3/13/2013
Mahatma Gandhi, Preschool, and Adult Education
Tom Sticht International Consultant in Adult Education
On November 5, 2011, President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech in which he said “Improving early learning programs for children birth through third grade is critical work and plays a fundamental role in building a cradle to college and career education system for our children.”
Two years later, following up on President Obama’s State of the Union Address for 2013, in which he called for making large investments in early childhood education, Secretary Duncan and Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius posted a message on the Huffington Post Education Website in support of the President’s message. They stated that the President’s goal would be achieved “through a new plan that will deliver high-quality preschool for every American child, and enhance early learning services for children from birth through age three.”
In both of these speeches the Secretaries of Education and Health & Human Services focused upon starting educational interventions for children from birth. However, as I have argued earlier, this is the culmination of arguments about the K-12 system’s continuous production millions of functionally illiterate adults. When the high schools are blamed for graduating functionally illiterate adults, they blame the middle schools for sending them illiterate students. The middle school then blames the primary schools for not teaching children to read and write. The primary schools blame the kindergarten schools, the kindergarten schools then blame the Head Start preschool programs, and in recent years, Head Start programs have blamed parents and we now have Early Head Start programs which start at birth.
Having backed-up blame for poor educational outcomes for the K-12 system from High School graduation to birth, there appears to be no further back they can go, so the Secretaries of Education and Health & Human Services have stated that the President will “Launch a new Early Head Start-Child Care partnership to significantly expand the availability of high-quality early learning opportunities for infants and toddlers.”
Mahatma Gandhi: Education Starts Before Birth
The year 2013 marks the 65th anniversary of the assassination in 1948 of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s “mahatma” or “great sage.” In one of his many comments on education, Gandhi made an observation about the limits of the approach the Obama administration proposes to “stop illiteracy at the source” with an Early Head Start program. He said:
Quote: “Again, I must have my eye on the children right from their birth. I will go a step further and say that the work of the educationist begins even before that. For instance, if a woman becomes pregnant, Ashadevi will go to her and tell her: ‘I am a mother as you will be. I can tell you from my experience what you should do to ensure the health of your unborn baby and your own.’ She will tell the husband what his duty towards his wife is and about his share in the care of their expected baby. Thus the basic school teacher will cover the entire span of life. Naturally, his activity will cover adult education.” End quote
It is this focus upon adult education and the effects it can have on children’s educational achievement even before children are conceived and during gestation that I find missing from the Obama administrations strategy for educational progress. The articles by the Secretaries of Education and Health & Human Services never mention the importance of adult education in overcoming the intergenerational transfer of low social mobility and educational underachievement.
In a 2011 article for the American Educator, entitled Getting it Right From the Start: The Case for Early Parenthood Education, I review research indicating that effective preschool education rests heavily on the education of the parents of the children in the programs. As Gandhi suggested, investments in adult education help to improve the educational achievements of children before birth and afterwards.
Given the importance of adult education for both adults and their children, increasing investments in the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, a component of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, should be an integral component of any initiative to enlarge and enhance preschool education.
[NOTE: For information about my free workshop on Intergenerational Workforce Literacy Development which expands on the foregoing go to the website of the Michigan Association of Community and Adult Education: www.macae.org/]