Barry talks about the need to teach literacy skills in context (1:43)

I think the community here is tired of being told that they’re illiterate and I think they’re tired of trying to work through an education focus that really doesn’t put them in any place.  It’s sort of it’s an outside thing that’s being imposed.  To me any literacy or numeracy program run in this community has got to be based around what’s the usable and valid reasons for that being evolved.  And quite a few people believe that the literacy is valuable to them but they don’t want to be hammered and forced to do something that isn’t focused in a way that will work for them.  In schools with kids that are not engaged in the schools, schools run alternate programs of curriculum and that is practical and focused on what their needs are, that they’re interested in.   I think the same thing has to happen here.  You don’t focus on literacy, because they don’t see that that’s the value but you focus it on something that has got value such as craftwork, painting, maintenance, landscaping – things that people actually would like to have as a skill and then you put the literacy or you bring the literacy out through the program.  If you focus just on the literacy, and this is the experience of most people that work here, is that it falls flat, because people can’t – coming from the first language background, walk into a second language background educational institution and just be told that this is what you’ve got to do.  It’s got to have a relationship to who they are and what their needs are as well.

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