[AAACE-NLA] FW: Family Literacy Day Message

[David Collings]

Colleagues,

The following message is from Tom Sticht (tsticht at aznet.net).  If you received a
similar message through another discussion list, note that the link to the last
reference (Torres, R. M.  (2002)) has been updated in the message below.

David C.

-----Original Message-----
From: tsticht at znet.com [mailto:tsticht at znet.com] 
Subject: RE: Family Literacy Day Message

November 1, 2007 is National Family Literacy Day in the U.S.


Improving Family Literacy By Increasing Investments in Adult Literacy
Education: Moving From a One Life Cycle to a Multiple Life Cycles Education
Policy

Tom Sticht
International consultant in Adult Education

Policymakers sometimes opt to fund early childhood education to "stop illiteracy
at the source" at the expense of adult literacy education funding. In Canada in
2006 the new conservative government announced cuts of CAN$17.7 million in what
was already a skimpy federal budget for adult literacy education. The Headline
News web page of the National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) of October 4, 2006
carried the following statement from a government official (www.nald.ca Oct 4
06):

"The Tories rationalize the cuts by saying they want to focus instead on better
teaching children how to read and write, Treasury Board President John Baird
said last week.
He noted that governments need to more effectively use the $20 billion they
already spend on educating younger Canadians. ""This is repair work after the
fact,"" Baird said of adult literacy programs. ""We've got to (have a) much
greater focus on ensuring we get it right from the get-go, with the first $20
billion, rather than doing it after the fact.""

This type of thinking has been often used to call for "stopping illiteracy at
the source," meaning with young children, at the expense of focusing upon adult
literacy education. But this is a mistaken understanding of "the source of
illiteracy" and ignores the role of adults as parents of children and the
intergenerational transfer of literacy from adults to their children.

The Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy

In 1975, the Human Resources Research Organization published Reading for
Working, a book I edited which brought together a number of adult literacy
projects I had directed and a paper I had written for the U. S. government.
In the chapter dealing with the government paper, I reported on the
relationships between the reading scores on the 1971 National Assessment of
Educational Progress of young adults (17; 25-35 years old) and the educational
levels of the adult's parents. Taking notice of the fact that the young adult's
reading scores systematically increased as their parent's educational levels
increased, I simply reported that adult education might be more important than
we thought because it could affect the literacy ability of the adult's children.

Later, in a report entitled "Literacy and Human Resources Development at
Work: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of
Children (Sticht, 1983) I argued that a body of research existed to suggest that
more highly educated parents transmit literacy intergenerationally via oral
language skills and the modeling of literacy skills. Therefore if we could find
ways to provide education for adults we might get double value from education
dollars because investing in the education of adults could improve the
educability of their children. I have referred to this as getting "double duty
dollars" when investing in adult education. We pay for the adults' education,
and we get improved education for both the adults and their children.

Intergenerational Transmission of Literacy in the UK

Some years later that I came across an exceptionally well done book aimed at
helping adult literacy educators in the United Kingdom. The book was published
in 1975 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to go along with a major
adult literacy campaign that the BBC was carrying out. Called the BBC Adult
Literacy Handbook, the book was, and in my judgment still is, one of the best
introductions to adult literacy students and literacy instruction for tutors,
teachers, and others.

Of particular interest to me was the fact that the mere acorn of an idea I had
expressed that same year of 1975 in Reading for Working about the relationship
of parent's education to their children's reading ability, even when the
children had grown into young adulthood, was present in the BBC Handbook as a
full-grown oak tree sized concept about what I later called the
intergenerational transfer of literacy, and more recently a Multiple Life Cycles
education policy.

Here are some of the seminal ideas as presented in the BBC Handbook in 1975:

" From all the research on reading difficulty in schools, it is not difficult to
argue a most forcible case for the importance of certain factors of family
background to literacy. The term Cycle of Deprivation is commonly used to
describe the legacy of deprivation which passes down from parent to child and
cannot be broken by intervention at only one point in the circle. If a child
grows up deprived of, and unaccustomed to, books and libraries and opportunities
to practise verbal skills, then this will affect his progress and he, in turn,
unless intervention is made, will see no pleasure and relevance in reading and
will pass this attitude on to his children. Researchers have plotted the crucial
importance of parental
interest: so much is a confirmation of commonsense observation."

