Tom,


       I'm an educator with Fulton County Schools in Georgia.  In my
experience, I have found that students that have a network of support at
home tend to do better in school.  If parents are able to help students with
their homework, invest time in reading with their children, and instill
academic ambition into their students, these children will have a strong
advantage over their peers.  It is unfortunate to see a student struggle
with a subject that will require the child to work at home knowing
that he/she will have little assistance from his/her parents. However, I can
understand the government's focus on the young students.  Strengthening a
child's skills will ultimately improve the academic performance for future
generations.  I believe the reason that k-12 schools get the largest budget
is that students are required to attend these institutions.  Adults are
typically self directed learners.  It is my hope that there are enough
programs to accommodate all of these adult literacy learners.  I do not
doubt that these programs need additional funding to be most effective, but
an adult will determine if they want to enroll in such a program and take
the necessary steps to accomplish their goals.


Eric Bragg

Tom,


       I'm an educator with Fulton County Schools in Georgia.  In my
experience, I have found that students that have a network of support at
home tend to do better in school.  If parents are able to help students with
their homework, invest time in reading with their children, and instill
academic ambition into their students, these children will have a strong
advantage over their peers.  It is unfortunate to see a student struggle
with a subject that will require the child to work at home knowing
that he/she will have little assistance from his/her parents. However, I can
understand the government's focus on the young students.  Strengthening a
child's skills will ultimately improve the academic performance for future
generations.  I believe the reason that k-12 schools get the largest budget
is that students are required to attend these institutions.  Adults are
typically self directed learners.  It is my hope that there are enough
programs to accommodate all of these adult literacy learners.  I do not
doubt that these programs need additional funding to be most effective, but
an adult will determine if they want to enroll in such a program and take
the necessary steps to accomplish their goals.


Eric Bragg



On 11/13/07, tsticht at znet.com <tsticht at znet.com> wrote:

>

> November 13, 2007

>

> Needed: A "Before You Start Families" Program:

> A Multiple Life Cycles Approach to Improving Family Literacy

>

> Tom Sticht

> International Consultant in Adult Education

>

> In 1983, Denny Taylor published her book with the term "Family Literacy"

> in

> its title. To my knowledge, that is the first time the term was used in a

> published publication. Taylor was interested in ways in which children and

> their parents interacted that lead to the development of the children's

> literacy. This was mostly about literacy practices that took place within

> the family such as parents telling children the words in environmental

> print, or reading books to children, etc. Taylor's research was not

> concerned with what adults did to improve their own literacy, though some

> of their activities with their children may, in fact, have helped the

> adults develop better literacy abilities.

>

> Now, almost a quarter century after Taylor's influential book, Barton &

> Coley (2007) have once again focussed on the family and its influence on

> children's literacy development.  In the preface to the report, Marc H.

> Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League, states that the authors

> "… examine many facets  of children's home environment and experiences

> that

> foster cognitive development and school achievement, from birth throughout

> the period of formal schooling." This perspective, however, fails to note

> that the cognitive development of children actually BEGINS BEFORE BIRTH as

> the fertilized ovum develops in the mother's womb, and of course cognitive

> development continues throughout the lifespan, not just during the period

> of formal schooling.

>

> The report by Barton & Coley  presents a lot of data showing how many

> factors operating in the context of families affect the literacy

> development of children, including the amount of language spoken to

> children by parents, relationships of parent's educational achievement to

> children's literacy achievement, parent's socio-economic status and amount

> of reading to their children, and so forth. Yet, despite all these

> relationships which are dependent upon parent's language and literacy

> achievement, most of the conclusions and recommendations focus upon the

> development of more involvement of parents with schools and improving

> educational opportunities for early childhood education. Regarding adult

> education, the authors take just 26 words to provide three

> recommendations,

> "…providing instruction in parenting skills to those who need them,

> teaching

> non-reading parents how to read, and helping families obtain suitable

> reading materials for their homes."

>

> Following this cursory treatment of adult education, Barton & Coley then

> move on to argue for early education interventions for children and cite

> research calling for a major expansion and intensification of Head Start

> and Early Head Start. This moves the call for educational investments away

> from meeting the educational needs of adults, back to making major

> investments in education starting with the birth of children in Early Head

> Start.

