[Reading-hall-of-fame] Adults Can't Learn to Read

[tsticht at znet.com]

June 12, 2006

Theoretically You Can’t Teach Adults to Read and Write:
But Just Keep On Doing It

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Why is it so hard to get funding for adult literacy education? Innumerable
studies, reports, TV shows, and statistical surveys in most of the
industrialized nations of the world declare that their nation is being
brought to its economic knees because of widespread low basic skills
(literacy, numeracy) amongst the adult population. But repeated calls for
funding commensurate with the size of the problem go unanswered. Why?

Beneath the popular pronouncements of educators, industry leaders, and
government officials about the importance of adult basic skills development
there flows an undercurrent of disbelief about the abilities of illiterates
or the poorly literate to ever improve much above their present learning.
This was encountered close to a hundred years ago when Cora Wilson Stewart
started the Moonlight Schools of Kentucky in 1911. Her claim that adults
could learn to read and write met with skepticism. As she reported, Quote:
"Some educators, however, declared preposterous the claims we made that
grown people were learning to read and write. It was contrary to the
principles of psychology, they said."   End Quote

Today that undercurrent of disbelief still flows, but today it carries with
it the flotsam and jetsam of "scientific facts" from genetics science,
brain science, and psychological science. Look here at objects snatched
from the undercurrent of disbelief stretching back for just a decade and a
half.

2006. Ann Coulter is a major voice in the conservative political arena. In
her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Chapter 7 The Left’s War
on Science: Burning Books to Advance "Science" pages 172-174)  she clearly
defends the ideas given in Murray & Hernstein’s book The Bell Curve
regarding the genetic basis of intelligence. By extension,  since The Bell
Curve uses reading and math tests in the Armed Forces Qualification Test
(AFQT), Coulter is discussing the genetic basis of literacy and numeracy.
In her book she says about The Bell Curve book:

Quote: "Contrary to the party line denying that such a thing as IQ existed,
the book methodically demonstrated that IQ exists, it is easily measured,
it is heritable, and it is extremely important. 
Among many other things,
IQ is a better predictor than socioeconomic status of poverty,
unemployment, criminality, divorce, single motherhood, workplace injuries,
and high school dropout rates.  
Although other factors influence IQ, such
as a good environment and nutrition, The Bell Curve authors estimated that
IQ was about 40 to 80 percent genetic." (p. 173) End Quote

Coulter goes on to discuss the misuse of science in the same chapter in
relation to AIDS and homosexuality, feminism, trial-lawyers law suits, DDT
and environmentalists, abortion and stem cell research, and other topics
that are controversial among large segments of the population but of
mainstream concern in the far right conservative base in the United States.
Because of her position as a best-selling author and spokesperson for
conservative groups, Ann Coulter’s ideas about the genetic basis of
intelligence and high school dropouts can have a profound impact upon
political thinking about basic skills education among adults who have not
achieved well.

2005. The Nobel Prize winning economist James J. Heckman  in an interview at
the Federal Reserve Bank region in Chicago discussed his ideas about
cognitive skills and their malleability in later life with  members of a
presidential commission consisting of  former U.S. senators, heads of
federal agencies, tax attorneys and academic economists. Later in his
interview he discusses what Adam Smith, in his The Wealth of Nations said
and why he, Heckman, disagrees with Smith.

According to Heckman, Adam Smith said, Quote: "
 people are basically born
the same and at age 8 one can't really see much difference among them. But
then starting at age 8, 9, 10, they pursue different fields, they
specialize and they diverge. In his mind, the butcher and the lawyer and
the journalist and the professor and the mechanic, all are basically the
same person at age 8." End Quote Heckman disagrees with this and says:

Quote: This is wrong. IQ is basically formed by age 8, and there are huge
differences in IQ among people. Smith was right that people specialize
after 8, but they started specializing before 8. On the early formation of
human skill, I think Smith was wrong, although he was right about many
other things. 
 I think these observations on human skill formation are
exactly why the job training programs aren't working in the United States
and why many remediation programs directed toward disadvantaged young
adults are so ineffective. And that's why the distinction between cognitive
and noncognitive skill is so important, because a lot of the problem with
children from disadvantaged homes is their values, attitudes and
motivations. 
Cognitive skills such as IQ can't really be changed much
after ages 8 to 10. But with noncognitive skills there's much more
malleability. That's the point I was making earlier when talking about the
prefrontal cortex. It remains fluid and adaptable until the early 20s.
That's why adolescent mentoring programs are as effective as they are. Take
a 13-year-old. You're not going to raise the IQ of a 13-year-old, but you
can talk the 13-year-old out of dropping out of school. Up to a point you
can provide surrogate parenting. End Quote

Here Heckman seems to think of the IQ as something relatively fixed at an
early age and not likely to be changed later in life. But if IQ is measured
in The Bell Curve, a book in which Heckman found some merit, using the AFQT,
which in turn is a literacy and numeracy test, then this would imply that
Heckman thinks the latter may not be very malleable in later life. This
seems consistent with his belief that remediation programs for adults are
ineffective and do not make very wise investments.

