Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i7UCxCR24183; Mon, 30 Aug 2004 08:59:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 08:59:12 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <cf.154ed804.2e647db7@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: MWPotts2001@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2812] Globalization and Literacy X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5030 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Status: O Content-Length: 8468 Lines: 166 Colleagues, In January, 1994 NIFL launched Equipped for the Future by sending an open letter to teachers, tutors, and adult learners across the country, inviting them to help us answer the question behind the National Goal 6: What is it that adults need to know and be able to do in order to be literate, compete in the global economy, and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? The EFF Four Purposes for learning were extracted from the answers to that question. (1) To gain ACCESS to information and resources so we can orient ourselves in the world. (2) To take ACTION, to solve problems and make decisions on our own, acting independently, as parents, citizens, and workers for the good of our families, our communities, and our nation. (3)To give VOICE to our ideas and opinions with the confidence that we will be heard and taken into account. (4)To build a BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE, to keep on learning in order to keep up with a rapidly changing world. Below is an article by Dr. Tom Sticht, his thoughts on that question about literacy and the global economy. All the Best, Meta Potts, Moderator 4-EFF List Glen Allen, VA mwpotts2001@aol.com Globalization and the Urgent Need for Adult Literacy Education: Some Thoughts for Labor Day September 6, 2004 Tom Sticht International Consultant in Adult Education The concept of "globalization" has generally been interpreted within the context of international economics and refers to the world wide integration of markets, economies, communications and cultures. More broadly, the term has come to refer to the global movement of people, languages, information, knowledge, cultural beliefs, ways of thinking & behaving, religions, institutions, & organizations. >From the economic point of view, globalization has been widely discussed and debated within such forums as the United Nations and the World Bank in terms of what it has done in developing nations to reduce poverty and produce greater wealth within less developed nations and to produce less differences in the standards of living among developing and richer nations. Additionally, the downside of globalization has been discussed in terms of how it has increased inequality of wealth between socio-economic classes within a given nation and between nations that have benefited and those that have not benefited from the effects of globalization. Within developed nations, such as Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, and other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), issues of globalization have focussed upon the movement of jobs from the industrialized to the less developed nations and what this has done and will do to the job markets in the developed nations, and the issues raised by the immigration of millions of people of widely differing language and social backgrounds from less developed nations into the developed nations. The Urgent Need for Adult Literacy Education in Labor Markets Within all the nations of the world, the consequences of globalization have produced an urgent need for adult literacy education. Within developing nations, moving into the world marketplace and benefiting from its economy requires that illiterate and poorly literate adults receive literacy and education at the beginning literacy, post-literacy and lifelong learning stages if they are to develop sustainable literacy skills and volumes of knowledge that will permit them to utilize the worldwide communications technologies that are so rapidly changing the distribution of information and knowledge underlying new economies. Within developed nations, "outsourcing" of work to developing nations across the wide spectrum of jobs from unskilled to highly skilled is resulting in the continuing need for adult literacy education at levels ranging from beginning to advanced. The need is for focusing education and training upon jobs that have a low probability of being outsourced. This will include most jobs that are "hands-on" or that require immediate, close contact with other people. Such work commands levels of communication and interpersonal abilities that many native born and immigrant adults may lack and for which adult literacy educators can provide programming. Following Functional Context Education principles, which call for integrating basic skills education with important content area knowledge and skills, more rapid progress can be made in achieving sustainable development than is typical of sequential programs in which basic skills are first raised to some assumed necessary level before the adult can obtain the education and training needed. Functional Context Principles can be applied to sustainable development activities such as: 1. education on microenterprise development so adults can learn how to become entrepreneurs and economically self-sufficient, 2.job skills training so that displaced workers in unskilled jobs can be efficiently cross-trained into better paying jobs that do not suffer from outsourcing; 3. financial literacy so that once employment at a self-sufficiency level is achieved adults can be better consumers in various domains and manage their money better so they can begin to invest in wealth accrual, 4. health literacy so that individuals and families can take better care of themselves and access affordable, competent medical care; 5. workplace literacy so that employed and under employed workers can acquire skills for upward mobility or transfer into better paying jobs. Globalization and The United Nations Literacy Decade: 2003-2012 The United Nations Literacy Decade has as its primary theme Literacy as Freedom. This continues a concern for freedom that has existed even before the United Nations was officially created. In January of 1941, as the United States was on the brink of entering into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech to the U.S. Congress in which he argued that peoples of the world were entitled to Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech and Expression Freedom of Worship Freedom from Want Freedom From Fear. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ensured that FDR’s emphasis upon the Four Freedoms were incorporated into this basic Human Rights declaration. Today this emphasis upon human freedom is foundational for the United Nations. Similarly, the role of adult literacy education is recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as foundational in helping hundreds of millions of disenfranchised and marginalized adults gain the Four Freedoms for themselves, their families and their communities. Without literacy, hundreds of millions more "laborers" of the world will not secure these Four Freedoms and their lives and those of their loved ones will suffer. For this reason governments need to pledge sufficient resources to permit adult literacy educators to develop and sustain the educational systems they need to help turn on the light of literacy for those millions of adults, and their families, who remain in the dark shadows of globalization. Governments must also understand that they must provide the extensive and intensive social services that will permit adults in need of education in literacy and economic development to actually seek out and participate in this education. That is, governments around the world must recognize that hundreds of millions of adults will need to gain an appreciable degree of freedom from fear and freedom from want before they can find their way into programs that will help them learn to tolerate freedom of worship for others and to seek freedom of voice and expression for themselves. It seems likely that without literacy and freedom, globalization will ultimately fail to eradicate the social inequalities within and among nations that sustain a world without peace. For more on globalization see resources online at http://econ.worldbank.org/prr/subpage.php?sp=2477 For more on Functional Context Education and sustainable, economically self-sufficient education and training for underserved adults see Wider Opportunities for Women’s (WOW) Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project online at http://www.wowonline.org Thomas G. Sticht International Consultant in Adult Education 2062 Valley View Blvd. El Cajon, CA 92019-2059 Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133 Email: tsticht@aznet.net
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