Family Literacy Colleagues:

I don't know anyone who would argue against having parents read to their
children as a means of promoting children's acquisition of literacy.
However,  the intergenerational transfer of literacy from parents to their
children actually starts before birth or even before conception. This is a
point frequently missed when policymakers, practitioners, and researchers
sometimes opt to fund and implement early childhood education to "stop 
illiteracy at the source" at the expense of providing adequate funds for
adult literacy education.

For groups seeking to advocate for adult literacy education I have written a
paper that focuses upon the intergenerational and  multiple returns to adult
literacy education. In this paper I review eight lines of research that
establish the value of adult literacy  education in improving the literacy
of children and hence providing multiple returns to investments in adult
literacy education.

1. Debunking arguments for early childhood education and against adult 
education based on the growth and development of the brain and its 
relationship to IQ. Frequently funders, policymakers, and even some  adult
educators indicate that adult literacy education is too late and that we
need to focus our efforts on early childhood education while downplaying
our efforts on adult literacy education. Brain science (neuroscience) is
often cited to support this position. In this part of the paper I indicate
why this is not a viable argument.

2. Debunking claims that poorly literate adults are genetically inferior to
others and are unable to succeed in life. Here I cite statements in the
popular press arguing that adults with low literacy skills are likely to be
of low IQ and hence unable to achieve much benefit from investments in their
education. I present quantitative evidence to counter these types of claims.

3. Statistical Data: Thirty+ year trend data show that there has been little
or no improvement in reading scores for 9, 13, and 17 year olds despite
decades of investments in early childhood education, compensatory education
in the schools, and thousands of programs such s parents reading to their
children. Despite all this, the schools continue to turn out tens of
thousands of functionally illiterate young  adults each year. This suggests
the need for a new approach to improving children’s learning in K-12. This
new approach focuses upon the extensive and intensive education of
undereducated young adults before and after they conceive and give birth to
children to improve their children’s school achievement.

4. Statistical Data: Parent’s education level and their children’s literacy 
skills: Thirty year trend data, national, and international adult literacy
assessment data show that as parent’s education level increases their
children’s literacy achievement increases. Though this is one of the most
salient of research finds over decades of research policymakers have not
focused on this relationship and adequately funded adult literacy education
to stimulate this intergenerational transfer more equitably and effectively.

5. Statistical Data: Parent’s Literacy Level and Their Children’s  Literacy:
 extensive research from the United Kingdom Institute of Education  show
that  as parent’s measured literacy goes up so does the literacy of their 
children.

6. Parent Education and the Efficacy of Preschool Education: New research
evidence indicates that adult education is a key factor in the success of
preschool education and that arguments for expanding early childhood
education are to a large extent actually arguments for increasing
investments in early adulthood education.

7. Mechanisms for the Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy From Parents to
Their Children: Extensive data are presented on the transfer of motivation,
self-efficacy, language, and literacy from parents to children. The
oracy-to-literacy transfer effect provides one explicit mechanism for how
parents transfer literacy intergenerationally. To date, however, adult
literacy programs devote very little, if any, time to the teaching of oracy
skills of native language speaking adults.

8. Evidence of the Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy in Adult Literacy
Education: Data from workplace literacy studies, family literacy studies,
and general literacy studies indicate that adult literacy education can
affect the literacy education of their children.

In my paper entitled Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy:
Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of Children
I argue for education policy that recognizes that literacy is transferred
across generations from parents to their children. Therefore, we need to
have a much larger investment in the education of youth and adults who are
parents or who will be parents. Adult literacy education affects multiple
life cycles and we need to base our education policies on an explicit
understanding of the intergenerational, multiple life cycles aspect of
educational achievement. The paper is online at
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/sticht/06dec/06dec.pdf

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