Colleagues: In May 2012 the Education Digest (EdDigest.com) published an abridged copy of my paper entitled Getting It Right From the Start: The Case for Early Parenthood Education. The paper appeared in its original, full form in the American Educator, a journal of the American Federation of Teachers (aft.org) for Fall 2011. This month the November 2012 EdDigest has published an abridged version of my paper entitled Educated Parents, Educated Children: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy. This paper first appeared in the Fall 2010 edition of Education Canada, the journal of the Canadian Education Association.
The 2010 article argues for more investment in adult education because such education often affects the educational achievements of the adult’s children. The first part of the article discusses factors which hold back funding for adult education in favor of trying to stop educational problems and poor literacy at the start, i.e., in childhood. It argues that brain science should not be used to argue for billions of dollars for early childhood education while federal funding is just over 500 million for all fifty states. It makes the point that the brain can benefit from stimulation across the lifespan and that the brains of adults which are improved by education can have a positive impact on the brains of the adult’s children. The article goes on to discuss issues of those thinking that low intelligence or low aptitude in adulthood makes it unprofitable to spend money on trying to educate adults. The rest of the article reviews lots of research showing that much of the benefits of early childhood education may actually come from the changes the education makes in children’s parents rather than from the experiences with the children in programs.
The 2012 article continues the argument for investing more in the education of adults and illustrates the intergenerational outcomes of adult education resulting from the oracy-to-literacy transfer effect and the intergenerational transfer of non-cognitive (character) traits. It presents research evidence indicating that the most famous early childhood program, the Perry Preschool project, had a greater impact on children’s character traits than their cognitive abilities, and that most of the return on investment in that program resulted not from cognitive achievements but rather on behavioral outcomes such as reduced out-of-wedlock pregnancies, less delinquency, less criminal activities, and less drug use in the experimental preschool group. It also suggests that much of this character development resulted from the effects of the programs on the children’s parents.
Both of the full articles are available online for free downloading and can be found by using the my last name and the titles in a Google search. Taken together, these two articles include a lot of the information which I present in my free workshop on The Intergenerational Effects of Adult Education, to be presented next in Waterloo, Iowa on November 20, 2012. For information about the workshop contact me at tsticht@aznet.net.
Tom Sticht
Comments
There is no shortage of evidence for this, but how can we best help the disadvantaged children?
My answer is to modernise English spelling, so that even children of educationally unsupportive parents have a better chance of learning to read and write, gain earlier access to rest of the curriculum and remain motivated to learn.
I see the inconsistencies of English spelling which make both learning to read and write exceptionally difficult as a major educational handicap. I believe that until English spelling gets made substantially more regular, educational underachievement in Anglophone countries will remain depressingly high.
Masha BellEx English teacher, now independent literacy researcher
Author of ebook SPELLING IT OUT (2012),
'Rules and Exceptions of English Spelling' (2009),
'Understanding English Spelling' (2004),
www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk
http://EnglishSpellingProblems.blogspot.com
http://ImprovingEnglishSpelling.blogspot.com
and Youtube video 'Why improve English spelling?'
I am supervising 37 tutors working with over 200 children in Florida. Our job is to help the students do well on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The curriculum we are using is designed to teach test "strategies". Frankly I am appalled that such strategies as "finding main idea"; "making predictions"; "Identifying author's purpose" and "Guessing word meaning from context" are being mandated for teachers to teach. I see so many children who cannot read well or dislike reading after a few years of this kind of instruction. I would never permit such instruction for my children because I happen to be educated in more effective methods of teaching children how to read and getting them to like reading and books. Years from now we may be looking back at the "startegies" and wonder "What were they thinking?"
Sharon Hillestad,
Clearwater, Fl
I'm grateful, actually, to the people who told me to pause and think about main ideas and predictions. It really does add to the reading experience; I was a "charge throught the story!" reader and missed all kinds of nuances.
Of critical importance is that yes, I also received solid, well-grounded instruction in the code.
I'm thinking of "startegies" as a coinable term, too...
I don't think Tom's posting here was seeking alternatives to current teaching methodologies, but rather was referring to a body of work he has presented before that argues for adult education over endless investment in early childhood education. Every public education teacher learns during their first year of parent-teacher conferences that the problem with some kids is their parents! In fact, my experience in elementary teaching made me realize I needed to deal with adults if I really wanted to impact children.
For me, the best breaks I got in life was when my dad brought me to Alaska at age 11, and when he kicked me out of the family home at age 17--before I graduated high school. Unlike my siblings, I figured it out: Parents are the first teachers, and if they teach the wrong things to their kids, the kids continue a flawed legacy.
Donn Liston, MEd
Anchorage, Alaska
I agree with Mr. Liston. Dr. Sticht has long been a proponent of adult education as an important step in breaking the intergenerational cycle of low literacy. Parents who themselves understand the value and importance of education pass those traits onto their children. Family literacy programs have a 20-year history of lifting families out of poverty and low literacy by providing educational opportunities to parents while helping them understand their role as their children’s first teachers.