Hello Rochelle,

Thanks for raising this issue.  I'm cross-posting to FocusOnBasics, because 
of a thread on learners views, and copying to Alan Wells at the UK Basic 
Skills Agency, mentioned in my postscript.

In the text you quote in your email, Tom Sticht discusses why many people 
believe that adults can't learn to read, and suggests it is because people 
tend to put nature before nurture.  But he does not consider that poor 
literacy of adults may be due to poor teaching of those adults as children. 
This is a very strong argument towards nurture!  Let me elaborate.

There is an underlying assumption that learning to read is difficult, and 
that many people with LD or dyslexia cannot be taught to read.  But the 
experience of the Clackmannanshire study was that 100% of school children in 
a deprived area of Scotland could be taught to read, given the right 
teaching method.  Is there any logical argument why adults could not all be 
taught to read by the same method - synthetic phonics?

The idea that you can "mix and match" methods according to the "learning 
style" of children, putting them in the right "learning environment" and 
addressing their "psychological needs", has been a failure, and now, after 
decades of failed teaching, we have one in five adults (in UK, US, Canada..) 
unable to read satisfactorily, costing the economy around 1% GDP.

What is more, when asked about their reading problems, the adults blame 
themselves!  To quote from another NIFL message (see FocusOnBasics 337 
learners on learning to read):  "Their focus makes clear that the starting 
place for success is within them."

So I'd reinforce Tom's message - keep on at the teaching.  But I would like 
to see a study on whether synthetic phonics works as well for adults, as it 
appears to do for kids.

Cheers,

John

P.S.  There has been some doubt on the merit of synthetic phonics (where 
segmentation and blending is done with individual phonemes) over other 
phonics methods.  In particular a paper by Torgerson et al. threw doubt on 
the supremecy of synthetic phonics over analytic phonics and other methods. 
This has raised doubts for others, such as the Basic Skills Agency in the 
UK, see:
 http://www.basic-skills.co.uk/site/page.php?cms=2&p=1723.

But the Torgerson document has been convincingly rebuffed by Diane 
McGuinness, see http://www.rrf.org.uk/Torgersonarticle.pdf, to quote:

"This is a dense document, with numerous tables and appendices, arcane 
discussions of statistical minutiae and issues regarding experimental 
design, etc., all to the end (it appears) of drawing a vague set of 
conclusions which lead the reader to believe that synthetic phonics 
programmes have not been proven to be effective beyond other methods by any 
margin sufficient to be trustworthy. The reality is, that every statement 
under the heading key findings is incorrect or seriously compromised by the 
true facts."

and later...

"When the results for onset-rime/analogy based phonics programmes were 
compared to those for phoneme-based synthetic phonics instruction, there was 
another parting of the ways. Rime/analogy programmes were singularly 
unsuccessful, producing an effect size of .28. The pooled data for the 
phoneme-based programmes on their own produced an effect-size shot of around 
1.0 (one-standard deviation advantage over the comparison groups). This 
effect is very large, and it is reliable."

-----

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Try WordAloud with synthetic phonics:
http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm
Tel: +44 208 742 3170  Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk



----- Original Message ----- 
From: RKenyon721 at aol.com
To: learningdisabilities at nifl.gov
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 4:28 AM
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 471] Adults Can't Learn to Read - by 
TomSticht


Hello all,

If you have never read or attended a presentation delivered by Tom Sticht, 
you are in for a treat.  Below, please find a message that is being posted 
for him.


Rochelle Kenyon, Moderator
National Institute for Literacy Learning Disabilities Discussion List
RKenyon721 at aol.com

To subscribe:
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/Learningdisabilities

To view all archived messages from the LD Discussion List at:
http://www.nifl.gov/lincs/discussions/list_archives.html


June 12, 2006

Theoretically You Can’t Teach Adults to Read and Write:
But Just Keep On Doing It

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Why is it so hard to get funding for adult literacy education? Innumerable
studies, reports, TV shows, and statistical surveys in most of the
industrialized nations of the world declare that their nation is being
brought to its economic knees because of widespread low basic skills
(literacy, numeracy) amongst the adult population. But repeated calls for 
funding commensurate with the size of the problem go unanswered. Why?

Beneath the popular pronouncements of educators, industry leaders, and 
government officials about the importance of adult basic skills development 
there flows an undercurrent of disbelief about the abilities of illiterates 
or the poorly literate to ever improve much above their present learning. 
This was encountered close to a hundred years ago when Cora Wilson Stewart 
started the Moonlight Schools of Kentucky in 1911. Her claim that adults 
could learn to read and write met with skepticism. As she reported, Quote: 
"Some educators, however, declared preposterous the claims we made that 
grown people were learning to read and write. It was contrary to the 
principles of psychology, they said."   End Quote

Today that undercurrent of disbelief still flows, but today it carries with
it the flotsam and jetsam of "scientific facts" from genetics science,
brain science, and psychological science. Look here at objects snatched
from the undercurrent of disbelief stretching back for just a decade and a
half.

