[NLA] a proposal to "save" the NIFL

[AndresMuro@aol.com]

I responded to this earlier w/o having followed the discussion to that point. 
However, this message is clearly in line with my thoughts so I will repeat 
them again. NIFL is getting 5 million bucks from the "No Child Left Behind 
Act" This  money that must be spent exclusively in improving adult education. 
There is research that tells us that the education of the parent is directly 
proportional to the education of the child. So, based on this, we must rush 
to educate all the parents so that their children will not be left behind. 

This does not mean educating the parent with some lame job skill for them to 
get into minimum wage employment, unless we want their children to follow 
suit. this means getting parents to graduate form high school and transition 
into college to pursue a higher education. This "will" esnure that their 
children will not be left behind. What we need to remember is that in order 
to do this, we need to create legislation that allow mothers to get an 
eduation in resonable amounts of time. There are no "educational wormholes". 
In othe words, an adult woman witha fifth grade edcuation cannot enter an 
educational wormhole on one side and come out the other side with a GED 
certificate within six months, while living in abject poverty and trying to 
support her family. Children of poor women with limited education will  
likely not make it weather or not we test them every year, we give out 
vouchers, or we put  any other pedagogically unfounded idea into practice. I 
know this, chirsty knows this, sandra knows this, the president and his mom 
and his wife know this, cheryl, knows this, john cummins knows this and 
everyone in nifl, ncsall, and usde  know this.  

A few year back, Andree Catalfamo wrote that the conservative view point was 
that the role of the mother was at home taking care of her children, unless, 
of course, she was a poor single mother. In that case, she  had to be out of 
the house working under the most inhuman conditions that we can imagine. we 
have mothers living in extreme poverty comparable to poor latin american 
countries. I haven't heard of  any legislation to change this, but the 
president will not leave any child behind.  How is he going to help the 
children living in abject poverty if he is unwilling to create opportunities 
for their mothers to get an education and to spend time at home nurturing 
these children?

Andres





   

 

In a message dated 7/11/2002 3:36:48 PM Mountain Daylight Time, 
Christy.Gullion at ed.gov writes: 
> This is in response to the many requests to "hear from NIFL" on this topic.  
> I was surprised by Andy's proposal to "give back" the $5 million 
> appropriation we now receive under the No Child Left Behind Act.  My first 
> reaction was to contact some staffers on Capitol Hill and ask them 
> (confidentially) what they thought of such a proposal.  Their reactions 
> were mixed -- some thought the Institute should never have received the 
> money and should focus solely on adult (not family) literacy issues while 
> others felt strongly that we should focus on literacy across the lifespan.  
> Several asked me what problem this proposal was intending to solve.  I 
> think that is a good question and we should think more about that.  But 
> before we go down this road, I want to remind people of our various 
> Congressional mandates and funding streams.  
> 

andresmuro at aol.com

Please see Andres Muro's original paintings at: 
http://www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/nla-nifl-archive/attachments/20020713/41d25d24/attachment.htm