2000. It is easy to slip from talking about adults with low literacy ability
to talking about adults with low intelligence. On October 2, 2000, Dan
Seligman, columnist at Forbes magazine, wrote about the findings of the
National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) of 1993 and said, Quote: "But note
that what’s being measured here is not what you’ve been thinking all your
life as "literacy. " The cluster of abilities being examined is obviously a
proxy for plain old "intelligence." End Quote He then goes on to argue that
government programs won’t do much about this problem of low intelligence,
and, by extension, of low literacy.

These types of popular press articles can stymie funding for adult literacy
education. That is one reason why it is critical that when national
assessments of cognitive skills, including literacy, are administered, we
need to be certain about just what it is we are
measuring.  Unfortunately, that is not the case with the 1993 NALS or the
more recent 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). These
assessments leave open the possibility of being called "intelligence" tests
leading some, like Seligman, to the general conclusion that the less
literate are simply the less intelligent and society might as well cast
them off – their "intelligence genes" will not permit them to ever reach
Level 3 or any other levels at the high end of cognitive tests.

1998.  Dr. G. Reid L yon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development provided an Overview of Reading and Literacy Initiatives to the
U. S. Congress Committee on Labor and Human Resources on April 28, 1998. In
his testimony he stated that in learning to read it is important for
children to possess good abilities in phonemic analysis. He stated:

Quote: Difficulties in developing phoneme awareness can have genetic and
neurobiological origins or can be attributable to a lack of exposure to
language patterns and usage during the preschool years
. It is for this
reason that the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) considers reading
failure to reflect not only an educational problem, but a significant
public health problem as well. Within this context, a large research
network consisting of 41 research sites in North America, Europe, and Asia
are working hard to identify (1) the critical environmental, experiential,
cognitive, genetic, neurobiological, and instructional conditions that
foster strong reading development; (2) the risk factors that predispose
youngsters to reading failure; and (3) the instructional procedures that
can be applied to ameliorate reading deficits at the earliest possible
time. End Quote

Discussing why some children may have difficulties learning to read, Lyon
went on to say:

Quote: Children raised in poverty, youngsters with limited proficiency in
English, children with speech and hearing impairments, and children from
homes where the parent's reading levels are low are relatively predisposed
to reading failure. Likewise, youngsters with sub-average intellectual
capabilities have difficulties learning to read, particularly in the
reading comprehension domain. End Quote

Taken together, these statements by a senior government scientist advisor to
both the President and the Congress of the United States indicates that the
NICHD considers that in some cases low literacy may result from genetic,
neurological, sub-average intellectual capability or a combination of these
and other factors. Again, this may contribute to wide-spread beliefs that
adults with low literacy may possess faulty genes, brains, and/or
intellectual abilities and are unlikely to benefit from adult literacy
education programs. From a policy perspective, then, policymakers may think
that funding such programs may be regarded as a poor use of public funds.

1997. In a January 7, 1997 article in the Washington Times , a prominent
newspaper
published in Washington DC and read by many members of Congress, columnist
Ken Adelman wrote:

Quotes: The age-old nature vs. nurture debate assumes immediacy as the new
Congress
and new administration gin up to address such issues as poverty, crime,
drugs, etc. 
This, the most intellectually intriguing debate around, is
moving far toward
nature (and far from nurture) with new evidence presented by an odd pair -
gay activist Chandler Burr and conservative scholar Charles Murray. 
In
brief, their new findings show that 1) homosexuality and 2)
educational-economic achievement are each largely a matter of genes – not
of upbringing. 
If true, as appears so, the scope of effective government
programs narrows. Fate, working through chromosomes, bestows both sexual
orientation and brainpower, which shape one's life and success. Little can
be altered - besides fostering tolerance and helping in any narrow window
left open - through even an ideally designed public program.   (page B-6)
End Quotes

The juxtaposition of homosexuals and those of lower educational and economic
achievement is an obvious rhetorical device meant to stir negative emotions
about both groups, This is a rhetorical device brought back into play by
Coulter in her 2006 book  cited above.

