[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Adult Literacy and Basic Education in the United States

[P David Pearson]

As always, Tom, we appreciate your generosity in sharing your latest
insights.
Happy Juneteenth,
David P.

On Mon, Jun 20, 2022 at 2:45 PM Thomas Sticht <tgsticht at gmail.com> wrote:

> Greetings, Reading Hall of Fame colleagues! Twenty years ago I wrote a
> brief chapter about the history of the adult education and literacy system
> in the United States (Sticht, 2002). Seven years later I prepared a chapter
> for the Cambridge University Press about adult literacy education in
> industrialized nations, with a focus on the United States, United Kingdom,
> and Canada (Sticht, 2009). Then a dozen years later, in February of 2021, I
> was invited by the Oxford University Press to prepare a chapter on adult
> literacy and basic education in the United States. Since I had already
> written for Cambridge University I felt that it would only be fair to do
> something for Oxford University, too, so I agreed to write the paper. The
> article is now complete and available online (see below).
>
> The summary for the article states:
>
> "From colonial times to the modern era the United States has provided
> adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) for those adults seeking better
> work, a better home life for themselves and their families, greater
> educational achievement for their children, and engagement in civic duties
> for community development. In the Moonlight Schools of Kentucky, illiterate
> country folk learned to read and write to run their farms and towns better.
> In the cities, immigrants learned English and their civic duties as
> citizens in programs of “Americanization.”
>
> By the 1960s, civil and voting rights movements helped tens of thousands
> of African Americans learn to read and write so they could exercise their
> rights of self-government through democracy. In 1966, the United States
> established for the first time a national Adult Education and Literacy
> System (AELS) formed in a partnership of the federal and 50 state
> governments. From serving some 50 thousand or so adults in its early years
> the AELS enrollments rose over the next 35 years to around 4 million.
>
> Then, following the implementation of a National Reporting System with
> stringent performance accountability requirements, enrollments fell over
> the next 20 years to less than 1.2 million. But during all these years the
> AELS provided basic education aimed at achieving general educational
> outcomes and benefited from research and development projects leading to
> the implementation of special programs in which the basic skills of English
> language, reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught contextualized
> within the domains of workplace, health, civics, family, and digital
> knowledge.
>
> At the end of the first two decades of the 21st century, the AELS had seen
> its mandate extended from helping adults gain contextualized skills and
> knowledge, and the achievement of a secondary school level of education, to
> gaining access to postsecondary, college, and specialized certificate
> programs within a career pathway with recurring education and
> credentialing. There is increasing interest in moving forward with ALBE
> within a full “lifelong” and “lifewide” AELS."
>
> Reviewers of the article commented:
>
> Reviewer # 1: “…* an extraordinary job of summarizing developments in the
> US.  … knowledge and portrayal of how developments were linked including
> their individual and collective significance are powerful.  The details
> provided of the changing nature of these developments, their antecedents
> and influences afford a narrative which brings to the fore historic figures
> and their role as well as how developments resonated with America’s
> economic and political developments.” *
>
> * Reviewer # 2: “This is a superb, detailed and exhaustive overview of the
> field drawing upon both contemporary data and a broad historical
> understanding of its development and foundations. The author is the leader
> in documenting, advocating and building this field over many decades, and
> this piece will be a crucial update in a period where, as this contribution
> establishes, the challenges of extending adult literacy programs and
> policies remain acute.”*
>
> *I hope some will find this article of interest and use.* It is entitled
> "Adult Literacy and Basic Education in the United States" and is available
> online by subscription at:
>
>
> https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-1744?rskey=oiUZ2C&result=1
>
> For those seeking additional information about adult literacy education in
> the U.S., U.K., and Canada see:
>
> Sticht, T. (2009). Adult literacy education in industrialized nations. In
> D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy.
> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pp. 535-547)
>
> Sticht, T. (2002). The rise of the Adult Education and Literacy System in
> the United States: 1600- 2000. In: J. Comings, B. Garner, & C. Smith (Eds.)
> Annual Review of Adult Learning and Literacy. Vol. 3. San Francisco, CA:
> Jossey-Bass. Online at: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED508720
>
>
>
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

*“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life
in your years."**‑—Abraham Lincoln*
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
P. David Pearson
Evelyn Lois Corey *Emeritus* Professor of Instructional Science
Graduate School of Education
University of California, Berkeley

email:  ppearson at berkeley.edu
other e-mail:  pdavidpearsondean at gmail.com
website for publications:  www.pdavidpearson.org
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