[NLA] Return on Investment Imagery

[gdemetrion@msn.com]

 Thanks to Tom, Catherine, and to Harry, and now David Hayes for this important discussion on Return on Investment imagery.  I believe this discussion speaks to the heart and soul of the field and needs to be taken seriously, thoughtfully, carefully, and considered charitably, given the marginality of the field and the substantial challenges it faces, particularly in the current political-social climate in moving to a more center stage into the public and policy sector.
 As Allan Quigley points out in Rethinking Literacy Education (1997), "return on investment" imagery has been with us for at least 40 years, when as he put it, adult literacy as an independent sector from ABE became policy disenfranchised, where the latter became linked with human capital development.  Though other discourses have arisen over the decades, it would be difficult to dispute the dominance of the human capital thrust over several decades culminating in the Workforce Investment Act.  Thus, ABE/literacy advocates have also drawn upon the metaphor, “return on investment,” for decades in the difficult effort to achieve public/policy legitimacy. With Tom, David, and others, I don't think it can simply be dropped without establishing important bridges to other discourses that might speak to more comprehensive and humanizing visions of adult literacy education that are not reduced to a cost-benefit utilitarian human investment calculus.
 Yet I also believe there are paths forward.  Both Tom and Catherine speak about the importance of broader notions of "investment" than commonly used.  In the effort to move from here to there, certainly an expanding notion of the terminology of investment represents an important strategy that should not be lightly dismissed.  I leave it to Tom, Catherine, and others to flesh out the specifics of what this means, which they have begun to do so in their recent messages.
 The imagery in EFF of the active citizen reconstructing self and society through the mediating institutions of community, the family, and the workplace, represents another opportunity to shift gears from notions of overcoming deficiency to those of empowerment through the aegis of adult literacy education.  Though I think there are aspects of EFF that need to be looked at critically, I think it does the field well to think through the many positive accomplishments that its developers have established against some very difficult circumstances.   
 One of these accomplishments is in the portrayal of adult education as a very positive social and cultural force contributing to the vitality of the US political culture through stimulating lifelong learning that helps to enable adults reconstruct their own lives as well as the local institutions in which they are invested.  On this vision, the emphasis adult literacy education is no longer focused on deficiency imagery linked to crime reduction, etc., but to the building of the city, by which I mean the American political culture through the strengthening of mediating institutions and the ethos of voluntarism through which much of this effort takes place.  
 In moving from current investment linked to a somewhat narrow economic calculus language, often couched in terms of overcoming dimensions of perceived deficiency, toward a more empowering notion of adult literacy education, I believe EFF is an important mid-wife in a gradual shift from imagery stemming from capitalistic metaphors to those premised on our potent, though largely underutilized democratic lineage.
 The longer-term effort, I believe, is to establish a coherent political culture of adult literacy stemming from premises grounded in the US political tradition, namely, the ethos of constitutional democracy.  While it could be argued that we *should* be there already, particularly our politicians, the reality is that we are far from us. However, I agree with Catherine that the outrageous events of September 11th offer some new opportunities to draw on democratic discourse that could conceivably cross some neo-conservative/neo-liberal/progressive boundaries to open up fresh dialogue for a broad based national consensus to which EFF could help point the way.
 I do believe that long term, a gradual shift from capitalistic to democratic metaphors on how the field defines the public value of adult literacy education is critical both to the vitality of the field as well as the political culture.  I also feel there are many field resources such as EFF, the new literacy organization, VALUE, the NLA, and the work underway with An Action Agenda for Literacy that conceivably could find some common ground in shifting the metaphors of how we define ourselves.  Though I believe any such effort has to be gradual, building from where we are to where we could be, keeping attuned to the reality of current needs, such as the next legislative cycle as well as to longer term initiatives.
 To state it negatively, I believe what the field lacks is a coherent political vision congruent with the dynamics of US political culture to which a thoughtful and careful embrace of constitutional democracy could unleash.  To state it positively, there are a variety of factors at work, including current return on investment language, which could be enlarged that could gradually lead toward a more humanizing vision stemming from a coherent political framework.   
 Many would argue, given the inherent pluralism of US society, it's practically impossible to move toward such coherency.  I don't doubt the difficulty of the challenge.  David Hayes' message this evening gives us even more reason to pause in assuming that this issue of imagery and language has any easy solution.  
Yet, adult literacy conveys a certain symbolic significance in terms of its value to the lives of individual students as well as to the culture and society that if appropriately tapped could lead to a new synthesis, which I believe, is in no small measure, conveyed within EFF.  The issue is whether pushing the envelope toward such coherency is worth the effort, not that it is an impossible task, that is, unless one believes that the gods control our fate.  Though the issue on whether it is worth it is a fundamental one, which, in my view, should not be lightly by-passed.
George Demetrion
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford
Happy New Year to all
  
  
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