2006. Ann Coulter is a major voice in the conservative political arena. In
her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Chapter 7 The Left’s War on 
Science: Burning Books to Advance "Science" pages 172-174)  she clearly 
defends the ideas given in Murray & Hernstein’s book The Bell Curve 
regarding the genetic basis of intelligence. By extension,  since The Bell 
Curve uses reading and math tests in the Armed Forces Qualification Test 
(AFQT), Coulter is discussing the genetic basis of literacy and numeracy. In 
her book she says about The Bell Curve book:

Quote: "Contrary to the party line denying that such a thing as IQ existed, 
the book methodically demonstrated that IQ exists, it is easily measured, it 
is heritable, and it is extremely important. …Among many other things, IQ is 
a better predictor than socioeconomic status of poverty, unemployment, 
criminality, divorce, single motherhood, workplace injuries, and high school 
dropout rates.  …Although other factors influence IQ, such as a good 
environment and nutrition, The Bell Curve authors estimated that IQ was 
about 40 to 80 percent genetic." (p. 173) End Quote

Coulter goes on to discuss the misuse of science in the same chapter in
relation to AIDS and homosexuality, feminism, trial-lawyers law suits, DDT 
and environmentalists, abortion and stem cell research, and other topics 
that are controversial among large segments of the population but of 
mainstream concern in the far right conservative base in the United States. 
Because of her position as a best-selling author and spokesperson for 
conservative groups, Ann Coulter’s ideas about the genetic basis of 
intelligence and high school dropouts can have a profound impact upon 
political thinking about basic skills education among adults who have not 
achieved well.

2005. The Nobel Prize winning economist James J. Heckman  in an interview at 
the Federal Reserve Bank region in Chicago discussed his ideas about 
cognitive skills and their malleability in later life with  members of a 
presidential commission consisting of  former U.S. senators, heads of 
federal agencies, tax attorneys and academic economists. Later in his 
interview he discusses what Adam Smith, in his The Wealth of Nations said 
and why he, Heckman, disagrees with Smith.

According to Heckman, Adam Smith said, Quote: "… people are basically born 
the same and at age 8 one can't really see much difference among them. But 
then starting at age 8, 9, 10, they pursue different fields, they
specialize and they diverge. In his mind, the butcher and the lawyer and
the journalist and the professor and the mechanic, all are basically the
same person at age 8." End Quote Heckman disagrees with this and says:

Quote: This is wrong. IQ is basically formed by age 8, and there are huge
differences in IQ among people. Smith was right that people specialize
after 8, but they started specializing before 8. On the early formation of
human skill, I think Smith was wrong, although he was right about many
other things. … I think these observations on human skill formation are 
exactly why the job training programs aren't working in the United States 
and why many remediation programs directed toward disadvantaged young adults 
are so ineffective. And that's why the distinction between cognitive and 
noncognitive skill is so important, because a lot of the problem with 
children from disadvantaged homes is their values, attitudes and 
motivations. …Cognitive skills such as IQ can't really be changed much after 
ages 8 to 10. But with noncognitive skills there's much more malleability. 
That's the point I was making earlier when talking about the prefrontal 
cortex. It remains fluid and adaptable until the early 20s. That's why 
adolescent mentoring programs are as effective as they are. Take a 
13-year-old. You're not going to raise the IQ of a 13-year-old, but you can 
talk the 13-year-old out of dropping out of school. Up to a point you can 
provide surrogate parenting. End Quote

Here Heckman seems to think of the IQ as something relatively fixed at an 
early age and not likely to be changed later in life. But if IQ is measured 
in The Bell Curve, a book in which Heckman found some merit, using the AFQT, 
which in turn is a literacy and numeracy test, then this would imply that 
Heckman thinks the latter may not be very malleable in later life. This 
seems consistent with his belief that remediation programs for adults are 
ineffective and do not make very wise investments.

2000. It is easy to slip from talking about adults with low literacy ability
to talking about adults with low intelligence. On October 2, 2000, Dan
Seligman, columnist at Forbes magazine, wrote about the findings of the
National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) of 1993 and said, Quote: "But note
that what’s being measured here is not what you’ve been thinking all your 
life as "literacy." The cluster of abilities being examined is obviously a 
proxy for plain old "intelligence." End Quote He then goes on to argue that 
government programs won’t do much about this problem of low intelligence, 
and, by extension, of low literacy.

