[NLA] Policy regarding the use of AELS

[Thomas Sticht]

Everyone Belongs in the GAELS!

Responses to my messages about the name and acronym Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS) as I had earlier defined it have chastised me for
using the name/acronym in such a narrow manner. According to Catherine
King the reason why people have reacted this way is because the name
"infers" a much broader application and so people cannot be satisfied with
such a focussed use of the name. Some have thought I have been too
exclusive and have argued for a use of the name/acronym to include a wider
range of programs and educators.

Now I have seen the light and have come to recognize the fallacy of my
thinking. I have thought about the meaning of adult education and literacy
and have come to the enlightened view that ALL education is about adult
education and literacy development and ALL educational experiences belong
in the AELS.

1. Early Head Start, Head Start, Even Start and the entire K-12 system
belong in the AELS because as everyone knows, though in my earlier narrow
perspective I had ignored this, the purpose of pre-school, kindergarten,
and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th,8th,9th,10th,11th, and 12th
grades of elementary and secondary school is to prepare children to grow
up to be educated, literate adults. So all of these programs for children
are actually programs of adult education and literacy development and are
hence appropriately referred to as members of what I will call the Greater
Adult Education and Literacy System (GAELS) of the United States.

2. My earlier mental myopia caused me to fail to recognize that community
colleges, four year colleges, and universities, serving both
undergraduates and graduate students,  are obviously educating adults and
developing their literacy so they, too, should be included as members of
the Greater Adult Education and Literacy System (GAELS) of the United
States.

3. Shamefully, in my narrow minded attempt to define the AELS as a third
system of publicly funded education I left out the funds from TANF, the
programs of the Job Corps, numerous job training programs, and all the
proprietary vocational training schools which obviously improve adult’s
education and literacy in numerous vocational fields and hence should be
included as part of the Greater Adult Education and Literacy System
(GAELS) of the United States.

4. Of course programs run by labor unions such as the AFL/CIO, UFW, etc.,
business programs such as those run by the Motorola University, and
numerous other corporate-sponsored education programs for employees were
excluded by me and yet they clearly provide programs of education for
adults which qualify them as members of the Greater Adult Education and
Literacy System (GAELS) of the United States.

5. I am guilty also of leaving out thousands of programs for senior
citizens operated by such groups as OASIS, the AARP,  Elder Hostel, and
numerous programs in hospitals,  rest homes, hospices, and other venues.
These organizations and venues are obviously engaged in adult education
and hence they, too, should be included in the Greater Adult Education and
Literacy System (GAELS) of the United States.

6. Of course, thousands of Community Based Organizations such as the Cub
Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, YWCA,
Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries, 4H Clubs, ProLiteracy America, and on
and on provide education for both children-who- will-become-adults and
adults and hence should not be excluded from the Greater Adult Education
and Literacy System (GAELS) of the United States.

7. As the present Bush administration has recognized, tens of thousands of
religious organizations, including churches, synagogues, mosques, temples,
cult headquarters,  and so forth offer educational and literacy
development opportunities for both children-who-will-become-adults and
adults across the life span and I regretfully excluded them from the
Greater Adult Education and Literacy System (GAELS) of the United States.

8. In a serious omission, I left out thousands of movie theatres, hundreds
of TV channels, thousands of newspapers, thousands of magazines, thousands
of book stores and books, and other media that inform, educate, and make
more literate millions of adults each year.  All these deserve a place at
the table of the Greater Adult Education and Literacy System (GAELS) of
the United States.

9. Of course, total institutions such as jails, prisons, military
organizations such as the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force offer
numerous opportunities, both formal and informal, for adult learning and
it was a serious oversight for my not having specifically included all
these institutions, their students, and programs in the Greater Adult
Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States.

10. Finally, showing an egregious lack of sensitivity to the educational
and literacy development power of everyday conversations and dialogues I
omitted family discussions in millions of homes, dialogue and conversation
in hundreds of thousands of coffee houses,  restaurants, bars, subways,
airplanes, trains, cars, and numerous other places, as integral to the
education and literacy development of the nation. I now recognize that all
talk, interaction, experience in the world, and so forth deserve a place
in the Greater Adult Education and Literacy System (GAELS) of the United
States.

To partially atone for these sins of commission and omission , I offer the
foregoing list so that anyone wanting to refer to the inclusive education
system of the GAELS may do so, and, if they want to refer to one of the
specific categories they can use the simple approach of designating the
particular sub-system by using the acronym GAEL and a designating number,
such as GAELS-1 (pre-school etc.), GAELS-5 (senior citizen programs),
GAELS-10 (conversations etc.). Using this simple approach, others may add
categories such as GAELS-11, GAELS-12, and so on until no one can think of
anyone or anything else that should be added and a state of complete
inclusiveness is attained.

Happy New Year!
Tom Sticht
A proud member of the GAELS (rhymes with jails)!

PS: I hasten to add that I do not mean to imply that the foregoing
categories and numbers must necessarily be labeled as I have them or
include the components I have included. Some may wish to refer to GAELS-3
as GAELS-7, or GAELS-4 as GAELS-2 and so forth. Each person is entitled to
his or her own preferences in how they name any or all of these
educational sub-systems and what they include in them. That’s what makes
America great (among other things!)!



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