[NLA] Celebrating Labor and Intl. Literacy Days

[Thomas Sticht]

Celebrating Labor and Intl. Literacy Days

In just over a month from now, on September 2nd,  our nation honors
America’s workforce and celebrates Labor Day.   Later that week, on
September 8th, the U. S. and the rest of the world celebrates
International Literacy Day. In recognition of the relationships among the
workforce and literacy, I have prepared a four page document entitled, The
POWER of Workforce Basic Skills Education: Celebrating Labor and
International Literacy Days September 2nd and 8th  2002.

The first page considers the question, What Is Workforce Basic Skills
Education? It starts with an historical account that reads: "In 1911, Cora
Wilson Stewart, Superintendent of Schools  in Rowan county, Kentucky,
called together a group  of teachers and explained a plan for holding
classes on moonlit  nights to teach the rural laborers, farmers and their
families of the area to read, write, and  calculate. On Labor Day,
September 4th, 1911 the teachers went out into the  highways and byways to
gather in to school all the adults who wanted to learn. The next night, 
September 5th, the first classes in what became known as the Moonlight
Schools of Kentucky opened. That night some 1200 rural, working folk of
Rowan county , aged 18  to  86, made their way through streams, over
mountains and across hollows to begin their studies in the basic skills.
Thus, was basic skills education brought  to the rural workforce of
America’s mountaineers and miners of Appalachia."

After a brief discussion of developments of workforce basic skills
education in WWI, the Civilian Conservation Corps, with an accompanying
graphic of a page from the CCC Camp Reader for 1930, WWII and developments
since, the first page ends with the statement, " On the first Monday of
September each year, on Labor Day, we celebrate our nation’s labor force.
On each September  8th, we join with the rest of the world and celebrate 
International Literacy Day in recognition of the tens of  millions of
adults who have sought access to the world of  print and knowledge to
advance their economic and social  well being.  With partnerships formed
of government, private organizations, labor, and management, millions of
these  adults have acquired basic literacy and  numeracy skills  at their
workplaces."

Page 2 talks about The Power of Workplace Basic Skills and how investments
in such education gives multiple returns to investments in five areas:
productivity, self-confidence, health, education, and an improved criminal
justice system.

Page 3 is called Teach the Mothers and Reach the Children and the question
is raised: How Can Workforce Basic Skills Education Help Women Get Off
Welfare and Improve Their Parenting Skills, Too? It discusses work by
Wider Opportunities for Women on the intergenerational transfer of
literacy from mothers to their children.

Finally, page 4 addresses the question, What Is the Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS) of the United States? It makes the point that in
the last decade of the 20th century, over 35  million adults chose to
improve their minds and  lives by learning in the Adult Education  &
Literacy System  of the United States.

Anyone wanting a free copy of the four page report can write to me off the
NLA list and give me a postal mailing address that I can send the paper
to. I am sending the paper out early so that anyone who wants to duplicate
or reprint all or parts of the paper for their advocacy work around the
first week of September can do so.

My email address is tsticht at aznet.net.

Tom Sticht





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