1991. One of the beliefs in our culture is that the brain and its 
intellectual  capacity  is   developed   in   early   childhood. There is a
widespread belief that if children's early childhood development  is not
properly stimulated, then there is likely to be intellectual
underdevelopment leading  to  academic   failures, low aptitude, and social
problems such as criminal activity, teenage pregnancy and welfare. It will
be difficult if not impossible to overcome the disadvantages of
deficiencies in early childhood stimulation later in adulthood. So why
invest much in adult education? We need instead to put billions of dollars
into early childhood education.

That these beliefs about the consequence of early childhood development are
widespread is revealed by articles written by prominent journalists in
major newspapers. For instance, on Sunday, October 13, 1991 the San Diego
Union newspaper reprinted an article by Joan Beck, a columnist for the  
Chicago  Tribune , that  argued  for  early  childhood education because,
Quote: "Half of adult intellectual capacity is already present by age 4
and 80 percent by age 8, ... the opportunity to influence [a child's] basic
intelligence - considered to be a stable characteristic by age 17 – is
greatest in early life." End Quote

A  year earlier in the same newspaper on October 14, 1990  an adult family
literacy educator was quoted as saying, Quote: "Between the ages of zero to
4 we have learned half of everything we'll ever learn in our lives. Most of
that has to do with language, imagination, and inquisitiveness." End Quote
This doesn’t hold out much hope for the adults in family literacy programs.

Joan Beck was quoting research by Benjamin Bloom in the 1960s. But Bloom did
not show that half of one's intellect was achieved by age 4. Rather, he
argued that IQ at age 4 was correlated +.70 with IQ at age 17. Since the
square of .7 is .49, Bloom stated that half of the variance among a group
of adults' IQ scores at age 17 could be predicted from their group of
scores at age 4. But half of the variability among a group of people's IQ
scores is a long way from the idea that half of a given person's IQ is
developed by age 4. This is not even conceptually possible because for one
thing there is no universally agreed to
understanding of what "intelligence" is. Further, even if we could agree on
what "intelligence" is, there is no such thing as "half of one's intellect"
because no one knows what 0 or 100 percent intelligence is. Without knowing
the beginning and end of something we can’t know when we have half of it.

1990. A report by the Department of Defense shows how these beliefs about
the
possibility of doing much for adults can affect government policy. After
studying the job performance and post-service lives of "lower aptitude,"
less literate personnel, the report claimed that they had been failures
both in and out of the military. Then,  on February 24, 1990, the Director
of Accession Policy of the Department of Defense commented  in the
Washington Post newspaper, Quote: "The lesson is that low-aptitude people,
whether in the military or not, are always going to be at a disadvantage.
That's a sad conclusion." End Quote  A similar report of the Department of
Defense study was carried in the New York Times of  March 12, 1990. Then on
April 8, 1990 Jack Anderson's column in the Washington Post quoted one of
the Department of Defense researchers saying, Quote: "...by the age of 18
or 19, it's too late. The school system in early childhood is the only
place to really help, and that involves heavy participation by the
parents." End Quote

Regarding the news articles about the Department of Defense studies of "low
aptitude" troops, the conclusions were based on analyses of the job
performance of hundreds of thousands of personnel in both the 1960s and
1980s with Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores between the 10th
and the 30th percentiles, the range of  scores which the  Department   of 
Defense  studies  called "low aptitude."

But contrary to what the Department of Defense researchers and accession
policy maker stated, the actual  data  show that in both time periods, 
while  the   low aptitude personnel  did  not   perform  quite   as  well  
as   those   personnel  with aptitudes above the 30th percentile,  over 80
percent of the low aptitude personnel did, in fact, perform satisfactorily
and many performed in an outstanding manner. As veterans they had
employment rates and earnings far exceeding their rates and earnings at the
beginning of the study. Further investigation by the media would have
revealed these discrepancies between what the Department of Defense's
researchers said and what the actual findings were. But as it stands, these
popular media types of stories reinforce the stereotypes about adults with
who score low on intelligence or aptitude tests and perform poorly on tests
of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

We can find these pieces of scientific debris all the way back to the
Moonlight Schools of 1911.  Following her account of those educators and
academics who declared that teaching grown people to read and write was
contrary to the principles of psychology, Cora Wilson Stewart said, Quote:
While they went around saying it couldn’t be done, we went on doing it. We
asked the doubters this question, "When a fact disputes a theory, is it not
time to discard the theory? There was no reply. End Quote

Today when we ask why the funding for adult literacy education is so little
so late, there is still no reply. So we just keep on teaching adults to
read and write. And we do it on the cheap, even though it is  theoretically
impossible.

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