[NLA] NIFL Board

[Gullion, Christy]

Senator Kennedy is the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions (HELP) Committee.  The other members are listed at
http://www.senate.gov/~labor/Members/members.htm.  This is the committee
that is responsible for confirming the NIFL board nominees.  To the best of
my knowledge, no date has been set for that confirmation process.

Christy Gullion
Associate Director for Federal Policy
National Institute for Literacy
1775 I Street, NW, Suite 730
Washington, DC  20006-2417
ph. (202) 233-2033 
fax (202) 233-2050


-----Original Message-----
From: George E. Demetrion [mailto:sophocles5 at juno.com]
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 12:25 AM
To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: Re: [NLA] NIFL Board


To follow up on David's message, should there be a targeted campaign
specifically to Senator' Kennedy's committee (the name of it alludes me)?
 Is that the key committee that will vote on the nominees?  If that is
the case, could someone supply a list of the Senators?  In addition to
Kennedy, I believe that includes Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Harkin
of Iowa.

But do I have the right committee?  If so, would targetting them at this
stage, be the best approach?

Regardless of how things turn out here, I agree with Gail Spangenberg and
others on the importance of keeping our eyes and vision on the long haul,
now more than ever. Perhaps we are getting a first-hand object lesson on
how marginal adult literacy truly is to the policy sector and general
public.  While it will be important to compromise with what might be
referred to as the current political reality where necessary, it is
equally, if not more important in keeping our eyes on the long term
importance of the work. 

Among much else, I believe that will require establishing a reasonably
viable consensus on the purposes and value of adult literacy education
not only among students, but within the context of what I refer to as the
public good.  One of the values of relative marginality is that it offers
a framework of quietude and reflection where the field might be able to
take the time to work through some rough places where we have been to
enable us to establish and nurture the resources to do our best work. 
Many of those resources have emerged in the 1990s.  They are worth
nurturing and valuing even more, especially  given the marginal status
that we find ourselves in the first decade of the 21st century.  

Perhaps adult literacy might become the voice/the echo of voices and
visions for which the culture longs and only so faintly hears,.  A place
where our collective vocation not merely becomes the quest for the
revitalization of the field, but a renewal of the republic upon the
values for which it stands.  A value which now is so little embodied,
particularly in the patriotic enthusiasm of the present with its
temptations of truiumphalism, that  impedes upon the overflowing of a
deeper piety for love of country, neighbor and stranger alike,  that
intrudes on the fulfillment of  the common good.

Perhaps adult literacy can represent that faint echo of utopian longing
for human fulfillment upon and through which the field might find its
deepest voice and its most vital source of cultural renewal.  It is
through such renewal that the republic itself can become revitalized upon
the values for which it stands.

Dare we dream so boldly?  I dare say, we must!

George Demetrion


________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.
_______________________________________________
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/nla-nifl-archive/attachments/20020215/b9a73fdb/attachment.htm