[NLA] Discussion: AELS and Higher Ed

[Catherine B. King]

Hello Eileen:

Friere is a good reference to keep in mind.  Thank you
for bringing it up; though as things look, and as your
note infers, we are drifting farther and farther away from
understanding anything he meant.

Also, who could argue with "balance," save in the way
Friere does so well in developing our understanding of the
complexity of what that means, and the potential for our
failure to keep one.  He also knew that in human concerns
an adequate balance is not static but dynamic.  As such it's
like riding a two-wheeler down a bumpy road--it needs
constant attention and adjustment to remain "balanced."
And he knew that in human affairs adequate attention is
constituted by dialogue and dialectic, listening and talking,
discussing and reflecting, and of course acting well on what
we have come to understand.

That being said, I too fear how things are going right now.
Please counter this if you don't agree, but as I hear David's
posts, I wonder if things aren't so big and disconnected
that any kind of cohesive communication is near
impossible.  I've seen some glimpses of things that
speak of both profound sanity as well as total idiocy
and ineptitude.

I do know (and I have talked about this before on this list)
that one of the things to look for in funding is the
underlying political ordering of it, regardless of what it is
called.  That is, whatever they are calling these motions
within what appears to be an entire and basic
restructuring of government at all levels, the swing
in the funding will either support, or not support,
a mixture of democratic and capitalist concerns.  Or it
will support only one or the other.  It seems to me we are
moving towards a complete capitalization at the level
of principle to the detriment of community, and ultimately
to Constitutional-democratic concerns.  It's resulting in
a polarization where the extremes are being understood
as the mainstream, and perhaps have become so.

(No one has explained how the way things are becoming
is not the same thing as "big government." The only
difference is that, rather than giving things away with
little or no fiduciary prudence or oversight, now those in
control want to control everything with little or no
fiduciary, or moral, or just, prudence or oversight, and
no accountability, by the way.)

But funding that supports educational orders around only
capitalist concerns, i.e., educational funding only for WIA
type programs aimed at job-getting for poor adults, will
signal a split at the foundations of government and,
subsequently, of the United States and its core values,
where "provide for the general welfare" is not understood
as supporting a cohesive, educated, educating, complex
and  "balanced" (as in dynamic) culture and community
base for its people, but rather has come to be
reinterpreted to mean "welfare" and "big government
liberal giveaway and we're not doing that anymore."
"Provide" will mean "letting them (in our case
undereducated adults) pull themselves up by their
bootstraps," "the ovarian lottery," and "get a job" or
"sink or swim" so we don't have to bother with you.

In a later note Nancy Hansen says:  "When the whole
discussion about funding being transitioned to the Dept
of Labor from the Dept of Ed occurred, I expected that
eventually something like this would happen.  So from
the sounds of it, workplace development programs will
be the ones that get the proverbial nod from the DoL in
the different states.  The point David made is _exactly_
what I was talking about related to having effective
measurement data to show accurate outcomes of
learners who 'just' want a better quality of life and
improved life skills rather than TABE or CASA or any of
the other educational achievement measure scores. If
that is a 'just' because, in my opinion, the outcomes
programs like mine provide are JUST as important as
the 'education gain' and outcomes that David was
pointing out will be eliminated if this new change occurs.
Welcome to the club, folks."

The change that Nancy talks about, Of education funding
FROM a department of education to labor, is a
fundamental move from democratic to capitalist
principles.  My dismay of this move is what prompted
me to enter this conversation in the first place.

Thank you for your thoughtful response,

Regards,

Catherine King

----- Original Message -----
From: Eileen Eckert <eileeneckert at hotmail.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 7:24 AM
Subject: RE: [NLA] Discussion: AELS and Higher Ed


> Carl put it all in one word,balance, but I went back to the writing of
Paulo
> Friere and found this (from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, pp. 68-69):
>
> "When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection
> automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter,
> into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating 'blah'...On the other
hand,
> if action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the
> word is converted into activism. The latter, action for action's sake,
> negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. Either dichotomy,
by
> creating unauthentic forms of existence, creates also unauthentic forms of
> thought, which reinforce the original dichotomy."
>
> To bring it back to the previous discussion, we can't <just> report
> experiences or results. We also need to look at their meanings, the limits
> of their meanings, and how those meanings change in different situations.
>
> Here's an example: If a program is required to use a comptetency-based
> assessment such as the CASAS to report results, then those results will
only
> be a meaningful reflection of the effectiveness of teaching and learning
to
> the extent that the program's curriculum (and what's actually happening
> instructionally) match the competencies that the CASAS tests. To the
extent
> that there is a difference, results will be misreported, and probably
> underreported. Teachers and students can be achieving great things, things
> that have real value and meaning to the students, but if they are not the
> same things tested for in the program's mandated assessment, if they are
not
> the same things the program is required to report on, then the meaning and
> the value are invisible to those making funding decisions. To rely only on
> predetermined data and results in that situation is to negate the real
value
> of the program's work, and to call the individual learner's goals
> irrelevant.
>
> Now we see from David's message yesterday that the range of acceptable,
> reportable outcomes may shrink even further. If it went through, the new
> outcomes reporting would mean "results" and "data" would have even
narrower
> meanings. This is very scary to me, and I don't think we can wait around
to
> see if someone steps in to save us before mobilizing ourselves. We can
take
> action immediately, and we can simultaneously keep reflecting and evolving
> our own understandings. Yes, balance.
>
> We've got a few Connecticut people on this list, and we've got quite a few
> northeasterners. Maybe we could work on a regional effort to advocate for
> acceptance of a broad range of results that are meaningful to learners?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
> http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
> LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
> http://literacytent.org
>

_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org