November 1, 2007 is National Family Literacy Day

Improving Family Literacy By Increasing Investments in Adult Literacy
Education: Moving From a One Life Cycle to a Multiple Life Cycles Education
Policy

Tom Sticht
International consultant in Adult Education

Policymakers sometimes opt to fund early childhood education to "stop
illiteracy at the source" at the expense of adult literacy education
funding. In Canada in 2006 the new conservative government announced cuts
of CAN$17.7 million in what was already a skimpy federal budget for adult
literacy education. The Headline News web page of the National Adult
Literacy Database (NALD) of October 4, 2006 carried the following statement
from a government official (www.nald.ca Oct 4 06):

"The Tories rationalize the cuts by saying they want to focus instead on
better teaching children how to read and write, Treasury Board President
John Baird said last week.
He noted that governments need to more effectively use the $20 billion they
already spend on educating younger Canadians. ""This is repair work after
the fact,"" Baird said of adult literacy programs. ""We've got to (have a)
much greater focus on ensuring we get it right from the get-go, with the
first $20 billion, rather than doing it after the fact.""

This type of thinking has been often used to call for "stopping illiteracy
at the source," meaning with young children, at the expense of focusing
upon adult literacy education. But this is a mistaken understanding of "the
source of illiteracy" and ignores the role of adults as parents of children
and the intergenerational transfer of literacy from adults to their
children.

The Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy

In 1975, the Human Resources Research Organization published Reading for
Working, a book I edited which brought together a number of adult literacy
projects I had directed and a paper I had written for the U. S. government.
In the chapter dealing with the government paper, I reported on the
relationships between the reading scores on the 1971 National Assessment of
Educational Progress of young adults (17; 25—35 years old) and the
educational levels of the adult’s parents. Taking notice of the fact that
the young adult’s reading scores systematically increased as their parent’s
educational levels increased, I simply reported that adult education might
be more important than we thought because it could affect the literacy
ability of the adult’s children.

Later, in a report entitled "Literacy and Human Resources Development at
Work: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of
Children (Sticht, 1983) I argued that a body of research existed to suggest
that more highly educated parents transmit literacy intergenerationally via
oral language skills and the modeling of literacy skills. Therefore if we
could find ways to provide education for adults we might get double value
from education dollars because investing in the education of adults could
improve the educability of their children. I have referred to this as
getting "double duty dollars" when investing in adult education. We pay for
the adults' education, and we get improved education for both the adults and
their children.

Intergenerational Transmission of Literacy in the UK

Some years later that I came across an exceptionally well done book aimed at
helping adult literacy educators in the United Kingdom. The book was
published in 1975 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to go along
with a major adult literacy campaign that the BBC was carrying out. Called
the BBC Adult Literacy Handbook, the book was, and in my judgment still is,
one of the best introductions to adult literacy students and literacy
instruction for tutors, teachers, and others.

Of particular interest to me was the fact that the mere acorn of an idea I
had expressed that same year of 1975 in Reading for Working about the
relationship of parent’s education to their children’s reading ability,
even when the children had grown into young adulthood, was present in the
BBC Handbook as a full-grown oak tree sized concept about what I later
called the intergenerational transfer of literacy, and more recently a Life
Cycles education policy.

Here are some of the seminal ideas as presented in the BBC Handbook in 1975:

" From all the research on reading difficulty in schools, it is not
difficult to argue a most forcible case for the importance of certain
factors of family background to literacy. The term Cycle of Deprivation is
commonly used to describe the legacy of deprivation which passes down from
parent to child and cannot be broken by intervention at only one point in
the circle. If a child grows up deprived of, and unaccustomed to, books and
libraries and opportunities to practise verbal skills, then this will affect
his progress and he, in turn, unless intervention is made, will see no
pleasure and relevance in reading and will pass this attitude on to his
children. Researchers have plotted the crucial importance of parental
interest: so much is a confirmation of commonsense observation."

