[Reading-hall-of-fame] Review of Strugglers Into Strivers

[tsticht at znet.com]

11/3/2014


Book Review


Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education


A review of: Hugh B. Price (2014). Strugglers Into Strivers: What the
Military Can Teach Us About How Young People Learn and Grow. Small Batch
Books, Amherst: MA. ($14.99 plus S & H as a published on demand book).


During the later years of the Vietnam War and on into the All-Volunteer
Force of the 1970s I worked in Monterey, California on developing
educational programs for the Army at the Fort Ord recruit training center .
In those days there was a large business downtown in Monterey in which
soldiers who had just completed their basic training could go in and have
their photo taken and placed inside the front cover of a large Bible that
they could purchase and have sent to their family. They were proud of
having completed basic training and they wanted their folks to see them in
their new uniforms. Their training had instilled not just discipline and
obedience to orders, but more importantly, it instilled new self-concepts
and belief in themselves as capable and useful members of society.


Since those days I have read about many civilian education programs that aim
to help undereducated and struggling young people claim that their efforts
were based on the tough “boot camp” methods that the military uses to
instill discipline and obedience to orders. However, I knew from my earlier
experience with undereducated youth in the military that what really made
these new recruits successful was the social capital they gained through
the social-emotional changes that they experienced as they came to
understand that at last they were part of a socially valued  American
institution and that they could be proud of what they were doing.


Now comes Hugh Price with his new book, Strugglers Into Strivers, in which
he describes how education and training methods derived from military
practices have been used to develop and implement the National Guard’s
ChalleNGe program for high school dropouts. Importantly, Price makes the
point persuasively that, consistent with what I had noticed in Monterey
years earlier,  while the ChalleNGe program does include some features of
military “boot camp,” it makes its largest contributions to learning and
development by improving the social-emotional attributes of the students.
They improve their self-concepts and relate better to families, friends,
teachers, and employers. In short, they make large gains in social capital.


Price’s book details problems faced by cast-off youth, and describes in
detail the major components of the ChalleNGe program and the research that
has demonstrated the positive cost-benefits of the program, which in 2014
takes place in over 30 sites in 27 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of
Columbia.  Serving around 5,000 young people annually, since 1993 ChalleNGe
has graduated some 115,000 young former dropouts at a cost of around
$15,000.00 per student, with the Department of Defense paying 60 percent of
the costs and the various states picking up the remaining 40 percent of the
cost.


Strugglers Into Strivers reviews the eight basic components of the ChalleNGe
program as: Academic Excellence, Leadership/Followership, Responsible
Citizenship, Service to the Community, Life-Coping Skills, Physical
Fitness, Health and Hygiene, and Job Skills. Focusing on the teaching
methods of the ChalleNGe program which distinguish them from the
school-based teaching that turned students off and into dropouts, Price
states, “These military-like programs emphasize learning by doing,
variously referred to as experiential learning or, in the case of the Army,
“Functional Context Education” (FCE). True to the military’s predilection
for fast-track training, FCE is designed to generate swift gains in reading
and math skills by teaching academics “in the context” of learning and
performing a given task. Military researchers have found that, compared
with general literacy instruction, this kind of learning-to-do instruction
generates rapid and robust gains in job-related literacy that endure over
time.”


With its emphasis upon achieving both academic excellence and improved
social-emotional development, the ChalleNGe program offers insights for
improving not only the life chances of those K-12 students who are
struggling to get by in and out of school, but for all students who today
face tough times in learning in school and developing into adulthood and
productive citizenship. In the final chapters of Strugglers Into Strivers,
Price discusses possible limitations to, and the means and ends of
incorporating some of the military’s educational and training approaches
into a system of academies beyond those of the ChalleNGe educational
network.


Almost three decades ago, colleagues and I wrote another book which also
aimed to show how military methods for educating and training undereducated
youth and adults could be applied in civilian education. In an appendix I
reported on an interview I conducted with former Secretary of Defense for
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and former President of the World Bank,
Robert S. McNamara.  I told him about the positive value that the military
education and training methods provided for educating young, often
impoverished young adults. On learning about the positive benefits the
military approaches could provide, he said, “Now, this kind of approach
shows that there is something that can be done, and that people—individuals
in our society—that our society thinks can be cast off need not be cast
off!”


Some thirty years later, thinking in a similar manner as McNamara, in the
conclusion to his book, Hugh B. Price, former Vice President of the
Rockefeller Foundation and former President of the National Urban League
states, “By examining and adapting what the Pentagon knows about educating
and developing aimless young people, we can transform these troubled and
troublesome young Americans into a valued social and economic asset to our
nation.”


Yes, we can! Si, se pueda!


tsticht at aznet.net