From tgsticht at gmail.com Fri Sep 1 18:39:05 2023 From: tgsticht at gmail.com (Thomas Sticht) Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2023 10:39:05 -0700 Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] September Highlights for Adult education Message-ID: 09/01/2023 September Highlights for Adult Education and Family Literacy Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education (Ret.) The month of September offers two special days and one special week for celebrating adult literacy educators and learners in the United States and around the world. *September 4 Labor Day:* On Labor Day we celebrate the workers of our Nation and thank them for providing the abounding plenty enriching the lives of the large majority of adults and children living in the United States of America. We also recommit ourselves to helping those who are not sharing in this plenty, as was done some six decades ago when President Lyndon Johnson initiated a national ?war on poverty?. A decade later I wrote about reading and career education in military and civilian job contexts and discussed skirmishes in the ?war on poverty? aimed at helping low literate adults qualify for work in both of these functional contexts (Sticht, 1975). This work helped stimulate the passage of the National Workplace Literacy Program (NWLP) by the U.S. Congress (Rosen, 2008). The NWLP was later discontinued but workplace literacy and career education programs have continued to operate. Later, Rosen (2017) served as Program Management Moderator for a webinar on creating career pathways for Adult Basic Education and English Language Learners featuring examples of integrated education and training workforce programs. Interestingly, in 1990 I chaired the California Workforce Literacy Task Force established by the State Legislature that called for greater investments in workforce literacy education. Now, over three decades later, California?s Employment & Training Program (2023) is funding educators to create or expand workplace literacy training in the State. Hopefully this will enable many more citizens to celebrate Labor Day with better education, income, and civic engagement. *September 8 International Literacy Day.* From 1979 through 2003 I served on UNESCO?s International Literacy Prize Jury. Upon my retirement from the Jury in 2003 Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, then Director General of UNESCO, noted that I had ??consistently? maintained that the literacy prizes should focus upon adult literacy education.? However, nowadays the literacy prizes may be awarded for educational programs for children, adolescents, or adults. UNESCO (2023) reports that in 2020, at least one out of seven youth and adults aged 15 years and over worldwide (763 million) lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills. In addition, a significant number of children, including those who are enrolled in school, are not acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills, while 244 million children and young people between the ages of 6 and 18 are not enrolled in school. Given the tough financial times of nations around the world and the massive needs of literacy education to boost economic and social development of nations, I still think that greater investments in adult literacy education offer a cost-beneficial way to boost the educational achievements of both adults and their children. As I noted over a decade ago (Sticht, 2011), ?Educating those who are, or about to become , parents offers the possibility of obtaining payoffs for future generations even before conception occurs. And, if we focus our limited resources on reaching first-time parents, then one ?dose? of parenting education could also benefit succeeding children?. International Literacy Day 2023 will focus on ?Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies?. I add: Invest in the education of adults to improve the educability of their children. *September18 to 23 Adult Education and Family Literacy Week (AEFL**)*: A focal idea for this week is family literacy and the intergenerational transfer of cognitive skills from parents to their children. Almost 50 years ago, in a book on Reading for Working, I presented data showing that as education levels of parents increased so did the literacy skills of their adult children (Sticht, 1975). Thirteen years later, in 1988, I convened a national conference in San Diego, California on The Intergenerational Transfer of Cognitive Skills wherein family literacy programs were described in which the education of both parents and their children in literacy and other abilities took place (Beeler, 1992). It was also reported that the federal government would soon be providing funds for a family literacy oriented program called Even Start. *National Follow On*-The Even Start program championed by Congressman William Goodling provided funds for family literacy programs from 1988 through 2011 (Clymer, et al., 2017). However, post-2011 many states and foundations kept family literacy programs funded and upon Rep. Goodling?s retirement the Congress honored him by establishing the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Pennsylvania State University. Clymer, et al., (2017) present a comprehensive report on the status of family literacy programs. A 2021 infographic with additional information about the national status of family literacy programs in the United States is available on the Goodling Institute web site. *International Follow On-*Four years following the 1988 Conference on the Intergenerational Transfer of Cognitive Skills, working in 1993 as a member of UNESCO?s International Literacy Prize Jury at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, I proposed that UNESCO?s forthcoming International Year of the Family 1994 be celebrated in part by the convening of a World Symposium on Family Literacy. This idea was accepted and UNESCO convened the Symposium in Paris on 3-5 October 1994. The 1994 World Symposium was followed-up by UNESCO and numerous member states and some two decades later the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning produced a report on ?Learning Families ? Intergenerational Approaches to Literacy Teaching and Learning? (Hanemann, 2015). A sample of more than two dozen programs from six different regions of the world illustrate the widespread flourishing of intergenerational skills programs since the San Diego conference of 1988. References Beeler, M. (1992). Introduction to Part II: Intergenerational Intervention Programs. In: Sticht,T., The Beeler, M., & McDonald, B. (Eds.). The Intergenerational Transfer of Cognitive Skills: Volume I: Programs, Policy, and Research Issues. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.Corporation. Clymer, C., Toso, B., Grinder, E., & Sauder, R. (2017). Changing the Course of Family Literacy. Policy Paper. Online at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED574448.pdf Employment & Training Program. (2023). Workplace Literacy Program. Online at: https://etp.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/70/2022/10/ETP_WorkforceLiteracyPilotProgram-Guidelines.pdf Hanemann, U. (2015). Learning Families: Intergenerational Approaches to Literacy Teaching and Learning. Online at: https://uil.unesco.org/literacy/learning-families/learning-families-intergenerational-approaches-literacy-teaching-and Rosen, D. (2008). International Workforce Literacy Review ? United States A report prepared for the Department of Labour. Online at: https://thehub.swa.govt.nz/assets/documents/International%20Workforce%20Literacy%20Review,%20United%20States.pdf Rosen, D. (2017). Webinar: From Policy to Practice: Designing Career Pathways for ABE/ESL Online at: *https://community.lincs.ed.gov/sites/default/files/9.11_ABE%2BESL_CP%20%284%29%20%281%29%20508%20%288%29_0.pdf * Sticht, T. (2011). Getting it Right from the Start: The Case for Early Parenthood Education. Online at: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/Sticht.pdf Sticht, T. (1975). Reading For Working: A Functional Literacy Anthology. Online at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED102532.pdf UNESCO (2023) Concept Note for International Literacy Day 2023. 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