The BBC Handbook presents a very well done graphic which depicts a Multiple
Life Cycles education policy and shows how illiteracy or semi-literacy is
passed from one generation of semi-literate parents to their children, who
then become the semi-literate parents of another generation of
illiterates/semi-literates. Yet despite this clear understanding of the
intergenerational cycles of illiteracy/semi-literacy documented so well by
the BBC Handbook over thirty years ago, today the United Kingdom, like most
nations, including the United States,  pursues a policy of education
focusing on one life cycle, a "cradle to grave" or "lifelong education"
policy.

More Recent Research on the Intergenerational Effects of Parents Education
Level

Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004)  from the Center for Research on the
Wider Benefits of Learning in London reported that "The intergenerational
transmission of educational success is a key driver of the persistence of
social class differences and a barrier to equality of opportunity
.
Parental beliefs, values, aspirations and attitudes (termed here
‘cognitions’) are very important, as is parental well-being. 
Parenting
skills in terms of warmth, discipline and educational behaviours are all
major factors in the formation of school success. 
 We conclude that the
intergenerational transmission of educational success is a key element in
equality of opportunity. There are substantial benefits of education that
accrue to individuals and society in terms of what education enables
parents to pass on to their children."

The November 2005 REFLECT magazine article by John Bynner and Samantha
Parsons, entitled "New light on literacy and numeracy" found that parent’s
basic skills were related to their children’s achievement in literacy and
numeracy and stated, "Although much more penetrating analysis will be
needed to understand the basis of intergenerational skill transfer, it
seems that parent literacy and numeracy is an important part of it,
especially in the case of parents whose skills are at the lowest levels."


>From Parents to Progeny: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy


Given the important intergenerational effects of parent’s education level on
the achievement of their children, I believe we need to shift our education
policies from a focus on one life cycle to a focus on "multiple life
cycles" education.  Such a policy would explicitly recognize that adults
transfer their educational achievements to the achievement of their
children, as illustrated so well in the BBC Handbook some thirty years ago.
It would also recognize that adult education should be valued as much as is
childhood education, and that nations should provide adult education
systems on a par with children’s education systems.   The importance of
adult’s education for children has been succinctly expressed by the South
American educationist, Rosa Maria Torres. She has argued that "the
children’s right to education should include the right to educated
parents."

Poorly educated children are the source of adult functional illiteracy, and
functionally illiterate adults are the source of poorly educated children.
Perhaps through education based on a Multiple Life Cycles policy,  in which
children are guaranteed their right to educated parents, the vicious
intergenerational cycles of functional illiteracy can be stopped at their
sources. It is time to implement Multiple Life Cycles education policies in
the UK, US, and other nations. Thirty years is enough time to wait.

NOTE: For additional information see: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles
Education Policy: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the
Educability of Children.
This paper argues for education policy that recognizes that literacy is
transferred across generations from parents to their children. Therefore,
we need to have a much larger investment in the education of youth and
adults who are parents or who will be parents. Adult literacy education
affects multiple life cycles. An extensive review is presented of research
on early childhood education, relationships of parent's education to
children's literacy, parenting and preschool effectiveness, and other
issues. Online at:
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/sticht/06dec/06dec.pdf

References

Bynner, J. & Parsons, S. (2005, November). New light on literacy and
numeracy. In: REFLECT online magazine. London: National Research and
Development Center for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. (www.nrdc.org.uk)

Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates (2004, May). A Model of the
Inter-Generational
Transmission of Educational Success. London: Center for Research on the
Wider Benefits of Learning

Sticht, T. G. (1983, February). Literacy and Human Resources Development at
Work: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of
Children. Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organization.

Torres, R. M. (2003). The fundamental linkages between child, youth and
adult learning and education. http://www.iiz
dvv.de/englisch/Publikationen/Supplements/60_2003/
eng_someconclusionsandelements.htm

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/Fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net