[AAACE-NLA] EdNews.org advocacy article

[tsticht at znet.com]

Aaace-nla Colleagues: The following article was posted today on the
Education News web site (www.ednews.org) which has a visitorship of some
1.3 million unique hits per month. The piece is an expansion of one posted
earlier on the aaace-nla list and advocates for adult literacy education.
Hopefully the ednews.org web site's braoder range of readers will go beyond
"preaching to the choir" and engage some new interest in the need for adult
literacy education and for a system of education with resources that meets
the scale of need. Tom Sticht

May 15, 2008

Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In 2003, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy from the U. S. Department
of Education indicated that as many as 5 percent of adults over the age of
16 were non-literate in English (that's 11 million adults), 14 percent (30
million) were below basic in literacy, and another 29 percent (63 million)
possessed only basic literacy skills.

Given the magnitude of the adult literacy deficit and the importance of
adult literacy skills to international competitiveness as stated by the
federal government and numerous business and economic organisations,  one
might have expected a fairly large increase in funding for adult literacy
education. Instead the Bush administration requested a two-thirds cut in
the federal budget for adult literacy education, and the Secretary of
Education said that the data supported the President's call for a one
billion dollar initiative to increase literacy in the high schools. But
actually, the real assault on adult illiteracy was placed on the
multi-billion dollars No Child Left Behind act and the initiative called
Reading First. This is an approach built on the strategy of "stopping
illiteracy at the source." The reasoning behind the strategy goes like
this:

Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source

Question: Why do we have all these adults who are practically illiterate?
Why can’t they read?

Answer: It’s because the high schools are graduating functional illiterates.
We need to fix the high schools so they stop sending functional illiterates
out into the world.

Question: Why don’t the high schools teach students to read before they
graduate them?

Answer: It’s too late. The middle schools keep sending the high schools
students who can’t read so the high schools can’t teach the academic
subjects they need to teach while also teaching students to read. We need
to have the middle schools stop sending students to high school who can’t
read.

Question: Why don’t the middle schools teach students to read before they
send them on to high school?

Answer: It’s too late. The primary grades keep sending the middle schools
students who can’t read so the middle schools can’t teach the subjects they
are supposed to teach to prepare the students for high school and also teach
the kids to read. We need to have the primary schools stop sending students
to middle school who can’t read.

Question: Why don’t the primary schools teach students to read before they
send them on to middle school?

Answer: It’s too late. Parents keep sending the primary schools children who
have not been prepared to learn to read at home. We need a preschool program
like Head Start to prepare children to learn to read so parents can stop
sending children to primary school who aren’t ready to learn to read.

Question: Why do so many children have to go to Head Start to get prepared
to learn to read? Why don’t parents prepare them at home?

Answer: It’s too late by age 3 or 4. That’s why we need Early Head Start  -
so children can be prepared starting at birth to go to Head Start so they
can learn to read in primary school so they can learn pre-high school
subjects in middle school so they can learn high school subjects and
graduate from high school able to read and be fully literate to contribute
to society.

Generally this is where the strategy for stopping illiteracy at the source
stops. It is claimed that literacy development starts at birth and so we
now put billions of dollars into these preschool programs at birth and then
add billions more in Reading First and No Child Left Behind money for the
instruction of disadvantaged students when they enter school still
unprepared to learn to read.

As I see it, a major part of the failure of this strategy up to now is that
it stops too soon. It needs to ask another question:

Question: Why are so many children born unprepared to be prepared to learn
to read?

Answer: It’s too late by birth. Too many young adults are functionally
illiterate and unable to take care of themselves. Often they get involved
with drugs or other activities that destroy their bodies and harm their
minds. They often have many out-of-wedlock births, they are frequently
unable to make informed choices about good prenatal and postnatal care, and
they are unable to afford such care because they can’t qualify for
well-paying jobs.

What we need is a high-quality, well-funded adult education and literacy
system that will prepare adults for parenting and profitable work. This in
turn will permit them to  provide for their own and their children’s
health, send their children to school prepared to learn to read, support
them through primary, middle and high school, and graduate them with the
literacy skills they need to participate fully in society.

It is a national disgrace that today the combined state and federal funding
for the 3,000 or so programs served by the Adult Education and Family
Literacy Act of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 provides only some
$850 per student. At the same time, federal spending alone provides over
$7,000 per child in Head Start and $10,000 in Early Head Start trying to
"fix" the children of the very adults who are themselves often in dire
circumstances and in need of extensive and intensive education.

We need to base our education programs on a multiple life cycles education
policy, understanding that there is an intergenerational transfer of
literacy across individual life cycles. Based on this policy, with an
investment in adult literacy education commensurate with the scale of need,
we can get what I call "double duty dollars": we can improve the education
of adults, then through the intergenerational transfer of good health,
emotional support and stability, language, and literacy, we can also
improve the educability of the adults' children.

It is not too late!

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