>

> That idea that literacy development starts at birth is implicitly

> challenged

> in the report of the Director of the National Institute of Literacy (NIFL)

> to the NIFL Advisory Board in October 2007 (Baxter, 2007). In her report,

> Baxter mentions one role of the NIFL as "…promoting and supporting

> scientifically-based and other rigorous research on how adults, youth, and

> children learn to read—literacy across the lifespan." If ones lifespan is

> considered to begin with conception, then this lifespan perspective on

> literacy development does recognize the importance of education from

> conception through birth and on into and across adulthood. However,

> thinking in terms of a single lifespan, even from conception to death,

> does

> not directly address the effects of the behavior of adults in the

> fostering

> of literacy BEFORE CHILDREN ARE CONCEIVED.

>

> Interestingly, Barton & Coley review research on the pre-conception

> behaviors of adults which are correlated with children's literacy

> acquisition. This includes factors such as out-of-wedlock births, meaning

> that the adults did not engage in marriage behavior before conceiving a

> child, and the consequential effect of raising children with a single

> parent rather than two, failure to complete secondary or post-secondary

> education, and failure of adults to be employed and earning

> self-sufficient

> incomes prior to having children. All of these factors that happen even

> before adults conceive and give birth to children have an effect on the

> next generation's literacy development.

>

> The fact of this intergenerational transfer of literacy from one

> generation

> to the next indicates that an education policy which focuses on a single

> lifespan, or education from birth to death, is a necessary but

> insufficient

> policy for making sustainable improvements in the literacy abilities of

> America's families. What is needed is a Multiple Life Cycles education

> policy that explicitly takes into account the intergenerational transfer

> from parents to their progeny of literacy and other cognitive and

> non-cognitive factors that also influence educational achievement across

> generations.

>

> Presently, several research studies on early childhood intervention

> programs

> have shown that such programs have produced considerable benefits in

> return

> to costs. What has not been emphasized however, is that most of the

> important early childhood education studies have also reported major

> changes in the behaviors of parents, especially mothers, of the children

> (Sticht, 2006). There is reason to believe that a goodly share of the

> effects of such preschool programs results from the educational effects of

> the programs on the parents.

>

> Current family literacy programs that emphasize early childhood education,

> parent education, adult education, and parent and child together education

> provide a valuable approach to fostering the literacy levels of families.

> They may also have multiplier effects in that the adult education,

> including parenting, may affect the educational achievements of any future

> children born to the parents whose parenting and literacy skills are

> improved in the programs.

>

> Needed: A "Before You Start Families" Program

>

> Family literacy programs that require parents and children to be educated

> together are already behind in affecting the behavior of the parents

> before

> they conceive children for the first time. For this there is needed a

> major

> emphasis upon those teenagers and young adults who have struggled in

> school

> and who will become parents later on. Before Early Head Start, which

> starts

> at birth, we need a Before You  Start Families program that will affect

> pre-conception behaviors. We also need to make certain that more of the

> resources for Early Head Start, Head Start, and Family Literacy programs

> are focused on the education of the parents. This way, there should be

> less

> need for special interventions for the future children of these parents,

> and

> the parents should be able to achieve more in their own lives, provide

> better for their children, and improve their own health and lives after

> their children are grown-up.

>

> The Multiple Life Cycles Education policy explicitly recognizes that

> literacy and other cognitive skills are not developed simply from birth to

> death, or across the lifespan from "from womb to tomb". Instead, there is

> an intergenerational transfer of literacy and other cognitive skills  from

> parents to their children. From this perspective, skills development

> starts

> in the next life cycle even before the child is conceived. Today, with a

> one

> life cycle focus,  there is a serious lack of efforts to promote a

> positive

> transfer of skills across generations  A Before You Start Families idea is

> one approach to acting on the basis of a Multiple Life Cycles program. No

> doubt, others can come up with additional approaches to improving family

> literacy through a Multiple Life Cycles approach.

>

> References

>

> Barton, P.  & Coley, R. (2007). The Family: America's Smallest School.

> Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. (Retrieved November 1, 2007

> from www.ets.org/research/pic)

>

> Baxter, S. (2007, October). Director's Report: FY 2006-2007: Reflecting on

> Our Achievements. (Online at: www.nifl.gov)

>

> Sticht, T. (2006, December). Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education

> Policy:

> Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of

> Children.

> (Online at:

> http://www.nald.ca/library/research/sticht/06dec/06dec.pdf

>

> Taylor, D. (1983). Family Literacy: Young Children Learning to Read and to

> Write. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

>

> Thomas G. Sticht

> International Consultant in Adult Education

> 2062 Valley View Blvd.

> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059

> Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133

> Email: tsticht at aznet.net

>

>

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