[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Veterans Day November 11, 2018

[P Pearson]

Great summary and resources Tom. Thanks for sharing, especially the URLs.

David


On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 6:19 PM Thomas Sticht <tgsticht at gmail.com> wrote:

> Veterans Day November 11, 2018
>
> Celebrating Adult Literacy Educator Veterans of Wars
>
> Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education (Ret.)
>
> Since its founding, the United States has engaged in a number of wars
> fighting for freedom and liberty both at home and abroad. On Veterans Day
> we celebrate the lives of the veterans of these wars and thank those both
> living and dead who have fought to keep us free. Among these veterans are
> adult educators, both military and civilian, who worked, often under
> arduous conditions, to help America’s non-English speaking, illiterate, and
> under-educated military personnel learn to read, write, and compute.
>
> During the Revolutionary War, at Valley Forge, military chaplains served
> as adult educators and taught soldiers to read. Though we don’t know how
> many soldiers were taught to read, nor how well, we do know that lessons
> continued throughout the encampment at Valley Forge.
>
> During the Civil War, fought in the United States to free the slaves of
> the Confederate states and to unite the Nation, the Union Army provided
> many educational opportunities for former slaves. This included the work of
> one General Banks who sought to eradicate the widespread illiteracy among
> the 18,585 Negro troops serving in the Department of the Gulf by appointing
> several members of the American Missionary Association as lieutenants in
> some of the colored regiments. Banks appointed these men for the sole
> purpose of teaching the Negro soldiers. He also directed chaplains to
> engage in literacy instruction for the former slaves.
>
> During WWI the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) provided
> reading and writing instruction for soldiers. One of the activities that
> the Y.M.C.A. undertook was the preparation of literacy instructional
> materials for the soldiers. Among these was the “Camp Reader for American
> Soldiers” which used a functional approach to teach soldiers to read
> military-related materials. At Camp Upton, New York, illiterate and
> non-English speaking recruits were taught literacy following a course of
> instruction developed under the direction of Captain Garry C. Myers, whose
> wife, Caroline, also taught soldiers to read. Later these veteran adult
> literacy educators founded “Highlights for Children”, a magazine for
> helping adults teach their children reading and writing skills.
>
>
>
> During World War II, the armed services once again faced the need to
> utilize hundreds of thousands of men who were poorly literate and many were
> non-English speakers. As in World War I, the armed forces developed
> functional, military-related materials to teach English language and
> reading skills with these under-prepared soldiers. Estimates of the numbers
> of WW II adult literacy instructors included some 5,291 personnel. Of
> these, around 641 were officers, 4,557 were enlisted men, and there were
> some 87 civilians. More than 1200 of these teachers were African-Americans.
> The efforts of all these teachers helped raise the literacy skills of over
> a quarter million soldiers.
>
>
>
> During the Korean War, fought from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953. tens of
> thousands of inductees entered the military services with reading levels
> below the 8th grade level, and many were in need of reading instruction.
> To meet the need for materials for teaching reading to under-educated
> inductees during the Korean War the United States Armed Forces Institute
> (USAFI) made available reading instructional materials that were based to
> an extent on the World War II functional literacy materials. Teachers in
> education centers at military posts around the country helped raise the
> literacy levels of thousands of the troops who went on to fight in Korea.
>
>
>
> During the Vietnam war, I directed the development of the Army’s
> Functional Literacy (FLIT) program for marginally literate personnel. This
> was the first program that introduced systematic methods for studying
> literacy practices of personnel in various jobs and job training programs,
> incorporated these practices into the design of job-related literacy
> programs, and compared the effectiveness of general literacy programs to
> job-related programs. In evaluation studies, some 3400 students taught by
> 30 military and civilian teachers at six Army posts improved their reading
> ability by studying authentic job-related materials having real meaning and
> relevance to them.
>
>
>
> In all these wars adult literacy instructors, including thousands of
> active duty military personnel, contributed to the war efforts through
> their teaching of reading. As veterans, some of these former soldiers or
> sailors went on to translate techniques for teaching basic skills for
> soldiers into methods for teaching basic skills for both children and
> adults.
>
>
>
> On Veterans Day this year, while we honor all veterans of all wars, take a
> moment to give a special thanks and appreciation to those veterans who
> served as teachers of adults in these wars. Behind the guns and bombs of
> war are the brains of those who fight. Adult educators helped to make many
> fighter’s  brains more effective in war and afterward at home through the
> magic of literacy.
>
>
>
> References
>
>
>
> For an extended set of readings about the work of adult literacy educators
> in all these wars see these two free e-books:
>
>
>
> Sticht, T. (2017). Fighting Illiteracy in Times of War. In: T. Sticht: The
> Struggle for Adult Literacy Education in America A Trilogy Of  Notes on
> History, Research, Policy, & Practice in Adult Literacy Education. E-book
> available online at:
> https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a158b4e4b0796a90f7c371/t/5a08848b8165f51550503a1d/1510507672628/Bk+Trilogy.1.pdf
>
>
>
> Sticht, T. (2018). Mainstreaming Marginalized Adults: The Transformation
> of Adult Basic Education in the United States. Online at:
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324604141_Mainstreaming_Marginalized_Adults_The_Transformation_of_Adult_Basic_Education_in_the_United_States
>
>
>
>
>
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