[Reading-hall-of-fame] Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source

[Thomas Sticht]

12/28/2018

It’s Not Too Late For Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education (Ret.)

On December 28, 2018 I received from the American Federation of Teachers my
copy of the American Educator for Winter 2018-2019. As with many issues of
this journal, the cover of this issue carried the theme: Literacy Education
in Early Childhood. As I read the first two articles in the journal I
noticed that they both called for parents who could read. The first article
called for parents to read aloud to their children to develop their oral
language skills as a foundation for reading comprehension. The second
article proclaimed: “The adults in children’s lives are their first
literacy teachers…”.

Interestingly, though both these articles assumed literate parents in their
prescriptions for early literacy development, they do not discuss the need
for adult basic education for the millions of parents who are, themselves,
in need of either learning to read or to improve their limited reading
skills enough to be able to read to their children.

This continues a trend to try to solve America’s adult illiteracy or low
literacy problems by putting billions of dollars into early childhood
education while leaving the Nation’s Adult Education and Literacy System
(AELS) funded at poverty levels (less than $500 federal dollars per
enrollee in fiscal year 2017 compared to some $9,870 per enrollee in Head
start and Early Head Start). Reading these articles I was  reminded of a
note I wrote over a decade and a half ago that addressed ideas about the
role of adult basic education in the development of early literacy
education for children.

I have reproduced the article below to once again call attention to the
fallacy of thinking that stopping adult illiteracy or very low literacy “at
the source” calls for emphasizing early childhood literacy education while
largely ignoring the need for adult literacy education for children’s
parents or parents-to-be (see Sticht, 2011, for more on the importance of
early parenthood education for improving the literacy education of adults
and their children).

***************

Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education (Ret.)

Question: Why do we have all these adults who are practically illiterate?
Why can’t they read?

Answer: Because the high schools are graduating functional illiterates. So we
need to fix the high schools so they stop sending functional
illiterates out into the world.

Q: Why don’t the high schools teach students to read before they graduate
them?

A: It’s too late. The middle schools keep sending the high schools students who
can’t read so the high schools can’t teach the academic subjects they need
to teach while also teaching students to read. We need to have the middle
schools stop sending students to high school who can’t read.

Q: Why don’t the middle schools teach students to read before they send them
on to high school?

A: It’s too late. The primary grades keep sending the middle schools
students who can’t read so the middle schools can’t teach the subjects
they are supposed to teach to prepare the students for high school and
also teach the kids to read. We need to have the primary schools stop
sending students to middle school who can’t read.

Q: Why don’t the primary schools teach students to read before they send them
on to middle school?

A: It’s too late. Parents keep sending the primary schools children who
have not been prepared to learn to read at home. We need a pre-school like Head
Start to prepare children to learn to read so parents can stop
sending children to primary school who aren’t ready to learn to read.

Q: Why do so many children have to go to Head Start to get prepared to
learn to read? Why don’t parents prepare them at home?

A: It’s too late by age 3 or 4. That’s why we need Early Head Start so
children can be prepared starting at birth to go to Head Start so they can
learn to read in primary school so they can learn pre-high school subjects in
middle school so they can learn high school subjects and graduate from high
school able to read and be fully literate to contribute to society.

Q: Why are so many children born unprepared to be prepared to learn to read?

A: It’s too late by birth. Too many young adults are functionally
illiterate and unable to take care of themselves. Often they get involved
with drugs or other activities that destroy their bodies and harm their
minds. They often have many out of wedlock births, they are frequently
unable to make informed choices about good prenatal and postnatal care, and
they are unable to afford it because they can’t qualify for well-paying
jobs.

What we need is a high quality, well funded Adult Education and Literacy System
in the United States that will prepare adults for parenting and profitable
work which will permit them to  provide for their own and their children’s
health, and send their children to school prepared to learn to read,
support them through primary, middle and high schools, and graduate them
with the literacy skills they need to participate fully in society.

It’s not too late. Adult literacy education contributes to the solution
of both present and future problems of adult literacy.

Reference

Sticht, T. (2011). Getting It Right From the Start: The Case for Early
Parenthood Education. American Educator. The American Federation of
Teachers. [Available online using a Google search]
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