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

[klare at ohio.edu]

Excellent point, Tom. Your analysis should get wide distribution.

George

--On Monday, March 28, 2005 3:49 PM -0800 tsticht at znet.com wrote:

>
> 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
>
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