[NLA] A Shared Vision

[David J. Rosen]

NLA Colleagues,

Bob Bickerton wrote:

> Let's keep focussed on the issues Tom is pointing to:  are we in an era of
> positive momentum with regard to quality, access and resources.  But let's
> also make sure we're pointed in the "right direction" as we seek to 
> increase
> momentum and resolve these seemingly intractable challenges.  I will once
> again submit that our first step is achieving agreement, re, what the 
> "right
> direction" actually is -- what I refer to as achieving a "common vision."
> Otherwise we'll continue to wander in the desert for another 40 or more
> years!

A common vision that recurs in adult literacy national discussions, 
including those on this list, one for which there is widespread 
agreement among students and practitioners, is that adult literacy 
education should become a system with adequate funding, a system which 
provides elementary and secondary level skills and accompanying support 
services for adults, just as the K-12 system provides these for 
children, a system which includes a broad spectrum of education providers. 

Another way to describe this, put forward by several people on this 
list, is that adult education and literacy (including basic and 
secondary level skills and ESL/ESOL) must become a right, just as public 
K-12 education is a right for children.

This should be our shared vision, and we should not rest until we 
achieve it. This is a vision which adult learners. practitioners and 
friends of the field can all work on together.  The challenge is how -- 
over this decade -- to make it happen.

David J. Rosen
<DJRosen at theworld.com>


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