[Reading-hall-of-fame] Adult Education and Family Literacy Week

[Thomas Sticht]

9/25/2021

Thoughts of Paulo Freire on Adult Education and Family Literacy Week

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

National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week  this year began on
September 19th   a day which also marked the 100th anniversary of the birth
in 1921 of Paulo Freire, the international giant of adult literacy
education who offered the world a Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Today, September 25, 2021, the final day of Adult Education and Family
Literacy Week, I celebrate Paulo Freire’s life by recalling my personal
knowledge of Paulo Freire based on the nine years, from 1987 through 1995,
during which I worked one week each year with him when we both served as
members of UNESCO’s International Jury for Literacy Prizes. I also relate
work in which both Paulo and I were discussed together.

The Oracy-to -Literacy Link

When he joined the Jury in 1987, Paulo brought his philosophy of literacy
for liberation and freedom to the evaluation of candidatures for literacy
prizes from countries where millions of adults were oppressed. He brought a
passion to the evaluation of candidatures, often expressed by clenching his
hands in a fist, clutching his chest and saying ‘I love this program!’. He
was also quick to provide a critical commentary when he thought that a
program had mistakenly claimed that it followed ‘the Freirean method’, and
he admonished the jury, pointing out that there was no such method.

Doing the work of the Jury was broken each day at mid-morning for taking
coffee or tea in the Café on the 7th floor of UNESCO House in Paris. Here
we discussed some of the main ideas that had guided both Paulo’s and my own
work on teaching literacy. One idea that we shared was the importance of
the development of knowledge through the oral language that could be drawn
on in developing the written language (Sticht, 2017). In an interview with
Freire in 1997, just six months before he died, Taylor (2006) captured
Paulo’s thoughts about the relationship between one’s oral language and
literacy when Freire noted that  “…I emphasize a critical understanding of
people’s language. It’s necessary to respect the syntax of the literacy
student, which is also a syntax of his or her social class. It is from the
universe of the student’s thought and language that the process of literacy
learning, the process of mastering the written representation of your
language, should begin.”

This line of reasoning about the oracy-to-literacy transfer process lead to
methods of teaching aimed at motivating adults to learn to read and write.
To start the process, Freire introduced the use of ‘multiple literacies’,
though he did not call his practice that. He used pictures that adult
literacy students ‘read’ to distinguish what in the picture was due to
nature and what was due to culture, i.e. human actions.

He listened to learners using oracy for “reading the world” in discussing
the various situations depicted in the pictures demonstrating via the oral
language that they possessed much knowledge about the world, including both
nature and culture. This knowledge was drawn on in teaching  reading of
”the word” and was used extensively to build on the knowledge that adults
possessed and to teach them to read the language that they already used to
express their knowledge. Then new knowledge was introduced to stimulate
adults to take actions to change their oppressive situations.

Functional Contexts for Literacy Education

Two years after Paulo had joined the UNESCO Literacy Prize Jury in 1987,
Gedal (1989) wrote, “Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is
a strong advocate of participatory, learner-centered literacy teaching for
adults. His work is aimed at developing "critical consciousness" about
social, political and economic contradictions in society that will enable
people to act for social change. Torn Sticht, author of Functional Context
Education, is an advocate of occupationally related basic skills
programs….He has been critical of the use of traditional concepts of
reading difficulty levels in adult literacy and emphasizes the importance
of context in literacy learning.” This focus upon “context” in forming an
approach to helping adults acquire literacy undergirded both Paulo’s and my
own stance in developing literacy programs for adults.


The Harvard Connection

I first became aware of Paulo’s work when he wrote an article in a special
issue on illiteracy in the Harvard Educational Review (HER) of 1970 while
he was in residence at Harvard University. That issue of HER also included
articles by David Harmon, from Israel, who was attending Harvard at the
time, and Jeanne Chall, Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education. In 1975, I was a Visiting Associate Professor in the
Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) where I had the great pleasure
of regularly meeting and having coffee, and perhaps a little kuchen, while
discussing adult literacy education with both David and Jeanne.

A dozen years later my enjoyment of conversation and coffee drinking
brought me into contact with Paulo Freire, who, as noted above, had also
worked at Harvard. In Paris,  while viewing the Eiffel Tower across the
Champ de Mars from the restaurant on UNESCO’s 7th floor,  Paulo, other
members of UNESCO’s International Literacy Prize Jury, and I continued this
discussion of the role of adult literacy education in bringing lives of
productive work and political liberty to adult learners around the world.
Paulo is gone, but the conversation goes on.

For more memories of Paulo Freire from his admirers around the world see
Wilson, Park, & Colon-Muniz (2010).


References

Gedal, S. (1989, Spring). Between Paulo Freire and Tom Sticht: Adult
education and job training at Boston Technical Center. Connections: A
Journal of Adult Literacy,Vol. 3, (54-62). (Available online using a Google
search)

Shanahan, T. & Neuman, S. (1997). Literacy research that makes a
difference. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 202-210. (Available online
using a Google search)

Sticht, T. (2017). From oracy to literacy and back again: Investing in the
education of adults to improve the educability of their children. Online
at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320024919_From_Oracy_to_Literacy_and_Back_Again_Investing_in_the_Education_of_Adults_To_Improve_the_Educability_of_Children

Taylor, S. (2006,May). An interview with Paulo Friere. Reflect: The
Magazine of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy
and Numeracy.(5). (pp/30-31).

Wilson, T., Park, P. & Colon-Munez, A. (Eds.) (2010). Memories of Paulo.
Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
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