Recently I had a conversation with an adult educator who was worried that my ESL class in the library was in competition with the classes offered by the local community college.
The person’s concern was centered on the perception that, if people attended my class or other classes in local community centers, then attendance would fall in the community college and …classes would be cancelled and…. teachers would lose their jobs.
I explained that, first of all, my students are working adults with families, who cannot attend regular classes and prefer my class because they can come when they want.
And, secondly, it would be much better if we cooperated with each other instead of setting up this false notion of “competition”.
I also explained that my class is bilingual for those who do not do well in an English Only class, and that my class could serve as a Transition to EO classes. As a matter of fact, students from my classes often go on to study for their GED at the local CC.
I also mentioned that, actually, if my program were adopted by a community college, attendance would rise, and the “dropout” rate would fall, in my opinion.
All that is necessary is for us all to learn how to work together.
In any case, this conversation seems to represent the prevailing attitude in adult education. Or does it?
I am very interested in reading your opinions.
Comments
Cooperation that increases the number of English learners being provided lessons and improving their English is so badly needed, that anyone worried about competition simply lacks knowledge. With 35 million (depending on whose stats one uses) people in the U.S. having third grade or below English abilities, and only 750,000 Adult Education English seats available annually, why would we even be concerned about competition?
Thanks 2learn-English - in my experience the lure of money stops people from cooperating. In this case, of course, it makes no sense. Anyone should be able to figure out that, by working together in the way that I have outlined above, probably the agencies involved would be eligible for funding beyond government aid, through foundation grants and other fund-raising activities.
The best example of the problem is the X Prize being discussed in another group. Apparently only one group out of five or six will get the prize of tens of thousands of dollars. This to me is not only unfortunate but even harmful, mainly because there should be no doubt that the "losers" would probably have a lot to offer, but will suffer due to lack of funds. Why not share the funds among them?
In short, among the "insiders" there is no real support for programs outside the parameters of "official" adult ed. I know first hand from my own experence.