[NLA] (David, go with this one) Toward a "Foundational Understanding"

[George E. Demetrion]

Long, but not technical

Colleagues,

It's not that adult literacy doesn't have impact on the lives of
individual students, their families and local communities, and
cumulatively, throughout the broader society.  It is the value system
that defines worth which is the determining factor of legitimacy of any
impact or sets of impacts.

An example--not in the eloquent and heartfelt words of Nancy Hansen, but
an example, nonetheless.

Monday I received a call from a probation officer who had a young client
who needed to work on his basic education. He had gone down to the city
ABE program, but was too limited in his reading ability to sit in there. 
He had gone to another program near his home, which basically provides
GED and ESOL and occasionally, one-to-one tutoring. Perhaps there would
be a tutor for him at some time.  In the meantime he would go on the
waiting list.

Our agency came up.  He made the appointment to come to one of our
community-based programs.  I did the intake and assessment.  Of the list
of 40 sight words, he couldn't read a single word, not even the word,
"the."  He didn't have a clue on how to sound any of the words out. As I
usually do in those situations, I go into an assisted reading format to
see if with bridging he has the potential of mastering the sound-sight
connection.  There's nothing scientific in this, at least in a formal
sense, only my practitioner's sense of intuition that if a student who
cannot read independently at all, can read a small paragraph with the
support I provide, that ultimate mastery of the sight-sound connection is
not beyond his grasp.  Or, to put it negatively, if a student cannot do
reasonably well in that format, then there may be a real problem, which
may be beyond our capacity to deal with.  Assisted reading involves the
instructor to read a text, with the student following along.  Then in
successive readings (2-5), the student takes on more and more of the
reading.  The guiding concept is that reading is as much caught by
unconscious assimilation through practice over time as it is specifically
taught by a specific focus on skill-based techniques like phonic
exercises and sight word mastery.  Obviously, based on previous postings,
I draw on both through a "balanced" methodology.

In any event, this student, who couldn't read a single word
independently, worked through a brief passage with about 70% accuracy
through the assisted reading approach.  I talked with him for quite a
while.  I pointed to the group where I would assign him.  I sought to
make a connection.  I told him he was in the right place.  We would work
with him, and that he could learn.  I pointed out to him the senior
member of the group, an 84 year old man, a former professional bicyclist
from Jamaica, and then I pointed out other group members, most of whom
were in their 30s or 40s.  I was trying to convey three points:  (a)  The
willingness of these folks to take on the intrepid effort of learning how
to read even when they were well beyond school age.(b) The support the
group members provided each others and the support they would provide
him. (c)  That for him at age 19, that now was the time to deal with this
issue in his life; that there was no need for him to feel ashamed or
inferior because he couldn't read and that there would be no need for him
to be in a basic literacy program in middle age if he took control of the
situation now and worked steadily on his education for the next several
years.

It was 11 am.  I had worked with him for over an hour.  I said to him
that he could start tomorrow.  He indicated that he wanted to join the
group for the last half-hour, which he did and was greeted warmly by the
students and the tutor.

The next day I was teaching the class.  He came ready to work.  He was
the most basic of this basic level group.  We worked with a passage from 
the Remembering Series, written by adult literacy learners on themes of
family, work, and migration.  The selection that their main tutor had
selected was a page long, consisting of several paragraphs.  In our 90
minute session we worked with the first three paragraphs, about half of
the length of the entire passage.  

We worked slowly, one phrase, one sentence, and finally, one paragraph at
a time.  We eventually had the three paragraphs on the white board.  At
that time, I asked the most advanced reader to come to the board and lead
the group in the reading passage.  I did that with several of the
students, those whom I thought would experience reasonable success with
this exercise.  They would all make a few mistakes, but by and large they
read most of the passage.

I asked the new student if he wanted to give it a shot.  No pressur. He
could pass if he wanted.  Instead, he jumped at the chance.  With a
little help from his new found friends he got through the three
paragraphs probably with around 50% accuracy with a bit of bridging
support that the other students and I were able to provide.  The group
gave this student a hand as he sat down, flushed with his own success and
more importantly, his willingness to get up there and chance it.  This
student had found a home.

So where do we go with this in terms of plausible impacts and its
potential value on what might be construed as the public good?  Let us
first consider a phrase Catherine King referred to some time ago, that of
"social facilitation."  Whatever else may be happening here with this
student, social facilitation is one of its key dimensions. 
Community-based programs like ours provide a socio-emotional support
system where adults like this individual can go to gain the support they
need to begin working on an array of important life issues that may be
essential not only for him to "survive," but to flourish.  Such social
facilitation serves as a baseline for the prospect of a more extensive
development of this individual's skills, including gradual progress with
reading, knowledge acquisition, social network building, problem solving,
and perhaps career development.  

That is, as a participant among a community of learners within the
supportive literacy program, through social facilitation, this individual
is afforded the opportunity to grow in a wide array of areas to help him
assimilate within the broad contours of society in a manner congruent
with his own emergent capacities  Whether that will happen or its extent
are not questions that can be answered at this time.  However, other
students have developed their capacities in these ways, as documented in
much of the ethnographic literature on adult literacy and more
informally, in the practitioners knowledge that many of us possess as a
result of our accumulated experiences.