The BBC Handbook presents a very well done graphic which depicts a Multiple Life
Cycles education policy and shows how illiteracy or semi-literacy is passed from
one generation of semi-literate parents to their children, who then become the
semi-literate parents of another generation of illiterates/semi-literates. Yet
despite this clear understanding of the intergenerational cycles of
illiteracy/semi-literacy documented so well by the BBC Handbook over thirty
years ago, today the United Kingdom, like most nations, including the United
States,  pursues a policy of education focusing on one life cycle, a "cradle to
grave" or "lifelong education"
policy.

More Recent Research on the Intergenerational Effects of Parents Education Level

Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004)  from the Center for Research on the
Wider Benefits of Learning in London reported that "The intergenerational
transmission of educational success is a key driver of the persistence of social
class differences and a barrier to equality of opportunity..
Parental beliefs, values, aspirations and attitudes (termed here
'cognitions') are very important, as is parental well-being. .Parenting skills
in terms of warmth, discipline and educational behaviours are all major factors
in the formation of school success. . We conclude that the intergenerational
transmission of educational success is a key element in equality of opportunity.
There are substantial benefits of education that accrue to individuals and
society in terms of what education enables parents to pass on to their
children."

The November 2005 REFLECT magazine article by John Bynner and Samantha Parsons,
entitled "New light on literacy and numeracy" found that parent's basic skills
were related to their children's achievement in literacy and numeracy and
stated, "Although much more penetrating analysis will be needed to understand
the basis of intergenerational skill transfer, it seems that parent literacy and
numeracy is an important part of it, especially in the case of parents whose
skills are at the lowest levels."

>From Parents to Progeny: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy

Given the important intergenerational effects of parent's education level on the
achievement of their children, I believe we need to shift our education policies
from a focus on one life cycle to a focus on "multiple life cycles" education.
Such a policy would explicitly recognize that adults transfer their educational
achievements to the achievement of their children, as illustrated so well in the
BBC Handbook some thirty years ago.
It would also recognize that adult education should be valued as much as is
childhood education, and that nations should provide adult education
systems on a par with children's education systems.   The importance of
adult's education for children has been succinctly expressed by the South
American educationist, Rosa Maria Torres (2002, p.91). She has argued that "the
children's right to education should include the right to educated parents."

Poorly educated children are the source of adult functional illiteracy, and
functionally illiterate adults are the source of poorly educated children.
Perhaps through education based on a Multiple Life Cycles policy,  in which
children are guaranteed their right to educated parents, the vicious
intergenerational cycles of functional illiteracy can be stopped at their
sources. It is time to implement Multiple Life Cycles education policies in the
UK, US, and other nations. Thirty years is enough time to wait.

NOTE: For additional information see: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education
Policy: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of
Children.
This paper argues for education policy that recognizes that literacy is
transferred across generations from parents to their children. Therefore, we
need to have a much larger investment in the education of youth and adults who
are parents or who will be parents. Adult literacy education affects multiple
life cycles. An extensive review is presented of research on early childhood
education, relationships of parent's education to children's literacy, parenting
and preschool effectiveness, and other issues. Online at:
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/sticht/06dec/06dec.pdf

References

Bynner, J. & Parsons, S. (2005, November). New light on literacy and numeracy.
In: REFLECT online magazine. London: National Research and Development Center
for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. (www.nrdc.org.uk)

Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004, May). A Model of the Inter-Generational
Transmission of Educational Success. London: Center for Research on the Wider
Benefits of Learning

Sticht, T. G. (1983, February). Literacy and Human Resources Development at
Work: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of
Children. Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organization.

Torres, R. M.  (2002). Lifelong learning: a new momentum and a new opportunity
for adult basic learning and education (ABLE) in the South, page 91. Accessed
online 11-2-07 at:
http://google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=ABLERMTorresEnglishfinal.doc

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