[AAACE-NLA] causes of low literacy

Tue May 30 16:02:38 EDT 2006

George and other contributors to the strand "causes of low literacy,

Thank you for putting this list together.  This is possibly the one question I am asked most often by people outside the field, 
especially those who wonder why our learners didn't "get it" when they were in school.  It is a hard question to answer quickly, concisely and yet completely without losing the attention of the listener who has other things on their mind.  This list offers a good beginning to answering questions about what we do.  This could be a good email resource as well as something to be used in presentations.

Cyndy Colletti
Illinois State Library Literacy Office

-----Original Message-----
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org]On Behalf Of George
Demetrion
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:28 AM
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
Subject: [AAACE-NLA] causes of low literacy

Dear Colleagues,

I have incorporated a good deal of the feedback received both on and off
line, and have also kept to my own arguments where I still think they
hold.  In incorporating various recommendations there may be some
unevenness in the prose

These materials are too much to cover during the initial presentation.
However, in their finished form I will include them in our follow-up six
session tutor training.

Feedback on and off line still welcome.

George Demetrion
________________________________________________________________________
___

Causes of Low Level English literacy amongst adults

*	The enduring reality of poverty. Many current adult learners
were children who were not well-fed, well-nurtured, healthy nor ready to
learn when they went to school (if they made it to school that day).
Physical and mental trauma at home due to poverty, or unemployment or
transient employment, or the ill health of the parents causes many
children to miss school entirely or to come to school sleepy, ill or
anxious.  Divorce, chronic diseases, and disabilities are adult problems
that children face while also trying to learn in school.  Families with
financial stability will be able to ameliorate these problems for their
children with tutoring and counseling.  Families without financial
stability have much fewer resources.  Many schools do not have the
flexibility to offer make up help with lessons, to change the way in
which they are "tracking" the children, or to intervene when they see a
problem that is on a lesser level than actual abuse or neglect.  

*	Failed Educational Policy, both currently and historically.  A.
Particularly with older adults, the legacy of segregation is still a
factor.  Many people don't realize that it wasn't until the early 1970s
that some districts integrated, followed by years of turmoil and
disruption.  B.  Many districts have still not developed adequate
alternative educational systems for high schoolers who need a different
structure.  C.  States that have an exit exam requirement may have added
to the drop-out problem.  Teens who are already behind flunk the test,
and even though there are multiple chances to re-take it, the resulting
discouragement often causes them to give up.  The point is remediation
strategies for those who do fail are often ineffective or are just not
even utilized.     D.  Programs that break the cycle of low literacy
from one generation to the next are few and far between, and so parents
can't equip themselves to help their children.

*	Increasing standards of what counts as literacy.  Literacy is
not something that can be defined by a static grade level, but is
measured against the perceived literacy needs of individuals shaped, in
part, by society and culture.  For basic literacy population the higher
end achievement is high school equivalency achievement.  Also important
is mastering the print-based needs of obtaining and keeping a
sustainable job, understanding and filling out forms of various types,
basic math, capacity to write a basic letter, rudimentary computer-based
mastery and knowing how to access information from various print sources
in home, work, community, and commercial environments.  All of these
pertain to the ESOL population.  The higher end here would be entrance
into college and obtaining a professional or entry level administrative
position.  One cause of low literacy is that the ladder of what
functional proficiency consists of has been raised.

*	Increasing immigrant population.  31.4 million immigrants
identified in 2000 census.  Immigrant groups are at the lowest levels of
English literacy. This includes the subgroup of refugees from African
nations such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan, and also Afghanistan that
have been war-torn for years, in which schooling was not an option for
many in those countries.  This also pertains to immigrants from English
speaking countries, particularly the Caribbean Islands where those who
sign up for literacy classes are typically at a much lower literacy
level than US born adults who sign up for literacy classes.  

*	Student mobility.  About 60% of students in the US make
unscheduled school changes between grades 1 and 12.  Students who move
may miss key pieces of instruction in reading and never catch up, a
problem which gets compounded in the higher grades, particularly when
students are passed through "social promotion." The student who moves a
lot is typically from a lower income family and/or attends an inner city
school.  In areas of high rent, poor housing and economic hardship,
school populations changing as much as 100% per year are increasingly
common. 

*	Drop out rates and increasing numbers of students, especially in
the cities not reading at grade level.  All the way through their
schooling, such students are getting further behind as they socially
passed year after year, or sometimes misplaced in special education
classes.  This would be a problem even if high school drop outs were
ready to prepare for the GED, but this is rarely the case.  Most, in
fact, lack the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed to succeed in a
GED program, and may lack the basic skills to succeed in a pre-GED
program.  This, in turn, contributes to the alarming life long gap
between the educationally haves and have nots, which, in turn, help to
foster generational cycles of low literacy.  High drop out rates are
both a symptom of low literacy and a contributory factor.  

*	Learning Difficulties.  Undiagnosed learning disabilities,
including a broad range of reading disabilities, have been identified as
an important cause of adult illiteracy.  Whether one wants to use the
specific and highly technical term learning disabilities, it is
indisputable, at the least that millions of adults have tremendous
learning difficulties in relation to reading and writing.  For many,
those difficulties were pervasive throughout their public schooling,
which acted to keep them back in their learning, and in any event,
impacts on their ability to learn as adults even if they have enrolled
in an adult literacy or adult basic education programs.  What we
typically see in adult literacy, even among the most dedicated students,
is modest progress, which, except for the most advanced students is
still a far cry from fluent, independent literacy.  Thus, one of the
causes of adult illiteracy is the current rate of low literacy, for
whatever reasons, and the difficulty of moving substantially beyond
current levels of mastery.  One might say that illiteracy is
self-perpetuating even as people can and do make progress in ways that
matter to them as we have seen in the case-study profiles.  

*	Low Self Expectations and lack of use.  In addition, students
who have had trouble specifically in reading during school not only
struggle to learn to read but often also suffer from poor self- efficacy
and self-respect. They learn early that they must be "dumb" since they
have trouble learning to read. This perception follows them through
adult hood, regardless of their gains in reading skill.  Moreover, the
literacy skills that students might have had at one point in their lives
diminish if not used on a regular basis.  Many adults who enter programs
in their 30s, 4s and 50s have read little or nothing since they attended
school as children or teenagers.  Whatever literacy skills, however
modest, adults possessed in their youth, the use it or lose it saying
has much applicability here.

_______________________________________________
AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org