[Reading-hall-of-fame] Celebrate EFA Week

[tsticht at znet.com]

April 17, 2006

Celebrating Education for All Week April 24-30, 2006

UNESCO Needs a Life Cycles Education Policy to Achieve Education for All

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

During April 24-30 the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) will lead the world in the celebration of Education
for All week. During this week the theme will be " Every child needs a
teacher." This will recognize the world-wide need for qualified teachers in
pre-school, primary, and secondary schools to promote the best possible
opportunities for children to acquire high levels of literacy and education
as they move from childhood into adulthood.

As important as this focus on teachers is, it is incomplete. It fails to
emphasize children’s first teachers, their parents. Indeed, even UNESCO’s
program on Early Childhood education continues to operate under an
understanding presented officially in 1990 in the Jomtien Declaration on
Education that proclaimed that "learning begins at birth," even though at
that time and today we know that that is not correct. Instead, both the
future ability of a child to learn and learning itself begin before birth,
and, indeed, even before the child is conceived.

Oppressed by the Intergenerational Transfer of Illiteracy

For many children, their opportunities for learning are pre-ordained to be
oppressed because of the situation of the adults who become their parents.

And by birth, it is too late for them. Too many young adults are
functionally illiterate and unable to take care of themselves. Often they
get involved with drugs or other activities that destroy their bodies and
harm their minds. They often have many out-of-wedlock births, they are
frequently unable to make informed choices about good prenatal and
postnatal care, and they are unable to afford such care because they can’t
qualify for well-paying jobs. They are the illiterates or functional
illiterates who will too often raise a second generation just like
themselves.

The same year of 1990 in which the Jomtien Declaration on Education declared
that "learning begins at birth," UNESCO also published a report by Dr.
Barbara McDonald and myself entitled: Teach the Mother and Reach the Child:
Literacy Across Generations. It indicated that for the sake of children’s
literacy acquisition and education, we need to provide literacy provision
for adults, paying special attention to the education of young adults, and
in particular young women. Our research for UNESCO illustrated the effects
of women’s education on children and their educational development at
various stages from before conception and birth to the school years:

Before Pregnancy
Better educated women have lower fertility rates and hence they produce
smaller families. The latter, in turn, is related to the pre-school
cognitive development of children and their subsequent achievement in
school.

During Pregnancy and at Birth
Better educated women provide better pre-natal care; produce more full term
babies; provide better post-natal care and this results in babies with
fewer learning disabilities.

Before Going To School
Better educated women produce better children’s health care; better
cognitive, language, and pre-literacy development; and better preparation
for schoolwork.

During The School Years
Better educated women produce higher participation rates in schooling;
better management of homework; better advocacy for children’s education and
negotiation of school/child conflicts; and they produce children who achieve
higher levels of education and literacy.

This intergenerational effect of adult literacy education has been expressed
as educational policy by Rosa Maria Torres, a member of the UNESCO
International Jury for Literacy Prizes in 2001-2002. In an online internet
article posted in 2003 (The fundamental linkages between child, youth and
adult learning and education) she stated that, ""Adult Basic Education and
Learning (ABLE) cannot continue to be viewed in isolation, as a separate
educational goal 
 butrather as part of the overall education, training and
learning system and policy at national and international level. 
To educate
children, it is essential to educate adults, not only (illiterate, poor)
parents and caregivers (including teachers) but adults in general. Because
it is adults and the adult society who make the critical decisions that
affect children’s well-being and development, at home, at school.... This
is the importance of educating adults, for their own sake and for the sake
of children, for the present and for future generations. 
In fact, 
 the
children’s right to education should include the right to educated
parents.""

Because of the pervasive finding of the influence of parent’s education on
their children’s educational achievement, and the arguments given by
Torres, UNESCO and its member nations need to move away from thinking about
literacy education as developed over one life span, a "cradle to grave",
"lifelong" perspective, and instead think in terms of a "life cycles"
education policy. A shift from a "one life cycle" to a "multiple life
cycles" policy for education is needed that embraces adult literacy
development with the same enthusiasm and commitment as is made to early
childhood, primary and secondary literacy development.

All this suggests that when we celebrate Education for All week this year,
and focus on the theme that "every child needs a teacher," we should give
special recognition to the educational needs of parents who are their
children’s first teachers. We need to call upon the nations of the world to
adopt a "life cycles" education policy and provide resources for adult
literacy education that are on a par with those for children’s education.

If we want to achieve Education for All, we should remember that when we
teach the parents, we reach the children!

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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