Family Literacy: Lifelong Learning Across Generations

Canada’s Family Literacy Day on January 27 celebrates family activities that foster lifelong learning and literacy. Chinese history offers inspiring stories.
Family Literacy: Lifelong Learning Across Generations
Empress-Dowager Mingde of the Han Dynasty instructs the young princes in the Confucian classics in this scene from the “Album of Virtuous Empresses in Successive Dynasties,” by Qing Dynasty court painter Jiao Bingzhen. Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
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When parents and children enjoy being together while learning and improving skills, it creates the perfect conditions for strengthening family relationships and enhancing lifelong learning.

These are some of the goals of family literacy, which focuses on interactions between generations in the family and community that foster a culture of learning and the development of literacy and other life skills.

Inter-generational teaching and learning are longstanding traditions rooted in many cultures.