No subject

idea that should elicit from both adults and educators,
the follow-up comment:   "Who do they think they are?"

George also says:  "Then finally, recall  this statement
from the USDOE's Draft Strategic Plan:

'Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the
field of education operates largely on the basis of ideology
and professional consensus.  As such, it is subject to fads
and is incapable of cumulative progress that follows from
the application of the scientific method and from the
systematic collection and use of objective information in
policy making' (p. 48)."

George is right--we should be outraged.

Politics and education are not medicine, agriculture and
industrial production.  It is an expression of naiveté, even
ignorance at this stage, and dangerous to expect
the data of education, politics, or any human science
(human beings) to respond in the same way that
biology acts, or in the same way that industrial production
produces products.

It is also naive to think that even the natural sciences or
statistics are not developed around notions of value--
before, during and after.  A "professional consensus"
around argued evidence in the public arena is how any
science moves around, and objectivity and truth have
long been "read" with a small "o" and "t" where new
evidence always raises questions against the old and
where people listen to and participate in reasonable
discussions.

Whatever else education is, its political import is
centered around developing people who can engage in
peaceful dialogue from which policy is formed and from
which new truths and objectivities will be lived.

The difference is not in the method, but rather in the data
and its import on future human objective living.

Where the data of science is relatively static, the data of
human beings is developmental--as is the scientist in
both kinds of fields.   But a higher complexity of the data
has never stopped us before, nor does it render us
"incapable of cumulative progress that follows from
the application of the scientific method and from the
systematic collection and use of objective information in
policy making."

What renders us "incapable of progress" is the attitude
reflected in our own USDOE's Draft Strategic Plan
that would make such a exhaustively ignorant statement
as the above, and those who think evidence concerning
human beings must resemble the "exactitude" of factory
items in order to pass muster.   God help us if that ideal
ever comes to be.   It's a false ideal too long affecting
internal as well as external policy.  Indeed, nothing
good or even adequate will ever get done that is
rooted in this naive and ultimately nihilistic point of view.

If our education departments continue to hold this position,
then education in America has, in fact, cut its own throat.

Whether by default or intention, adult education and
literacy efforts will also be "incapable of progress" as long
as our policy makers and administrators think from the point
of view of a benevolent tyranny rather than that of
stewardship of a commonwealth dependent on an informed
and educating electorate whom they pretend to serve.
(Thank you, George, for bringing this to our attention again.)

Regards,

Catherine King

----- Original Message -----
From: George E. Demetrion <sophocles5 at juno.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 8:36 PM
Subject: [NLA] Report on Literacy & USDOE


