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

[tsticht at znet.com]

Colleagues: Here is a note I wrote some time ago that argues for a Multiple
Life Cycles education policy instead of our present policies that focus on
one generation at a time. Perhaps this type of coneptualizing may help
cross the boundaries being mentioned.

Tom Sticht


Epigenetics and Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy


Tom Sticht

International Consultant in Adult Education


The results of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)
indicated that almost half of adults (47%) had only Basic or Below Basic
literacy skills. This lead the Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings,
to declare that this supported President George W. Bush’s plan for a one
billion dollar project to improve the literacy skills of high school
students. This was at a time when the federal spending for adult literacy
training was just over $200 per enrollee, and still the administration did
not ask for more funding for adult literacy education in the light of the
devastating NAAL results.


I recognized this as another attempt to “stop illiteracy at the source.” In
this case, millions of high school students were becoming adults considered
functionally illiterate, so the plan was to stop the high schools from
producing such adults. But of course, the high schools blame the middle
schools for sending them functionally illiterate students; the middle
schools blame the primary schools, the primary schools blame the parents
and call for Head Start to do a better job, and now we have Early Head
Start to stop illiteracy starting at birth!


In all this, then, it looks like we are willing to put billions of dollars
into the education of babies, toddlers, children, adolescents, and young
adults as long as they are in some sort of school. But as soon as they
graduate or drop out of high school we seem to consider them as mostly lost
causes, we throw a pittance in adult literacy education to them, and then go
back to trying to fix their kids in formal school settings.


Overall, the primary focus of education policy has been to focus on
intervening in the learning experiences of one generation, one life cycle,
at a time, rather than explicitly recognizing the intergenerational
consequences of education across multiple life cycles, that is, how the
education of parents may influence the educability of the parent’s
children.


In Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy: Investing in the
Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of Children
[http://www.nald.ca/library/research/sticht/06dec/06dec.pdf]


I argued for education policy that recognizes that affect, cognition,
language, and literacy are transferred from parents to their children. I
did an extensive review of behavioral and social sciences research on early
childhood education, relationships of parent’s education to children’s
literacy, parenting and preschool effectiveness, and other issues to argue
that we should make larger investment in the education of youth and adults
who are parents or who will be parents.


Now there is emerging  evidence for the importance of thinking of education
in terms of a Multiple Life Cycles Education policy, this time from the
biological sciences. In particular, I am talking about the field of
epigenetics which, according to a definition on the Wikipedia web site, is:

quote“the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene
expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA
sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: åðß- over, above) -genetics.” end
quote


The idea that aspects of one’s lifestyle may be transmitted across
generations via non-genetic, biological factors forms a large part of the
argument by David Shenk in his new book The Genius in All of Us: Why
Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong (New
York, Double Day, 2010). He notes that epigenetic science is beginning to
suggest that: quote”what an individual does in his/her life before having
children can change the biological inheritance of those children and their
descendants.” end quote (p. 130).


While the epigenetic science on the intergenerational transmission of
certain acquired characteristics due to one’s lifestyle is still in its
infancy, it may bolster the considerable behavioral and social science that
argues for changing our policies of education from those that focus on one
life cycle and lifelong learning. Instead, we need to focus on providing
educational opportunities based on Multiple Life Cycles Education policy.


One concrete policy shift called for by the Multiple Life Cycles Education
policy is a greater increase in the attention to education in parenting for
adolescents, young adults, and adults who are likely to become parents.  By
investing in the education of adults, we may increase the educability of
their children, and their children’s children, via behavioral, social, and,
possibly, epigenetic transfer.

tsticht at aznet.net




Quoting Alan Farstrup <afarstrup at me.com>:

> I fully agree that the "Balkanization" of the profession has lead to poor
> communication and even rivalries between departments. Certainly schools,
> classrooms and teachers are not immune to such effects either. We need to
> look into this set of issues.
>
> Alan
>
> ______________________
> Sent from my iPad2
> Alan E. Farstrup
> afarstrup at me.com
>
> On Nov 28, 2012, at 2:08 PM, Yetta Goodman <ygoodman at u.arizona.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Vicki... I do think this is an important issue to raise. And I
> do
> > hope others take up your  mantel. There should be discussions in
> reading,
> > writing, literacy, early childhood and adult literacy departments about
> how
> > to bridge the kinds of gaps that specialization has imposed on our
> > understandings of literacy development and its uses.  Perhaps
> developing a
> > session or symposium before you retire, Vicki might bring folks
> together on
> > this.     Yetta
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:01 PM, <vpurcell.gates at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all; My appointment as a Canada Research Chair is couched as an
> 'Early
> >> Childhood Literacy' Chair. As some of you may know,though, I approach
> early
> >> literacy through community literacy, adult literacy, and literacy as
> taught
> >> in schools lens. I have found over the years that this is hard for
> people
> >> to understand, especially policy people.
> >> Probably, this connection needs to be examined more closely through
> >> empirical research but it would take a sophisticated research design
> and
> >> lots of money. I'm about to retire (Yaaay!) so I feel ok about putting
> this
> >> out there for someone else to take up!
> >> Best, Vicki
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >> On Nov 27, 2012, at 10:01 AM, Yetta Goodman <ygoodman at u.arizona.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> 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
> >>>