the latter half of the twentieth century and seems unlikely to recover in our lifetimes. But the Catholic Canadians who now stay home from church in droves are not, according to a 2000 University of Lethbridge study, abandoning their religion. Rather, they are finding their own ways in which to worship.

The study attributed this new trend to people’s disillusionment with the church — as opposed to opposition to faith itself. Their problems were with the institution, not the teachings of the religion. It was the Church, not Catholicism, that was speaking out against gay marriage, contraception, and abortion — topics that divided many congregations. While people were looking to the religion itself for the values and morality they wanted, the Church was imposing hard and fast rules that a significant number of Catholics didn’t want or agree with.

Parents send their children to faith-based schools so that they can learn about their culture and religion, and grow up in an environment that recognizes that religion and the lessons it imparts. The Toronto Catholic District School Board’s website provides a great insight into the appeal of Catholic school. It has a page detailing the Board’s Equitable and Inclusive Educations strategy. It quotes St. Paul and discusses the open and accepting tenets of Catholicism, which is supposed to be applied to Catholic school  education. The intended message is that Catholic School will teach your children about their religion, instilling in them positive values of faith and tolerance.

And looking at that explanation, it is easily understandable why parents would want to send their kids to a Catholic school. But wanting your child to learn about the ancient teachings of Christ and the Apostles is very different from wanting your child to be subject to the institutional rules and judgments of school administrators, just as practising Catholicism can be very different from following the dogma of the Vatican.

There are plenty of examples of Catholic reformers working within the Church to change its doctrines on birth control, ordaining women, and embracing sexual minorities. There is no rule in Catholicism that Catholics can’t support LGBT rights or listen to a gay person present their feelings on bullying. The schools may say that Catholic teachings were the criteria that caused the rainbow-ban and Whitwell decisions to be made, but the fact is that they were not “Catholic” rules. They were rules imposed by the institution, lead by some individual or group of individuals who acted under the guise of channeling Catholicism. And, as such, they are rules that are apt to alienate students and parents alike.

Followers of a religion can be expected to adhere to, or at least respect, the guidelines of their religion. But rules made by a bureaucratic official based loosely on his or her interpretation of that religion’s teachings cannot be expected to inspire adherence. In fact, they are probably more likely to offend, especially when those interpretations result in the exclusion and intolerance that the religion ostensibly condemns. So, in the same way that people pushed back against the rules imposed by the Catholic Church, people may well begin pushing back against the rules imposed by Catholic schools, unless some action is taken to return to the positive values the TCDSB extols.

There is, and may always be, a debate over whether faith-based schools should be abolished in Canada. And in that debate there are many reasons to support abolishment, schools’ opposition to sexual diversity being among them. But the greatest argument in favour of keeping faith-based schools may be the large number of students who continue to enroll in these programs. Those numbers are essentially a straw poll of people’s support for religious education. Because of this, Catholic schools need their students, perhaps even more than students need their schools. If their flock abandons them to the same degree that the Church’s did, the Catholic school system will lose its greatest remaining reasons for survival and isn’t likely to be around for much longer. Whether that’s for the best or not is up to the parents and children to decide. But in the coming years, if institutional intolerance continues on, faithful Catholics may begin questioning just how well the Catholic school system represents their Christian values.

Institution out of time: A Catholic convent and boarding school circa 1880. Photo courtesy Canadian National Archives.

In Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, parallel education systems still exist: the secular public school boards, and separate Catholic school boards. It is time to abolish that system. The problem of separate school boards is not their Catholicism; it is their separateness. Public funding elevates one religious tradition above all others, and in secular, multicultural contemporary Canada, that is no longer a viable option.

The propriety of the Catholic school system was up for debate recently when the Halton Catholic District School Board banned gay-straight alliances because, as the chair Alice Anne LeMay said, such student groups are “not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.” An investigation by the gay and lesbian newspaper Xtra! later found that such groups are effectively banned in all 29 of Ontario’s Catholic school boards. Just a year ago, Catholic leaders, including Catholic school board trustees, led the charge against a new sexual education curriculum for all Ontario public schools, and successfully scuppered the new scheme.

These episodes are troubling, but keeping score of who wins which policy scuffle is beside the point. These problems stem from the overarching fact of constitutionally entrenched religious public schools. Separate school boards for Protestants and Catholics are a function of Article 93 of the 1867 Constitution Act, intended at the time to protect minority religious rights. The reasons that a 4th century European institution should have been embedded in our 19th century constitution may have made sense at the time, but that time is long past.

The precedent for ending separate education exists. Quebec secured a constitutional amendment exempting it from Article 93 in 1997, and thereafter reorganized its school boards along linguistic lines, not religious ones. Newfoundland and Labrador merged their school boards into one non-denominational system in 1998.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has already urged Canada [PDF] to “adopt steps in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in the funding of schools in Ontario.” Polls find significant public support for the idea, and it would undoubtedly save millions in administrative overheads. But pressure from the UN, public support, or financial incentives are all secondary to the simple truth that creating a singular, secular public school system is the right thing to do.

The problem is political will. No party is willing to touch the issue, especially after Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory’s disastrous 2007 campaign promise to fund all religious schools, for which he was widely ridiculed. Party leaders fear, probably correctly, that proposing a merger of the separate and public school boards would be labelled as anti-Catholic. It is not. It is an acknowledgment that times have changed and state-sponsored religious education of any type or denomination is no longer appropriate.

Nine months later, you’ll find Nelson busy planning ways to feed his new-found “obsession” with French-Canadian culture. Nelson credits the program for his change of heart. However, he’s not too impressed with Katimavik now. Like many, Nelson’s concern centres on recent “drastic changes” to the program. Starting this year, Katimavik is taking fewer volunteers, working in fewer communities and, for the first time, charging its participants.

Admittedly, Katimavik has been on the brink before. Launched in 1977 by Pierre Trudeau’s government, Katimavik was originally designed to solve Canada’s unity problem. Groups of youth from across Canada were cycled through three different communities, where they worked at non-profit organizations, lived together, and learned about the country’s cultural variety. Katimavik received its first blow in 1986, when Brian Mulroney’s government completely dismantled it. Jean Chrétien restarted it in 1994.

The program now has a three-year funding agreement with the Conservative government. Currently in its first year, the agreement will eventually cut Katimavik’s budget by a quarter, resulting in a yearly $4.7 million yearly shortfall. “Katimavik is certainly not as strong, and it is certainly not as able to create powerful Canadian citizens the way it could,” says Justin Trudeau, the opposition critic for youth, citizenship and immigration, and a former chair of the Katimavik board of directors.

The money isn’t the only thing that’s been cut. In order to balance its budget, the new funding agreement has forced Katimavik to cut back in many ways: it has reduced the number of participants to 1,000, down from 4,000 in the early ’80s; the program length has been cut from nine months to six; and, instead of being free, participants now must pay fees of up to $535, $350 of which is refunded upon successful completion of the program.

Trudeau doesn’t like the new fee structure. “It was something that was supposed to be accessible to all young Canadians,” he says, “regardless of social or economic status, regardless of education.”

Publicly, Katimavik has stated the cuts aren’t all bad, as they now have secure fiscal support, and are encouraged to diversify funding and look for new financial partners. But some former participants, such as Nelson, aren’t buying it: “I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for Katimavik, honestly.” For Trudeau, the changes are just another step away from his father’s vision. “Katimavik continues to fail to live up to it,” he says. “We haven’t had the capacity in this program to respond to the demand, to give opportunities to the tens of thousands of young people who would love to do this program.”