[AAACE-NLA] Abundance and Liberty For All

[tsticht@znet.com]

July 24, 2006

Adult Education for Abundance and Liberty for All:
Celebrating 40 Years of the Adult Education
and Literacy System of the United States

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Forty-two  years ago, in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson launched a
War on Poverty which included for the first time an initiative to provide
adult basic education for undereducated adults. Two years later, on
November 3, 1966 President Johnson signed a new law, the Adult Education
Act of 1966, which moved the adult basic education program from the War on
Poverty and established it as a new education system comprised of a
partnership between the federal government and the states.

This year we celebrate forty years of the Adult Education and Literacy
System that was created by the Adult Education Act of 1966, and which
continues today as Title 2: The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act of
the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. How the Adult Education Act emerged
from the adult basic education program of the War on Poverty illustrates
how multiple interests were brought together to break through a barrier
that had blocked the development of an Adult Education and Literacy System
for decades.

Abundance and Liberty: The Merger of Interests for a War on Poverty
and War For Defense of the Nation

By the beginning of the 1960s, the adult education community had become
fragmented into several factions: those seeking recognition for adult
education as a broad, liberal educational component of the national
education system; those who sought education for the least educated, least
literate adults; and those seeking the conservation of human resources to
enhance America’s security and increase the industrial productivity of the
nation by giving education and job training to adults stuck in poverty.

As it turns out, none of these groups was having much success getting adult
education or adult literacy education implemented in federal legislation.
An Adult Literacy Act drafted in 1962 was deemed to be too narrow and so it
was renamed the Adult Education Act even before it was introduced for
legislative hearings. But the U. S. Office of Education considered the term
"adult education"  too broad. The name finally decided on was the Adult
Basic Education Act of 1962, but it went nowhere.

At the time, President John F. Kennedy, struck by issues of poverty,
particularly poverty among African-Americans, had placed the adult
education issue within the human resources development framework and
problems of labor force training. He had been successful in getting the
Manpower Training and Development Act and the Area Redevelopment Act for
community economic development passed in 1962. But further legislation to
combat poverty was stalled. In 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated and
Lyndon Johnson became President. He would soon find the leverage for
breaking the log jam and for moving along his "War on Poverty" which would
carry adult education along with it. This time leverage for social action
in adult education would come from the nation’s military.

In July of 1963, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an Assistant Secretary of
Labor and later a leading Democratic Senator in the U. S. Congress, was
reading an article in the Washington Post. The article said that about half
the young men called for examination for military service had failed the
physical or mental test or both. According to his biographer, Godfrey
Hodgson, "Moynihan had observed how the sacred plea of national security
could be used to persuade politicians to support causes they might not
otherwise care two pins about" After reading the article,  Moynihan got
hold of the Secretary of Labor and convinced him to have the President
establish a task force on manpower conservation for which he, Moynihan,
would serve as staff leader. On September 30, 1963, just two months before
he was assassinated, Kennedy established the Task Force on Manpower
Conservation, which President Lyndon Baines Johnson continued.

The Task Force set out to understand why so many young men were failing the
military’s standardized entrance screening exam, the Armed Forces
Qualification Test (AFQT), and to recommend what might be done to alleviate
this problem. Just three months later, on January 1, 1964, the Task Force’s
report was delivered to President Johnson. The report was stunning in
revealing that one third of the young men called for service did not meet
the standards of health and education. It went on to recommend methods for
using the AFQT to identify young adults with remediable problems and to
provide them services, such as the Manpower Training and Development
program, and the enactment of new legislation that would provide additional
education and training.

In May 1964, President Johnson gave the speech that launched his  "Great
Society" programs  in which he argued that "The  Great Society rests on
abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial
injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time"

With his appeal to "abundance and liberty," Johnson captured the interest of
those in Congress concerned with employment, productivity, and poverty
("abundance") as well as those concerned with national security
("liberty"). In August 1964, Public Law 88-452, the Economic Opportunity
Act, was passed by the Congress and signed by President Johnson. It
contained within it Title IIB: the Adult Basic Education program.

Two years later, in 1966, when the Economic Opportunity Act  legislation
came up for legislative review, adult educators lobbied to move the Adult
Basic Education program to the U. S. Office of Education, and to change the
name from the Adult Basic Education program to the Adult Education Act,
broadening its applicability beyond basic education. Congress agreed to
these changes, and, on November 3, 1966, President Johnson signed an
amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, that 
included Title III: The Adult Education Act of 1966.

With the passing of the Adult Education Act of 1966, the acorn from which
the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) would grow was finally
planted. Over the last four decades, adults have produced some 100 million
enrollments in the Adult Education and Literacy System of the United
States. These adults have sought the education that they hope will help
them find abundance and liberty from the bonds of poverty and
underemployment for themselves and their families. For tens of millions of
adults this hope has been fulfilled. For this we

Celebrate 40 years of the Adult Education and Literacy System of the United
States.

[Note: Most of the foregoing is adapted from Sticht, T. (2002). The rise of
the Adult Education and Literacy System in the United States: 1600-2000. In
J. Comings,  B. Garner, & C. Smith (Eds.), The annual review of adult
learning and literacy (Vol. 3, pp. 10-43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.]

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net