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 11/1/07, tsticht at znet.com <tsticht at znet.com> wrote:

>

> November 1, 2007 is National Family Literacy Day

>

> Improving Family Literacy By Increasing Investments in Adult Literacy

> Education: Moving From a One Life Cycle to a Multiple Life Cycles

> Education

> Policy

>

> Tom Sticht

> International consultant in Adult Education

>

> Policymakers sometimes opt to fund early childhood education to "stop

> illiteracy at the source" at the expense of adult literacy education

> funding. In Canada in 2006 the new conservative government announced cuts

> of CAN$17.7 million in what was already a skimpy federal budget for adult

> literacy education. The Headline News web page of the National Adult

> Literacy Database (NALD) of October 4, 2006 carried the following

> statement

> from a government official (www.nald.ca Oct 4 06):

>

> "The Tories rationalize the cuts by saying they want to focus instead on

> better teaching children how to read and write, Treasury Board President

> John Baird said last week.

> He noted that governments need to more effectively use the $20 billion

> they

> already spend on educating younger Canadians. ""This is repair work after

> the fact,"" Baird said of adult literacy programs. ""We've got to (have a)

> much greater focus on ensuring we get it right from the get-go, with the

> first $20 billion, rather than doing it after the fact.""

>

> This type of thinking has been often used to call for "stopping illiteracy

> at the source," meaning with young children, at the expense of focusing

> upon adult literacy education. But this is a mistaken understanding of

> "the

> source of illiteracy" and ignores the role of adults as parents of

> children

> and the intergenerational transfer of literacy from adults to their

> children.

>

> The Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy

>

> In 1975, the Human Resources Research Organization published Reading for

> Working, a book I edited which brought together a number of adult literacy

> projects I had directed and a paper I had written for the U. S.

> government.

> In the chapter dealing with the government paper, I reported on the

> relationships between the reading scores on the 1971 National Assessment

> of

> Educational Progress of young adults (17; 25—35 years old) and the

> educational levels of the adult's parents. Taking notice of the fact that

> the young adult's reading scores systematically increased as their

> parent's

> educational levels increased, I simply reported that adult education might

> be more important than we thought because it could affect the literacy

> ability of the adult's children.

>

> Later, in a report entitled "Literacy and Human Resources Development at

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

> Children (Sticht, 1983) I argued that a body of research existed to

> suggest

> that more highly educated parents transmit literacy intergenerationally

> via

> oral language skills and the modeling of literacy skills. Therefore if we

> could find ways to provide education for adults we might get double value

> from education dollars because investing in the education of adults could

> improve the educability of their children. I have referred to this as

> getting "double duty dollars" when investing in adult education. We pay

> for

> the adults' education, and we get improved education for both the adults

> and

> their children.

>

> Intergenerational Transmission of Literacy in the UK

>

> Some years later that I came across an exceptionally well done book aimed

> at

> helping adult literacy educators in the United Kingdom. The book was

> published in 1975 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to go

> along

> with a major adult literacy campaign that the BBC was carrying out. Called

> the BBC Adult Literacy Handbook, the book was, and in my judgment still

> is,

> one of the best introductions to adult literacy students and literacy

> instruction for tutors, teachers, and others.

>

> Of particular interest to me was the fact that the mere acorn of an idea I

> had expressed that same year of 1975 in Reading for Working about the

> relationship of parent's education to their children's reading ability,

> even when the children had grown into young adulthood, was present in the

> BBC Handbook as a full-grown oak tree sized concept about what I later

> called the intergenerational transfer of literacy, and more recently a

> Life

> Cycles education policy.

>

> Here are some of the seminal ideas as presented in the BBC Handbook in

> 1975:

>

> " From all the research on reading difficulty in schools, it is not

> difficult to argue a most forcible case for the importance of certain

> factors of family background to literacy. The term Cycle of Deprivation is

> commonly used to describe the legacy of deprivation which passes down from

> parent to child and cannot be broken by intervention at only one point in

> the circle. If a child grows up deprived of, and unaccustomed to, books

> and

> libraries and opportunities to practise verbal skills, then this will

> affect

> his progress and he, in turn, unless intervention is made, will see no

> pleasure and relevance in reading and will pass this attitude on to his

> children. Researchers have plotted the crucial importance of parental

> interest: so much is a confirmation of commonsense observation."

