Adult Education for Social Justice & Workforce Development

Submitted by Tom Sticht : Free Report: Adult Education for Social Justice & Workforce Development

Colleagues:
The month of November is a special month for adult education. On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the new President of the United States of America. President Johnson carried on many of President Kennedy’s plans to promote greater social justice for all in America. On July 2, 1964 he signed the Civil Rights Act. He signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. Then, on November 3, 1966, President Johnson signed the Adult Education Act into law.
 
The Adult Education Act was designed to provide programs of instruction for persons 18 years and older (later changed to 16 years and older) whose inability to read or write the English language constituted a substantial impairment of their ability to obtain employment, and it generally provided education for adults below the 9th grade level (later changed to include high school completion).
 
An Adult Literacy Education Trilogy
 
During  2017 I have prepared a trilogy of reports consisting of brief notes about history, research, policy, and practice in adult literacy education that I have written over the last two decades. The first report, entitled “Fighting Illiteracy in Times of War”, was released on September 11, 2017 (a relevant  report for this Nov. 11 Veterans Day, too). The second report, entitled “From Oracy to Literacy and Back Again: Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve the Educability of Children”, was released on September 19, 2017 (this was featured in the news section of the 15,000 member Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) during the month of October).
 
Now, to celebrate the enactment of the Adult Education Act on November 3, 1966, I am releasing the third report of the trilogy. Entitled “Adult Education for Social Justice & Workforce Development” the 40 page report includes 20 brief notes (see contents below), 15  illustrations, and a list of references. The various notes describe the work of adult educators, such as Harriet Jacobs, Cora Wilson Stewart, Susie Taylor, Septima Clark, Ambrose Caliver, Paulo Freire, Shirley Jackson, Cynthia Marano, Susan Reid, and Mike Rose to bring the written word to hundreds of thousands of adults from before the Civil War, through the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, and into the 21st century. Additionally, these notes address the need to value, develop appropriate programming, and invest in the educational development of America’s workforce.
 
Anyone wanting a free copy of the third report can send me an email with your email address and I will send a pdf file with the report to you. I have also reformatted all three reports into one e-book and if you would like a copy of this e-book just send me an email asking for the trilogy.
 
Tom Sticht 
Email: tgsticht@gmail.com

Report: Adult Education for Social Justice & Workforce Development
                                                Contents

1.Cora Wilson Stewart and the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates
2.Three Black Women in the Struggle for Adult Literacy and Civil Rights
3.SELMA: The March From Literacy to Voting Rights
4.Ambrose Caliver and Freedom’s People
5.The Struggle for Social Justice: The Legacy of Paulo Freire (1921-1997)
6.How “McNamara’s Moron Corps” Fought the “Poverty War” and Won!
7.Literacy and Human Resources Development at Work: Getting Double Duty Dollars
8.Investing in the Education of Adults to Improve Their Employability and the Educability of Their Children
9. Education and Training of Undereducated Adults in Hard Economic Time 
10. Toward the 21st Century Orchestration of Learning Contexts for Adults
11.Cognitive Robotics, Literacy, and Unemployment
12.A Need to “Simultanealize” Adult Basic Skills Education and Vocational Training
13.Embedded or Integrated LLN Programs: Another Approach
14.Higher Education Credentials, Higher Skills, and Lost Purchasing Power: A Dilemma for Workforce Development Policy and Practice
15.Are We Educating People Into Poverty?  The Workforce Development and Utilization Dilemma
16.On Workforce Development: Some Puzzling Findings From and For Adult Literacy Research
17.The Right to Read and to Work in Nontraditional Jobs for Women
18.Functional Context Education for Workforce Development
19.Boomerang Brings Déjà Vu: The Rediscovery of Functional Context Education in the 21st Century
20.Valuing America’s Workforce