[aaace-nla] help Needed--constructs for the message

Sun Oct 24 12:05:10 EDT 2004

Dear Ms. Lex,

I wish it were so simple.   

I have worked with adult literacy students at the pre-GED level (mostly those reading below a 3rd grade level) since 1987, including many students who do not even read at the 1st grade level, where visible "gains" made, say on test scores, are slow in coming and extremely modest at best.  I am perpetually awed by the passion the students exhibit for learning and the often subtle and under-appreciated learning that they often make, whether in reading, learning about the world, or about themselves, including the impact of participating in our programs on their sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem.  

I am also awed at their role in contributing to a culture of learning that we seek to foster in our site-based community programming (how they support each other, foster a climate of hospitality with our tutors, and support our program), which is a social and cultural good itself of no minor significance.  This culture of learning is enhanced by the many volunteer tutors who give so freely of their talent and time in working closely with the students (often from social, cultural, and ethnic/racial backgrounds different from their own) in helping them achieve some of their aspirations.  Thus, in our little world, we have sought to create the vision and something of the reality of the good school in a nurturing learning climate in which people from diverse backgrounds learn and work together in the fostering of common goals.   

This contribution to multicultural dialogue and social activism, in itself, is a substantial, often neglected value in the strengthening of local culture that is accomplished through volunteer tutoring programs across this land of ours, built on the ideals of equality and opportunity.  It would be difficult and actually inappropriate to reduce such a contribution to a strict cost-benefit utilitarian source of measurement that can be reduced to a dollar figure or a test score.  Its relation to the social and cultural capital of our region (and collectively to the nation) would involve a metaphorical calculation of no minor importance that requires a matter of a grappling with the ways in which adult literacy education contributes to the enhancement of a broad range of social and cultural values linked to personal development, family education, citizenship, employment, and community development. Such contributions have been discussed in a variety of venues the details of which I will by-pass here, but can make available to you.

The impact is often indirect in which it is difficult, if not impossible to tease out the ways in which reading and writing influence the results from other factors.  As David Barton points out in Literacy:  An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language, one has to take into account the literacy practices operating in and through the lives of adult new readers to even begin to get an adequate handle on how lives are enhanced by participating in literacy programs.  In Life at the Margins:  Literacy, Language, and Technology in Everyday Life, Juliet Merrifield and her colleagues provide some excellent case study descriptions on some of the many ways in lives are enhanced in participating in such programs as well as something of the limitations of the impact of such programming without broader societal change.  I also have provided case study descriptive material on literacy in Hartford and can provide an abundance of examples to illustrate the impact.  Of course, one has to be willing to read and work through such texts in order to make a cogent assessment of them.  Even still, the impact is not all what skeptics too easily label as "touchy-feely," a stereotype that leads to a neglect of the social and emotional impact of our work not only with the students, but with the volunteers as well.  That is, our volunteers also experience much enrichment and learning as a result of their efforts.  As a social and cultural value, which builds up the quality of our body politic, this also is a contribution of no minor import.

In addition to these more subtle (and highly important) effects, in many cases we can point to concrete results with our students.  Over the years our students have become US citizens, have discussed and debated critical social and political issues in our small group tutoring sessions, and voted.  They have obtained jobs or better jobs, helped their kids with homework, become homeowners, have gone on to more advanced programs, have increased their ability to read religious literature more effectively, and participate more dynamically in their temples, mosques and churches.  Talk about a faith-based initiative!   

Moreover, every year we report gains on test scores and achievements attained, and our reports shows far from negligible results.  So we do have numbers and the numbers do give an indication of modest progress, at least for many, but they often mask as much, if not more than what they sometimes disclose.  Note that I emphasize "modest progress," obviously a relative terms that may mean something different for students and their instructors as compared to those who look at our program from more distant perspectives.  For the former, such "limited gains" represent much of the fruit of our work and a source of wonder in its own right, which can be communicated more through narrative and direct face-to-face communication, for example, when students, themselves speak with funders than through dispassionate statistical data.  Not that the latter is unimportant, far from it, and the numbers can be revealing.  The problem comes when we put more stock in the numbers as if, simply because they are "hard," they represent something more real than the many narrative descriptions and qualitative analyses of adult literacy programs that are also available.

In terms of the "modesty" of even the many concrete gains achieved and documented in our annual statistical reports, the fruit of such work has typically been the result of several years of cumulative program participation and hard effort, the effects of which are often invisible on a daily or even, often, on a yearly basis. Moreover, the learning process is not always moving in an obvious linear way.  Like the rest of us, adult literacy students often experience plateaus, where what they have learned becomes stabilized and where gains in test scores or life achievements are far from always in evidence.  Yet, without that continued participation, students often begin to lose some of what they've worked so hard to learn, so it's important for programs to be able to support such continuing students even when "gains" do not become easily provable or always measurable on an annual basis.   