>

> The BBC Handbook presents a very well done graphic which depicts a

> Multiple

> Life Cycles education policy and shows how illiteracy or semi-literacy is

> passed from one generation of semi-literate parents to their children, who

> then become the semi-literate parents of another generation of

> illiterates/semi-literates. Yet despite this clear understanding of the

> intergenerational cycles of illiteracy/semi-literacy documented so well by

> the BBC Handbook over thirty years ago, today the United Kingdom, like

> most

> nations, including the United States,  pursues a policy of education

> focusing on one life cycle, a "cradle to grave" or "lifelong education"

> policy.

>

> More Recent Research on the Intergenerational Effects of Parents Education

> Level

>

> Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004)  from the Center for Research on

> the

> Wider Benefits of Learning in London reported that "The intergenerational

> transmission of educational success is a key driver of the persistence of

> social class differences and a barrier to equality of opportunity….

> Parental beliefs, values, aspirations and attitudes (termed here

> 'cognitions') are very important, as is parental well-being. …Parenting

> skills in terms of warmth, discipline and educational behaviours are all

> major factors in the formation of school success. … We conclude that the

> intergenerational transmission of educational success is a key element in

> equality of opportunity. There are substantial benefits of education that

> accrue to individuals and society in terms of what education enables

> parents to pass on to their children."

>

> The November 2005 REFLECT magazine article by John Bynner and Samantha

> Parsons, entitled "New light on literacy and numeracy" found that parent's

> basic skills were related to their children's achievement in literacy and

> numeracy and stated, "Although much more penetrating analysis will be

> needed to understand the basis of intergenerational skill transfer, it

> seems that parent literacy and numeracy is an important part of it,

> especially in the case of parents whose skills are at the lowest levels."

>

> >From Parents to Progeny: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy

>

> Given the important intergenerational effects of parent's education level

> on

> the achievement of their children, I believe we need to shift our

> education

> policies from a focus on one life cycle to a focus on "multiple life

> cycles" education.  Such a policy would explicitly recognize that adults

> transfer their educational achievements to the achievement of their

> children, as illustrated so well in the BBC Handbook some thirty years

> ago.

> It would also recognize that adult education should be valued as much as

> is

> childhood education, and that nations should provide adult education

> systems on a par with children's education systems.   The importance of

> adult's education for children has been succinctly expressed by the South

> American educationist, Rosa Maria Torres. She has argued that "the

> children's right to education should include the right to educated

> parents."

>

> Poorly educated children are the source of adult functional illiteracy,

> and

> functionally illiterate adults are the source of poorly educated children.

> Perhaps through education based on a Multiple Life Cycles policy,  in

> which

> children are guaranteed their right to educated parents, the vicious

> intergenerational cycles of functional illiteracy can be stopped at their

> sources. It is time to implement Multiple Life Cycles education policies

> in

> the UK, US, and other nations. Thirty years is enough time to wait.

>

> NOTE: For additional information see: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles

> Education Policy: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the

> Educability of Children.

> This paper argues 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. An extensive review is presented of research

> on early childhood education, relationships of parent's education to

> children's literacy, parenting and preschool effectiveness, and other

> issues. Online at:

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

>

> References

>

> Bynner, J. & Parsons, S. (2005, November). New light on literacy and

> numeracy. In: REFLECT online magazine. London: National Research and

> Development Center for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. (www.nrdc.org.uk)

>

> Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004, May). A Model of the

> Inter-Generational

> Transmission of Educational Success. London: Center for Research on the

> Wider Benefits of Learning

>

> Sticht, T. G. (1983, February). Literacy and Human Resources Development

> at

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

> Children. Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organization.

>

> Torres, R. M. (2003). The fundamental linkages between child, youth and

> adult learning and education. http://www.iiz

> dvv.de/englisch/Publikationen/Supplements/60_2003/

> eng_someconclusionsandelements.htm

>

> 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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