The following is from Tom Sticht and was sent to several discussion
lists.  It's a short history of the Adult Education and Literacy System.
Please read on if you haven't seen it yet.
Donna

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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 NIFL list members 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. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education El Cajon, California, USA