[Reading-hall-of-fame] Freedom for America

[tsticht at znet.com]

March 26, 2005

The Freedom of Voice and Expression in Adult Literacy Education:
The United States Offers a Bad Example for the World

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

The U. S. government’s  National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) hosts 
thirteen discussion lists for adult literacy education. These lists cover a 
range of topics of interest to adult literacy educators. For this reason, 
they offer some insight into what professionals in the field find of 
interest and suitable for discussion. 

To find out what topics seem to be "hot" and which ones are "not", I have 
looked at the number of postings on each list in the first 83 days of 2005. 
For comparison, I have also looked at the number of postings on the aaace-
nla discussion list which is not sponsored by the government. 

Below is a listing of the discussion lists that fall within different 
ranges of average number of postings per day, going from the lists with the 
most postings to the lists with the least postings:

1.6-2.0		AALPD; ESL; Assessment, Technology
1.1-1.5		FOB;LD;Women
0.6-1.0		FamLit;Workplace;Health
0.0-0.5		PL&I;EFF;POVRACELIT

AALPD= Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers
ESL= English as a Second Language
FOB= Focus on Basics
LD= Learning Disabilities
FamLit= Family Literacy
PL&I= Program Leadership and Improvement
EFF= Equipped for the Future
POVRACELIT= Poverty, Race, and Literacy
		
By contrast with the foregoing, in which no government hosted list exceeded 
an average of 2 postings per day, the non-government-hosted aaace-nla 
discussion list posted an average of 6 messages per day. 

It is interesting that the PL&I discussion list, which was launched last 
year with an introductory message by Cheryl Keenan, Director of the 
Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) in the U. S. Department of 
Education, has posted the least messages this year, just 15 as of March 26, 
2005, and ten of these were information postings by the list moderator. It 
appears that there is not much interest in the field in discussing program 
leadership and improvement within this government sponsored list. It is 
ironic that just a few months after the launch of this list, the President 
submitted a budget cutting DAEL’s  State Grants budget for adult literacy 
education from over $500 million to around $200 million. 

It is possible that there is little interest in having discussions on the 
PL&I list because of feelings of intimidation among members of the field 
resulting from messages from the government calling attention to the need 
for participants to avoid commenting on Education Department policies or 
political points of view.

I also find it of special interest that the EFF list has had only 30 
postings (0.36 per day) as of March 26, 2005. This is the National 
Institute for Literacy’s long time, flagship project for reforming the 
adult education and literacy field. But there is apparently little interest 
in discussing it on the EFF discussion list, where, as with the PL&I list, 
most of the postings are information messages by the list moderator, not 
discussions by the list members.  

In general, with six of the lists posting an average of  1 or fewer 
messages a day and the remaining seven averaging less than two messages per 
day, the NIFL-hosted discussion lists do not appear to be stimulating much 
discussion overall. The contrast with the aaace-nla discussion list is 
striking and indicates that the field has a lot of interest in policy and 
political issues affecting the funding and mission guidance for adult 
literacy education, topics that are mostly censured and not permitted to be 
discussed on the government-hosted lists. 

It is again ironic that during the United Nation’s Decade of Literacy, with 
its theme of Literacy as Freedom, and with First Lady Laura Bush as its 
Honorary Ambassador to the world, her husband’s education administration 
has spoken out to limit the first of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four 
Freedoms, the Freedom of Speech and Expression. It seems that where such 
freedom is constrained, discussion withers, as witnessed by the low levels 
of participation on most of the government-sponsored discussion lists 
above.

If literacy is freedom,  as the United Nations has claimed, and the United 
States has concurred, then by censoring the freedom of speech on its 
internet discussion lists, and cutting the budget for adult literacy 
education in the United States by hundreds of millions of dollars, the same 
administration that sends its citizens to fight and die for the freedom of 
people around the world, has blocked the pursuit of freedom by hundreds of 
thousands of its very own people. 

Is this the message our Honorary Ambassador for literacy should carry to 
the world?

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