[NLA] It takes two to tango

[George E. Demetrion]

Hello all:

To pick up on a few of the messages:

A)  On Frederico Salas Isnardi's query on whether NIFL can be brokered as
a vital cradle to grave national literacy institute.

The short answer is look at the Board nominees and lack of responsiveness
of the Bush administration, to say nothing of Senator Kennedy's committee
of the field's concerns that none of the nominees has adult literacy as
their primary area of responsibility.

Also, to get a serious answer to Frederico's query we need to hear
publicly and unequivocally from the Undersecretary of Education, Ms.
Carole D'Amico and the acting Director of NIFL, Ms. Sandra Baxter.  We're
all ears. How is NIFL to be defined?  This is not a rhetorical question.

B. )  On Duane Rankin's message in pointing to AAACE ("the external
folks") to lay out the basic framework for a viable adult literacy/ABE
pedagogical/policy direction focusing on citizenship, self-potential, and
critical functionality.  Well, there is EFF as the flagship program
through which NIFL was to *lead* the field.  While EFF may not be all of
what the aborted AAACE plan *might* have been, as a realized phenomenon,
EFF comes as close to anything else we do have in providing an overall
sense of direction and coherency at a national level.

The problem, though, as I see it, is several fold, but primarily that of
a profound conflict in social and cultural metaphors.  Simply put, the
constructivist theory of learning upon which EFF is framed does not
square with the positivistic, quantitative and mathematical metaphors
that grounds the operative assumptions of the National Reporting System
and it will not do to subsume NIFL standards within the NRS paradigm. 
Rather, the roles need to be reversed.  The related issue is the focus of
social policy with the Workforce Investment Act largely reducing adult
literacy/ABE to a work place rationale instead of a social policy based
on the active citizen reconstructing mediating social institutions
through lifelong learning and active participation within a range of
domains at home, work, and in the community.

Those of us who speak on this list can discuss this till the cows come
home.  But to move an agenda forward that would place NIFL through the
EFF project as the integrative center of a national policy initiative
would require conscious decision making by our top policy officials.

Ms. D'Amico, Ms. Baxter, and Ms. Keenan of the Office of Vocational and
Adult Education (OVAE), are you ready to give us the word here in moving
toward a consensus vision  based on EFF at least as far as national
policy is concerned?  Or if not, say unequivocally why not?

Finally, if it is to be two that is to tango, Ms. D'Amico, in particular,
are you yet hearing the concern of the field in the failure of the Bush
administration to nominate candidates with a strong adult literacy focus?
 Are you willing to go to Dr. Paige and say that this simply won't do and
suggest that say, half the current nominees be replaced with candidates
with a strong background in adult literacy education?  And are you
willing to report back to us, directly on the NLA on the deliberations of
the USDoE on this matte?.

One final concern for the folks at the USDoE, in particular.  For any
negotiated agreement between the Department and the field, the primary
research institute at least for the adult literacy component needs to be
the National Center for the Study of Adult  Learning and Literacy 
(NCSALL) and not the National Institute for Childhood Development and
Health (NICHD).  Not that there couldn't and shouldn't be dialogue
between K-12 and adult research not only on reading, but on literacy. 
However, the adult literacy sector has its own emerging scholarship upon
which to build and cannot accept colonization by a particular (and
contestable) version of K-12 research.  

So the critical issues remain.  Can there be a brokered arrangement that
fully respects the range of the educational sector as well as the range
of research traditions that has marked the field of educational studies
for a century. I do not know the answer to that, though I do know that
neo-conservative ideologues that are providing the intellectual
infrastructure to the Bush-Paige USDoE are not inclined to compromise
with progressive/liberal adult literacy practitioners and scholars. Can
there be a brokered arrangement on the best of what Forrest Chisman
refers to as "American values," not merely as rhetoric, but as the
substance of adult education policy?  Can NIFL be that flagship by
fostering a public philosophy of active citizenship through the promotion
of lifelong learning and the strengthening of the mediating institutions
of the community, work place, and the family.  Can this effort result in
a greater realization of what Catherine King refers to as the
commonwealth tradition? 

If there are some positive, public, and forthwith responses by those in
positions of authority  perhaps a substantial arrangement can be made. 
If the response is deafening silence by the nation's policy and
institutional leadership combined with backroom decision making, that is
another matter.

It takes two to tango lest one believe in the sound of one hand clapping.

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com


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