[Reading-hall-of-fame] Adult Literacy Combats Terrorism

[tsticht at znet.com]

July 11, 2005

Literacy Education for Combating Terrorism
Amongst Marginalized Adults and Their Families

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In the summer of 1991,  I introduced a college course at San Diego State
University  entitled "Military Psychology: Applications of the Science of
Psychology to Peace, War, and Recovery." The course surveyed a wide range
of topics from military psychology, including research on methods used to
break down the resistance of prisoners of war so that intelligence
information could be extracted from them.

The major reading for the section on breaking down the resistance of
prisoners of war came from a book by Peter Watson (1978), in a section he
called "Hsi nao: "Brainwashing." In this section he discusses eight methods
the communists used to elicit compliance and cooperation from American
military personnel who were captured and held as prisoners during the
Korean war.

These eight methods can be summarized more succinctly as the " 3 Ds": dread,
debilitation, and dependence. In applying these methods to breaking the will
of prisoners, one first puts the person into a state of DREAD, in which
there is the constant threat of harm, pain, or even one’s death or that
these things would happen to one’s fellow prisoners. Second, the prisoner
is put into a state of DEBILITATION by starving the person, keeping the
person in an environment of cold, or heat, or fluctuating back and forth
between extreme heat or cold, keeping them away from other prisoners to
deprive them of social interaction, and preventing the person from
sleeping. And finally, putting the prisoner into a state of total
DEPENDENCE upon the guards and others in charge for permission to go to the
bathroom, to eat, sleep, get cleaned, to communicate with anyone, and to
receive any pleasurable relief at all from the circumstances of
imprisonment.

The Need for Adult Literacy Education to Overcome the 3 Ds
In the Lives of Socially Isolated, Marginalized Persons

Today, in numerous nations, both developing and developed, hundreds of
millions of adults live lives constantly stressed by dread, debilitation,
and dependency. While not as pernicious and abject as the stresses of the 3
Ds applied to prisoners of war, tens upon tens of millions of adults and
their families struggle daily under the DREAD of losing their shelter,
having no food, no clean water, getting sick and having no money for
healthcare, of being harmed in unsafe neighborhoods, and numerous other
threats. Each day many adults and their children get up and start the day
in a DEBILITATED state due to lack of food, lack of health care, suffering
malnutrition and exhaustion from working one, two or three jobs to scrape
together a living. And tens of millions are totally DEPENDENT upon
recalcitrant government bureaucrats for support in social services, or on
exploitative employers paying wages that do not support one person let
alone a family, or on landlords who refuse to take care of living quarters
and keep toilets, utilities and appliances in working order.


For these socially isolated and marginalized adults, adult literacy
education programs are often the first opportunities they have to escape
the 3 Ds. Decades of research in numerous nations reveals that one of the
most important and widespread outcomes of adult literacy education is
psychological, and reveals a mental step toward overcoming dread,
debilitation, and dependency. The finding is ubiquitous -  adults in
literacy programs begin to believe that they can learn, and that through
their learning they will be able to change not only their own lives but the
lives of their loved ones.

This finding of psychological changes in self-efficacy, self-esteem, and
reintegration into the social life of the community amongst adult literacy
students is so commonplace in adult literacy programs that many adult
literacy educators have come to view their work as a form of psychotherapy.
Through their efforts, adult literacy educators are generally able to
discover the wishes, wants, desires and goals of their adult learners and
assist them in overcoming many of the obstacles resulting from the 3 Ds
that block them from achieving their goals.

Literacy provides adults with the tool for overcoming dependency on others
for reading and writing, it helps them achieve the work that pays enough
for them to overcome their dread of hunger, poor health, and other miseries
of poverty. Literacy helps adults overcome many stresses and strains in
their lives that contribute to their debilitation and places them on the
road to activities aimed at increasing social inclusion and the movement
from the margins to the mainstream of society.

Today, dread, debilitation, and dependency instill constant terror in the
lives of hundreds of millions of adults around the world. The struggle
against this terrorism requires a multifaceted set of policies and actions
by governments, civil societies and individuals. Within this set, policies
and actions that greatly expand the provision of literacy education among
adults provide a cost-beneficial approach to social and economic
development. Through literacy education, adults not only learn to read and
write, they learn to overpower the psychological brainwashing of the 3 Ds
that has kept them and their families in poverty, social exclusion, and
political subservience. Conceivably, by combating the terrorism caused by
the 3 Ds amongst impoverished and illiterate or marginally literate adults,
we can also combat a significant part of the terrorism caused by bombs and
other weapons of war.

Adult literacy education is a formidable weapon against terrorism in both
war and peace.

Reference

Watson, Peter (1978). War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of
Psychology. London: Hutchinson


Tom 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