[NLA] Alert: Is the NIFL Advisory Board Just the Beginning?

[KathleenBombach@aol.com]

Tom:
No, I do not think you are wrong.
I agree that the "Stanley and Iris" picture of literacy and the common understanding of literacy as just reading is the dominant view. Although I am very proud of my grandmother, who earned her GED at age 64, we know that she represents a small minority of adult learners.

You have catalogued some of the incidents and changes at the national level. I see them happening at our local level, too. 

Local funding for adult literacy has been dramatically cut for the past three years. Our local Empowerment Zone Board initially refused to fund adult literacy, even though half of the EZ adult residents had their schooling ended at the elementary and middle school level, more than half do not speak English, and the EZ residents were requesting the services.  Under pressure, they have provided some very limited funding (about one percent of their total funding) for adult literacy--and they picked a completely unknown and inexperienced program while refusing to fund established programs with demonstrated success records. 

Except for welfare recipients, where they must attempt to serve most, the local workforce board's for-profit contractors have admitted screening out non-English speakers because they need a high level of resources (they admit this no longer because they are being sued for civil rights violations). 

Our local established literacy providers are much denigrated, after DOL spent millions demanding that they teach adult immigrants with a primary school education in their native country to be fully English literate with high levels of job skills in 12 to 18 months. When this task proved to be impossible, the providers were condemned, rather than the stupidity of what DOL was asking. 

I am frequently contacted by programs who want to set up ESL/literacy and GED classes within their own programs.  My first suggestion is to refer them to established programs that could help them set these classes up, provide a free curriculum, staff training, even pay for a teacher. Generally they refuse. I am left with the impression that many people out there think that anyone can teach ESL/literacy and GED, and that the things we talk about are unnecessary, like curriculum, professional development, instructional methodology, and learning materials. 

I cannot help but think that some of this comes from our inadequate promotional efforts, but I also think that there is something about American culture that doesn't want to acknowledge the 'failures' or 'losers' in society and blames the 'victim' After all, why can't they bootstrap their way up on their own? Why don't they want to learn English? Why do they refuse to learn English? If they really wanted to work, they would get a job! I did it, why can't they.

Then there are our longstanding underlying nativistic beliefs. These people are foreigners--not even from Europe. They are brown, or black, or Asian. And after 9/11, all brown-skinned immigrants are suspicious, potential bombers. The Bush administration is feeding these suspicions by creating the new Neighborhood Watch program, where we will be encouraged to watch our neighborhoods for signs of terrorists, or the three million trucker alert program announced this week. Report anything suspicious! 'Watch every immigrant around you because they may be terrorists' is the hidden subtext.

The present mood is not auspicious.
Kathleen Bombach
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