No doubt there is a dilemma.  How can we provide such support when only hard numbers count--or do they?  What about stories, do they count, too?  Granted, one story may be interpreted as merely an anecdote (and thereby discounted), but it’s not so easy to discount, except by convention, the compilation and organization of many stories (and supportive data) that we have documented over the years.  These are more than isolated anecdotes in their leading toward coherent narratives as articulated in Life at the Margins or in Fingeret and Drennon’s Literacy for Life.  At least at their best, such data are qualitative descriptions of the ways in which students have learned and what they've learned over the years. While we don't have narratives on every students we have them in sufficient breadth to provide a composite sketch of something of the learning that actually takes place at our site.  Is such information relevant?  I believe it is, particularly when correlated with other types of evidence.  As it says in a certain book, "He who has ears let him hear."  The dilemma that we face is that the culture itself is not willing to put the ear to the groundswell and has sold itself short by accepting too easily other cultural narratives even when listening well to ours would only enhance that which is best about American idealism and the very promise of America.  Do we want to sell that vision of America short or give it merely lip service?  At what cost, not merely to the students itothe underfunded literacy programs, but to the fabric of the culture?  There's more here than meets the eye.  He who has ears let him hear.

Then there are the students (more than we would like) who leave our program.  They leave for many reasons, sometimes for positive reasons as attaining a job which cuts into their discretionary time.  Some (more than we'd like) leave because they're not ready to make a sustained commitment of time and effort needed to make the slow gains in literacy that persisting students do make.  Some (fewer than we would like) return for a second or a third time.  And sometimes, the third or fourth time around it sticks.  So the reality, too, Ms. Lex, is that we also have to factor in these recursive dynamics which buts up against a linear model of progress that is sometimes demanded, particularly in a reporting cycle that functions on a yearly calendar.   

Should programs not make room for such recursive participation and learning, which typically takes place over several years or sometimes more?  We could increasingly move even more so in such a literal direction, which could only result in considerable "skimming," taking in and only working with those students most likely to succeed and those most likely to attain short-term gains that can be easily documented.  Given the current pressures on the field and the limited ways in which the value of adult literacy education is interpreted in the broader culture, this option is far from a rhetorical one even as we can provide decent evidence that many students attain a certain level of value as a result of participating in our programs, along with the reality that there is more than a little residual value for the culture itself, much beyond what counting purports to prove in fostering basic educational opportunities among its adult population.

So there are fundamental social, political, and cultural value issues at play.  While we can provide at least some evidence (granted, much of it self report) that many students who persist in literacy programs derive certain benefits from it in terms of life enhancement, we cannot always show concrete gains in reading for all students, though we certainly have some evidence of that--a good deal-- based on modest test score increases.

If literacy were merely about learning to read it would be easier to set linear benchmarks, but even here an overly literal set of standards highlights those who gain the most over others, who become increasingly invisible as a result of the accountability instruments we privilege.  I along with others contend that while becoming literate obviously includes progressive improvement in the ability to read and write print-based text, more fundamentally, literacy is about the process of learning to read the world.  In short, our goal is to help students read the word in order to read the world.  Sometimes they will be working more literally on one or the other of these polar dimensions, more fundamentally, their efforts will be residing somewhere in the interaction of the two.   

In short, for the little money we receive, we provide a lot.  Moreover, we're not asking for a heck of a lot, only a little more than we receive now with some assurance that funding will continue for some reasonable period of time.  In making your assessment, I urge you to weigh the amount your investment against the potential gain that your contribution makes toward our capacity to construct a stable and sustaining learning environment, not year to year, but for the years.  Is adult literacy education a worthy investment?  Ultimately it's a matter of values.  But don't just take my word for it.  Ask others.

George Demetrion

----- Original Message -----
From: AWilder106 at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 3:49 PM
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: [aaace-nla] help Needed--constructs for the message

Dear George,                                                            Office Building

Priorities, priorities, priorities.

When money is pressing (I quote from your post) and even when it isn't, somethings are more important than others.

I care about votes and getting educated (is that related to literacy?) citizens.  Let's make it simple--citizens who can read and write and vote.  All representatives care about the voting part, that's how we got here, and most of us like the job.

My school teacher daughter reminds me I also care about Education with a capital E.

If you can show me how to connect the dots, how to create literacy programs that succeed, you've got an audience.  

My previous committee assignment was on riparian rights, so my education assignment is new, and you are the expert. I can tell you some things that might help what you are interested in, though.

1)     Sharpen your language so I can understand it.  I know about "politics" but not "politics of."
2)     We listen to state directors of education and lobbyists.   
3)     Check into the education committe websites.  We are a partisan crowd.   

Back to the hustings!   

Thanks for your comments on adult literacy, we need concerned citizens, an American tradition.

Susan Lex, Representative     _______________________________________________
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