[NLA] A couple of thoughts

[KathleenBombach@aol.com]

Tom:
When I read your interesting summary of adult research on 'reading potential' 
I was struck by the idea that this could be used to argue that adult literacy 
education is a waste of money because low literacy level adults lack the 
'potential' to read at significantly higher levels.

I believe that what is happening is that the Bushes and their friends from 
early childhood and K12 have decided that the adult field needs to be taken 
over by the 'real' reading experts since we are so obviously ineffective. 
(Despite the obvious failure of the Texas school system to teach children to 
read: the more Texas uses multiple choice tests and emphasises drill and 
repetition, the less Texas children like to read. Their state test score go 
up, however, as teachers learn how to teach to the test.)

This tension has existed in El Paso for a while, with some early childhood 
educators with degrees in bilingual K-12 teaching claiming that they are 
adult ESL/literacy experts, not the people working in adult ESL/literacy. I 
have seen some of their work, and I am underwhelmed, but whole careers have 
been built on one program or one curriculum. There are several early 
childhood educators in El Paso who claim (conflicting) credit for writing the 
NAEYC standards. Out of curiosity, I took a look at the standards and the 
NAEYC curriculum. Again, I was underwhelmed.  I easily identified what I 
thought were important inadequacies with the curriculum. The standards are 
not bad, but in some respects they are superficial, and I have seen better 
models developed for linguistically, economically, racial, and culturally 
diverse children. After reading lots of early childhood curriculum, I can 
clearly see that progress has been made from the old 'Dick and Jane' days. 
But the whole field of early childhood and elementary education has many of 
the same inadequacies of the adult education field without the recognition 
that there are inadequacies. 

In adult ESL/literacy, we lack the hubris of many of our colleagues in early 
childhood and elementary education, and often we are much smarter and much 
better educated. I am going to bring it up; early childhood and elementary 
school teachers come from the bottom third of their college class, often do 
not major in a content area but instead take lots of education classes where 
they learn to decorate bulletin boards and read textbook summaries instead of 
original sources, and attend third and fourth tier colleges. 

Yes, I know, I am going to get beat up by people who went to Cornell or 
Columbia, but most teachers matriculate at one of the old 'normal' colleges.  
The broad diversity of preparation that adult education teachers bring to 
their work and their lack of junk education and educational psychology 
courses in college bodes well for the field. Sure, some turn out to be 
awful--but many others bring so much extra to the classroom.

If anyone out there wants to venture a guess as to who the new NIFL director 
and his/her key staff might be--and if that person has an El Paso or New 
Mexico connection--send me the name off-list.

Kathleen Bombach
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/nla-nifl-archive/attachments/20020223/4b4d9185/attachment.htm