Colleagues: The following article appears in Reading TODAY, the official
newspaper of the International Reading Association with a readership of
some 160,000 worldwide. I hope all of you are planning celebrations for the
40th anniversary of the AELS on November 3rd.
Tom Sticht

Reading TODAY October/November 2006 Vol. 24, No. 2 page

U. S. Adult Education and Literacy System marks milestone

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Adult Education and Literacy
System (AELS) in the United States, which continues today as Title 2: The
Adult Education and Family Literacy Act of the Workforce Investment Act of
1998. Over the past four decades, adults have produced some 100 million
enrollments in AELS. Yet establishing the system took years of effort.

A merger of interests.

By the beginning of the 1960s, the adult education community had become
fragmented into several factions: those seeking recognition for adult
education as a broad, liberal educational component of the national
education system; those seeking education for the least educated, least
literate adults; and those seeking to enhance America’s security and
increase the industrial productivity of the nation by giving education and
job training to adults stuck in poverty.

None of these groups, however, was having much success getting adult
education or adult literacy education implemented in federal legislation.
Finally, leverage to break the log jam came from the nation’s military. In
the summer of 1963, a task force on manpower conservation was established
by the Department of Labor. The task force, led by Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
set out to understand why so many young men were failing the military’s
standardized entrance screening exam, the Armed Forces Qualification Test
(AFQT), and to recommend what might be done to alleviate this problem.

The task force’s report was delivered on January 1, 1964, to President
Lyndon B. Johnson, who had taken office in November following the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. The report revealed that one third of the
young men called for military service did not meet the standards of health
and education. It went on to recommend methods for using the AFQT to
identify young adults with remediable problems and to provide them
services, and it also recommended the enactment of new legislation that
would provide additional education and training.

In launching his  "Great Society" programs  in May 1964, Johnson argued that
"The  Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an
end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in
our time"

By appealing to "abundance and liberty," Johnson captured the interest of
those in Congress concerned with employment, productivity, and poverty as
well as those concerned with national security. In August 1964, Johnson
signed the Economic Opportunity Act into law. It contained within it Title
IIB: the Adult Basic Education program.

In 1966, adult educators lobbied to move the Adult Basic Education program
to the U. S. Office of Education and to change the name to the Adult
Education Act, broadening its applicability beyond basic education.
Congress agreed, and, on November 3, 1966, Johnson signed an amendment to
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that  included Title
III: The Adult Education Act of 1966.

With the passing of the Adult Education Act, the seed from which the AELS
would grow was finally planted. For 40 years, adults have used the AELS to
help them find abundance and liberty from the bonds of poverty and
underemployment for themselves and their families. For tens of millions of
adults this hope has been fulfilled.

[Note: Most of the foregoing is adapted from " The rise of the Adult
Education and Literacy System in the United States: 1600-2000" by Thomas
Sticht, in John Comings,  Barbara Garner, and Cristine Smith (Eds.), The
annual review of adult learning and literacy (volume 3, pages 10-43). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Thomas G., USA