[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Five Shades of Gray

[tsticht at znet.com]

Thanks, Yetta, for bringing this important concern to the attention of the
RHF members. Following is a brief note I wrote recently with information
some articles that some might want to take a look at to reinforce the
importance of integrating adult and childhood literacy education through
what I call a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy.

Tom Sticht


Educated Parents Make Educated Children

Tom Sticht

November 11, 2012

Colleagues: In May 2012 the Education Digest (EdDigest.com) published an
abridged copy of my paper entitled Getting It Right From the Start: The
Case for Early Parenthood Education. The paper appeared in its original,
full form in the American Educator, a journal of the American Federation of
Teachers (aft.org) for Fall 2011. This month the November 2012 EdDigest has
published an abridged version of my paper entitled Educated Parents,
Educated Children: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy. This
paper first appeared in the Fall 2010 edition of Education Canada, the
journal of the Canadian Education Association. <?xml:namespace prefix = o
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The 2010 article argues for more investment in adult education because such
education often affects the educational achievements of the adult’s
children. The first part of the article discusses factors which hold back
funding for adult education in favor of trying to stop educational problems
and poor literacy at the start, i.e., in childhood. It argues that brain
science should not be used to argue for billions of dollars for early
childhood education while federal funding is just over 500 million for all
fifty states. It makes the point that the brain can benefit from
stimulation across the lifespan and that the brains of adults which are
improved by education can have a positive impact on the brains of the
adult’s children. The article goes on to discuss issues of those thinking
that low intelligence or low aptitude in adulthood makes it unprofitable to
spend money on trying to educate adults. The rest of the article reviews
lots of research showing that much of the benefits of early childhood
education may actually come from the changes the education makes in
children’s parents rather than from the experiences with the children in
programs.



The 2012 article continues the argument for investing more in the education
of adults and illustrates the intergenerational outcomes of adult education
resulting from  the oracy-to-literacy transfer effect and the
intergenerational transfer of non-cognitive (character) traits. It presents
research evidence indicating that the most famous early childhood program,
the Perry Preschool project, had a greater impact on children’s character
traits than their cognitive abilities, and that most of the return on
investment in that program resulted not from cognitive achievements but
rather on behavioral outcomes such as reduced out-of-wedlock pregnancies,
less delinquency, less criminal activities, and less drug use in the
experimental preschool group. It also suggests that much of this character
development resulted from the effects of the programs on the children’s
parents.



Both of the full articles are available online for free downloading and can
be found by using the my last name and the titles in a Google search. Taken
together, these two articles include a lot of the information which I
present in my free workshop on The Intergenerational Effects of Adult
Education, to be presented next in Waterloo, Iowa on November 20, 2012. 
For information about the workshop contact me at tsticht at aznet.net.



Tom Sticht



Quoting Yetta Goodman <ygoodman at u.arizona.edu>:

> Tom has been saying for a long time that adult literacy programs and
> early
> childhood literacy programs should be integrated.
> Certainly as a field, we should be involved in acknowledging how related
> the two fields are.
> There is general agreement that literacy history of parents and
> involvement
> of parents in reading and writing with their children is important to
> literacy development
> in young children.   Is there a way to make such an important issue more
> relevant in the learning to read communities.
> Yetta
>