> Colleagues:
>
> A Recent Report on Literacy (2-27-02) included some interesting
> observations by high ranking officials of the US Department of Education.
>
> First, there is the brief report on the meeting between Assistant
> Secretary Carol D'Amico who is overseeing adult and vocational ed
> programs for the Department.    In a 2-13 meeting with state directors
> D'Amico said that the Bush administration "will evaluate and support
> programs based on the extent to which they are proven to increase
> achievement" (p. 1).  Reauthorization for the ABE program and vocational
> ed are slated for 2003.  As she further explained it (quoting from the
> summary ) "she wants to see a system that is better able to prepare young
> people and adults for jobs and college level studies, and to help
> immigrants become citizens."  Focusing on the problems of a system that
> is marginalized and underfunded in the first place (GD's opinion, not Ms.
> D'Amico's), the Assistant Secretary wondered rhetorically, "What are the
> barriers that inhibit the ability of community organizations, schools and
> community colleges to deliver quality education."
>
> Some of the state directors responded by pointing to the need for more
> funding.  No economic stimulus was required here D'Amico argued, who, it
> was reported, "is more interested in using current funding amounts to
> leverage investments by others"
>
> D'Amico assured (apparently the taxpayers and other vested interests),
> "Don't misunderstand.  I will not advocate for the billions and billions
> it would take to reach 90 million people using the existing system.  I
> don't think we can get there from here."  Commenting further, she stated
> that "We don't know what that answer is" [in getting from there to here]
> (?).
>
> The writer of the column pointed to the Department's 5 year plan calling
> for "invest[ment] in pilot sites to develop new models of cooperation
> between well-trained adult education teachers, volunteers and other
> community resources like libraries."  One assumes that the writer is
> implying that some substantial funding (not billions and billions) would
> be a worthy investment in helping to illuminate a direction for the
> field.
>
> MA state director Bob Bickerton was not convinced about current plans
> underway by the Bush-oriented USDOE to address (or not, GD) the pressing
> needs of the field.  Said Bickerton, "For me the jury will be out until
> we can get into more dialogue, because at that forum we couldn't actually
> get past the first level of dealing with the issue.  The terms were too
> broad."
>
> Also at issue (or so it seems) is whether the Bush administration
> actually sees a problem worth critically examining and addressing.  Sure
> there's the 90 million.  Sure, we could throw billions at the problem.
> But wait, no one's asking for that.  If I have it right for years the
> field has been seeking a one billion dollar investment in ABE and an ABE
> system based on policy that resonates with what ABE actually provides.
> That would be good solid life relevant education at various levels of
> attainment progressively enabling individuals to enhance their lives as
> they incorporate ABE within the varied contexts of their own life
> purposes.
>
> As the EFF project has sought to demonstrate, such life long education
> plays a role in enabling adults to improve their lives within their
> social roles as workers, family members and community members/citizens
> and in the process to contribute to the vitality of the commonwealth of
> the Republic of the United States of America  This has been the implicit
> public philosophy underlaying the EFF project from the get go but has
> never been fully articulated by its developers.  Perhaps now is the time
> in this era of patriotism for the USDOE not to throw billions, but say
> invest $100 million into the EFF project to help the vision come into
> fruition and say another $100 million into NCSALL which is focusing
> specifically on adult literacy and adult education research.
>
> And to demonstrate a little good will one might encourage the USDOE to
> invest abother $100 million into the new literacy organization Pro
> Literacy World Wide, the impending merger of LLA and LVA.  For the son of
> Barbara Bush that would be a worthy investment indeed and more than a
> little sign of good will. Of couse the money would be well spent perhaps
> in supporting a few pilot demonstration projects of what really works
> well or in providing capacity building resources of supporting the 1000
> or so local literacy programs that will come under the aegesis of this
> new agency.
>
> Going back to EFF, one can't help wondering if the Bush administration
> views the constructivist philosophy upon which the EFF standards are
> based as a form of ideological faddism of the progressive literacy
> community that cannot stand the light of the solid empirical research of
> an "evidence-based" scientific tradition.  Not that EFF is not evidence
> based.  Not that the adult literacy scholarship stemming from the
> ethnographic tradition that underlays the New Literacy Studies of which
> Merrifield speaks, is not evidence-based, but such constructivist-based
> research/scholartship may not be the kind of evidence that the Bush
> administration touts as legitimate.  Ah, there is the rub, indeed.
>
> One cannot also help wondering if the real target of the USDOE under the
> Bush administration is not the entire progressive education tradition
> starting from the work of John Dewey.  Certainly there has been a
> persistent ideological drive among the neoconservative community to paint
> the 60s in the most lurid, superficial, and polarized light.  Notice Rod
> Paige's observations on whole language reading theory.  According to the
> writer of this edition of The Report on Literacy Programs:
>
> "Paige zeroed in on the teaching of reading specifically, saying research
> has settled the question about methods that work, relegating fads such as
> whole language to the dust bin."
>
> Notice the anti-intellectual broad brush by which, apparently, Professor
> Paige reduces an entire scholarly tradition.  No need for the Secretary
> of Education to critically review the complex and contentious field of
> reading research/scholarship/ theory.  Yes, Mr. Secretary, I said theory,
> as if the Bush administration is not operating out of a world view, a
> vision, a theory, if you will.
>
> As if truth is objective, value free and evidently available through a
> certain methodological rigor that can be sharply separated from values.
> As if research into the human sciences, so to speak, is based on the same
> empirical principles as chemistry, nuclear physics, and calculus.  As if
> the academic disciplines of history, literary theory,
> sociology,.political science, and anthropology (to name a few) don't have
> their own canonical principles (as contentious as they may be) through
> which scholarship in their respected fields are judged.  As if 100 years
> of education scholarship are now to be part of the dust bin of history
> based upon the ideological litmus test allowed by the current USDOE in
> its proposed great transformation of the Department of Education.  As if
> the USDOE has an intellectual and moral right to establish a reign of
> truth based upon its own uideological precepts parading as objective
> science.  Ghosts of Michael Foucault (who?) are turning in their graves.
>
> Then finally, recall  this statement from the USDOE's Draft Strategic
> Plan
>
> "Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of
> education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional
> consensus.  As such, it is subject to fads and is incapable of cumulative
> progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and
> from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy
> making" (p. 48).
>
> If that unsupported value-laden statement is not a declaration of war
> against educational scholarly community as a field I don't know what is.
> It would be very instructive to hear publicly and unequivocally from such
> organizations like the International Reading Association, .the National
> Council of English Teachers, and the National Council of Mathematic
> Teachers and other like groups on how they're reading the vision of the
> current USDOE.  Have they made statements and are they willing to go on
> record on their views, whatever they may be, of the direction of the
> current Bush administration?
>
> Make no mistake about it, the constructivist principles upon which these
> agencies have based much of their work is viewed as anathema by the
> ideological forces that are giving shape to the current USDOE.  The name
> of E.D. Hirsch Jr. is looming in the background.  Make no mistake about
> it.Cultural Literacy has become revived in the name of American Values, a
> sanitzied view of U.S. history, the phonemic revival, character
> education, and "evidence-based" research.  And it is proporting not to be
> ideology, but Truth, aka, "common sense," science, the era of normalcy
> for the 21st century.
>
> One howling in the wilderness
>
> GD
>
>
>
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