My intention in this message is not to attempt to support this assertion
through substantial documentation, though that is important work to take
on.  My intention, rather, is to look at the value systems at the level
of political culture which legitimizes or de-legitimizes the type of
impacts (often subtle and indirect that cannot necessarily be proven by
exacting causal relationships) to which much of the literature and our
accumulated practitioners' experiences point.
>From a cost-benefits utilitarian perspective, which shapes current
policy perceptions, it would be difficult to justify much public
expenditures to support individuals like I am describing.  Surely, to
state the negative, if this individual were optimally successful, the end
result might be that he would be more of a contributing member to society
than a drag on its resources, though there is no guarantee (or
necessarily even a likelihood) that this individual will succeed in this
manner to justify an expenditure that merits the cost based on the
utilitarian ratio of success.  That case might ultimately be made, but
would take years of exacting and rigorous scientific research requiring
much random sampling and a careful and precise analysis of costs and
benefits calculated quantitatively through a capitalistic metaphor.  The
irony in taking on such a task, is that in the name of science, values
are inevitably drawn on in terms of the benefit being discerned through a
quantitative metaphor reflective of the values of the nation's economic
system.  That's based on the assumption that such impact can be proven,
where evidence at most points to generalities rather than to individuals
that can only be gleaned through extensive ethnographic research.  Yet,
such research invariably draws out the values of quality and meaning
(since what is deemed valuable is not universally agreed upon) that
according to some studies is not susceptible to scientific investigation.

What if there were a different value system which gave shape to the
political culture of adult literacy in the United States?  What if that
value system were based on different metaphors--metaphors that draw on
imagery of social facilitation as the glue that hold healthy communities
together?  What if the ultimate value system to ground the politics of
adult literacy were based on another image than cost-benefits utilitarian
rationales; one instead based upon what Catherine King refers to as the
commonwealth tradition of a political culture that drew its founding
ideals from constitutional democratic republicanism as the baseline by
which to evaluate worth?  How would such a political culture differ from
the current operative model that many would suggest is a bastardization
of the founding political model?

For one, agencies like ours that provide important support services in
basic education and social facilitation to many of the more vulnerable of
our citizens (as well as others less vulnerable!) would receive public
support not simply on the altruistic grounds of providing assistance to
those in needs.  It would also be based  on the more positive grounds
that a healthy political culture requires active citizens who, in
realizing more of their fuller potential, are better able also to
contribute to the vitality of their families, workplaces, and various
community and civic organizations to which they might or could belong. 
This, even as impact may be indirect and inferential rather than
something that can be proven by direct causal attribution, which requires
"thick" ethnographic research to describe.  Or, to state this in another
way, to what extent can scientific-based research discern indirect,
inferential inference?

It would also be based on the assumption that community-based agencies
like ours by their very nature provide valuable resources to the public
good that without which, the broader society would not be able to
provide.  The individual student that I have described here is a case in
point.  Practically speaking, our program was the only act in town that
could provide this individual with the educational support he needs and
wants this time even just to begin to deal with the complex demands that
emergent adulthood is imposing upon him.  Clearly, our agency does not
stand alone, and if this individual is going to not merely stay out of
social and economic marginality, but to flourish, he will need much more
than what we alone can provide him.  But we do represent that baseline of
support, without which agencies like ours that the private or
governmental sectors are not providing, it would be much more difficult
for this individual to have a grounding point for moving forward in his
life in a positive manner.

On a broader note, agencies like ours provides a sustaining resource of
social and cultural facilitation where individuals from a broad array of
sectors congregate together through adult literacy education in working
toward the development of healthy local communities.  Thus, the program
where this individual has come is a  family resource center situated in
one of North Hartford's elementary schools.  The students consist
primarily of individuals of African American, Caribbean, and Latono/a
heritage from the neighborhood as well as other areas in Hartford. They
are more or less equally male and female and span in age from 19-84.  The
staff of the family resource center is mostly African-American.  Our
tutors are African-American and Caucasian both from the city and the
suburbs.  Like many community adult literacy programs across the nation,
ours is a valuable meeting ground that richly draws on the cultural
diversity of the various participants in creating a cultural and social
milieu in Hartford that fosters the values of integration, tolerance, and
commonality of purpose, which, in its own unique way, contributes to the
public good, beyond what is gained simply through what students acomplish
through instructional program alone.  

Whether or not such a contribution that our program provides is viewed as
legitimate and worthy of public support, has, I suggest, more to do with
values at the level of political culture than it does with any causal
attribution that might be inferred through rigorous scientific research
that seeks to measure worth in terms, only, of specific educational gains
as can be determined in quantitative formats.

in short, how do you measure the value or the purpose of a political
culture?  Can the contestable matter of values be avoided or glided over?
 I suggest not.  I suggest, rather, that values at the level of political
culture are at the core of any discussion of the public value of adult
literacy education.

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com


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