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

[Yetta Goodman]

Tom ---
Didn't you used to call this intergenerational literacy.   Multiple Life
Cycles educational policy has a interesting ring to it.  Yetta

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 2:50 PM, <tsticht at znet.com> wrote:

> 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
> > >>>
>
>


-- 
Yetta Goodman, Regents Professor Emerita
7914 S Galilleo Lane, Tucson Arizona 85747
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