NLA Question: Funding NIFL? -- Not

[gdemetrion]

Thanks Christy:

I only have time for a quick comment or two.  Glad to see there is some
interest in adult literacy in Congress.  It's unfortunate, in my estimation,
that adult literacy is being valued primarily for its utilitarian role in
helping parents with the schooling of their children.  To be sure, this is
a worthy reason, but adult literacy needs to be valued on its own right
and for the many ways that it contributes to adult development as
articulated in the EFF project.  They are also identified in the various
ethnographic studies such as Fingeret and Drennon's Literacy for life,
Merrifield et. al., Life at the Margins, a Canadian study by Bossort,
Cottingham, and Gardner, Learning to Learn accessed at
(http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/pat/L2L/cover.htm), some of my own
work on adult literacy in Hartford accessed at
(http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/a-cde.htm#D), Lorna Rivera's ethnographic study
of homeless women in Boston, a dissertation recently completed at
Northeastern University in Boston, and Rachel Martin's (2001), Listen Up:
Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students, Boynton Cook Publishers on a
neighborhood women's literacy program in Philadelphia.

I realize that by necessity you are working on a more short term while  I
have the luxury of focusing on the long haul at least in my research and the
various positions which I have been advocating on these airwaves.  I see
nothing wrong with that.  The tricky part becomes maintaining a strong
advocacy for the short run which, almost by necessity requires considerable
compromise particularly from the more purist perspective to which I am
adhering, while on the other hand, also planning for the longer haul where
it may be more realistic to maintain a higher standard of what we are
willing to accept.  Whether it's wise for the same group of people to
simultaneously take on both tasks is difficult to say.  I suspect that the
short term realists will tend to look at longer term prospects from the same
realistic cast of eye that they do when engaging in shorter term strategies,
while we theorists and philosophers may have a difficult time discerning
what is feasible from what is ideal.  So while I appreciate your shorter
term effort in dealing with the realities of D.C. politics, I would
simultaneously urge some concerted and collaborative effort in thinking and
working through long term prospects from a more purist perspective.  For,
whatever outer boundary we set in defining the parameters of our field, it
is not very likely that whatever comes to be will go beyond those
boundaries.  So, for the long haul, I say aim high, then see what ultimately
needs to be compromised rather than coming in from the get go with a
compromised strategy for the long haul.

For that long term vision, there is already (albeit a small) body of
ethnographic literacy (cited in part, above) upon which to build.  That is,
the research base, though small, already in part, exists.  Also, I am
dubious when I hear the phrase "research-based" being used.  Who is defining
this and what are the standards?  What is the relationship between such
"research-based" work and the various academic disciplines that comprise the
interdisciplinary field of adult literacy studies?  I am suspicious against
any tradition, for example, that may create a polarity between "research"
and "theory."  If we assume as I do, that "data" is not "value free" or
"objective," but interpretive all the way down, that, as put by the French
postmodern tradition, "there is nothing outside the text," including the
empirical research tradition, and if we agree with Freire that the
"pedagogical is political," again, all the way down, then it becomes
imperative to remain open to the range of research traditions that comprise
literacy studies, including ethnography, linguistics of various schools,
feminist theory, philosophical pragmatism, critical pedagogy, hermeneutics,
phenomenology, narrativization, etc, as well as empiricism, the cognitive
sciences, etc.  All of these schools of thought and more are supported by
rich academic traditions and therefore have their own canonical validity.
In my view it becomes highly problematic when we elevate one or a small
number of academic schools of thought with the honorific title of
"research-based," which inevitably marginalizes other academic traditions
upon which adult literacy studies are or can be based.  I realize that this
argument is for the long haul rather than for the next legislative cycle,
but if the legitimacy for the field is ever going to be based on its own
criteria, stemming from the disciplines that support adult literacy studies
as well as best practices as defined from a field perspective, then the
issues that I am discussing here will ultimately need to play a prominent
role.

One small example from your office.  EFF is premised on a constructivist
epistemology (theory of knowing) as well as a literacy as practices
perspective where literacy tasks and domains are enshrouded within various
social and cultural contexts that give meaning to the lives of individuals.
>From this perspective, the impact of literacy is largely indirect, not
susceptible to direct or precise measurement.  To get at such impact
requires subtle ethnographic work of the caliber of Shirley B. Heath and
Silvia Scribner.  Yet, from a policy perspective, there is an inordinate
pressure on EFF to be translated into behaviorist and empirical
epistemologies of direct measurement through the abstract category of NRS
levels, which are problematic on their  face.  Politically, this very well
may be required and there may or may not be a legitimate epistemological way
out of this conundrum.  As a short term strategy such a compromise may be
viewed as a necessity.  On a longer term basis we need to establish formats
for evaluation based upon the same epistemological criteria that grounds our
pedagogy.

This is the long term project to which I am committed.  As a first effort I
am currently engaged in an extensive writing project titled Struggling
Between paradigms in Quest to Document Adult Literacy and the Improved Life:
Shifting Tensions Between Alternative Assessment and Performance Based
Accountability."  I'll be happy to talk to prospective publishers for this
manuscript that is likely to come in at 45,000 words.

George  Demetrion
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford
Gdemetrion at msn.com
Gdemetrion at lvgh.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gullion, Christy" <Christy.Gullion at ed.gov>
To: <nla at world.std.com>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 8:51 AM
Subject: NLA Question: Funding NIFL? -- Not


>
> I have been meeting with staff who work with Senate and House
appropriators.
> The good news is that they seem genuinely interested in doing something to
> show their support for adult education and literacy.  They recognize that
> the President's budget triples funding for kids literacy efforts
(reading),
> while level funding adult literacy efforts.  They further recognize that
> most kids have parents or other adult caregivers in their lives who may
not
> have sufficient literacy skills to support that child's education.  So, we
> can spend $900 million a year over 5 years helping children learn to read,
> but this may not be the best and more efficient way to use the money if we
> don't also deal with the parents' literacy needs.  The people I have been
> talking to on Capitol Hill get this.
>
> Now for the bad news - the same staff who "get it" also tell me that there
> may be little they can do about it this year.  What is driving the kids
> literacy efforts (Reading First and Early Reading First) is the report
that
> was released last year on evidence-based reading research, or the best
ways
> to teach kids how to read.  This report is the result of a congressionally
> authorized research effort to determine the most effective ways to teach
> children how to read.  (You can view this report at
> http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/.)  Unfortunately, the adult education
> and literacy world does not have the same type of comprehensive document,
> which is strongly supported by many in Congress, to help drive the dollars
> into adult literacy.  While the staffers on Capitol Hill and their bosses
> want to do something to help the literacy field, they don't believe they
> have the support from their colleagues due to lack of research-based
> evidence proving the effectiveness of adult ed programs.
>
> I am currently working with these staffers and others to put together some
> documentation of successful efforts in adult literacy.  We are trying to
> find ways that the Congress can show support for what the field does -- to
> begin to build a case for additional funding in future years.  In the
> meantime, I think George is on the right track with questioning how this
> happened and what we can do about it.  I look forward to hearing other
views
> on this issue.





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