These types of popular press articles can stymie funding for adult literacy 
education. That is one reason why it is critical that when national
assessments of cognitive skills, including literacy, are administered, we
need to be certain about just what it is we are measuring. Unfortunately, 
that is not the case with the 1993 NALS or the more recent 2003 National 
Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). These assessments leave open the 
possibility of being called "intelligence" tests leading some, like 
Seligman, to the general conclusion that the less literate are simply the 
less intelligent and society might as well cast them off – their 
"intelligence genes" will not permit them to ever reach Level 3 or any other 
levels at the high end of cognitive tests.

1998.  Dr. G. Reid L yon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human 
Development provided an Overview of Reading and Literacy Initiatives to the 
U. S. Congress Committee on Labor and Human Resources on April 28, 1998. In 
his testimony he stated that in learning to read it is important for 
children to possess good abilities in phonemic analysis. He stated:

Quote: Difficulties in developing phoneme awareness can have genetic and 
neurobiological origins or can be attributable to a lack of exposure to
language patterns and usage during the preschool years…. It is for this
reason that the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 
(NICHD) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) considers reading 
failure to reflect not only an educational problem, but a significant public 
health problem as well. Within this context, a large research network 
consisting of 41 research sites in North America, Europe, and Asia are 
working hard to identify (1) the critical environmental, experiential, 
cognitive, genetic, neurobiological, and instructional conditions that 
foster strong reading development; (2) the risk factors that predispose 
youngsters to reading failure; and (3) the instructional procedures that can 
be applied to ameliorate reading deficits at the earliest possible time. End 
Quote

Discussing why some children may have difficulties learning to read, Lyon 
went on to say:

Quote: Children raised in poverty, youngsters with limited proficiency in
English, children with speech and hearing impairments, and children from 
homes where the parent's reading levels are low are relatively predisposed 
to reading failure. Likewise, youngsters with sub-average intellectual 
capabilities have difficulties learning to read, particularly in the reading 
comprehension domain. End Quote

Taken together, these statements by a senior government scientist advisor to 
both the President and the Congress of the United States indicates that the 
NICHD considers that in some cases low literacy may result from genetic, 
neurological, sub-average intellectual capability or a combination of these 
and other factors. Again, this may contribute to widespread beliefs that 
adults with low literacy may possess faulty genes, brains, and/or 
intellectual abilities and are unlikely to benefit from adult literacy 
education programs. From a policy perspective, then, policymakers may think 
that funding such programs may be regarded as a poor use of public funds.

1997. In a January 7, 1997 article in the Washington Times, a prominent
newspaper published in Washington, DC and read by many members of Congress, 
columnist Ken Adelman wrote:

Quotes: The age-old nature vs. nurture debate assumes immediacy as the new 
Congress and new administration gin up to address such issues as poverty, 
crime, drugs, etc. …This, the most intellectually intriguing debate around, 
is moving far toward nature (and far from nurture) with new evidence 
presented by an odd pair - gay activist Chandler Burr and conservative 
scholar Charles Murray. …In brief, their new findings show that 1) 
homosexuality and 2) educational-economic achievement are each largely a 
matter of genes – not of upbringing. …If true, as appears so, the scope of 
effective government programs narrows. Fate, working through chromosomes, 
bestows both sexual orientation and brainpower, which shape one's life and 
success. Little can be altered - besides fostering tolerance and helping in 
any narrow window left open - through even an ideally designed public 
program.   (page B-6) End Quotes

The juxtaposition of homosexuals and those of lower educational and economic 
achievement is an obvious rhetorical device meant to stir negative emotions 
about both groups, This is a rhetorical device brought back into play by 
Coulter in her 2006 book cited above.

1991. One of the beliefs in our culture is that the brain and its 
intellectual  capacity  is   developed   in   early   childhood. There is a
widespread belief that if children's early childhood development  is not
properly stimulated, then there is likely to be intellectual 
underdevelopment leading to academic  failures, low aptitude, and social 
problems such as criminal activity, teenage pregnancy and welfare. It will 
be difficult if not impossible to overcome the disadvantages of deficiencies 
in early childhood stimulation later in adulthood. So why invest much in 
adult education? We need instead to put billions of dollars into early 
childhood education.

That these beliefs about the consequence of early childhood development are 
widespread is revealed by articles written by prominent journalists in major 
newspapers. For instance, on Sunday, October 13, 1991 the San Diego Union 
newspaper reprinted an article by Joan Beck, a columnist for the Chicago 
Tribune , that  argued  for  early  childhood education because, Quote: 
"Half of adult intellectual capacity is already present by age 4 and 80 
percent by age 8, ... the opportunity to influence [a child's] basic 
intelligence - considered to be a stable characteristic by age 17 – is 
greatest in early life." End Quote

A year earlier in the same newspaper on October 14, 1990  an adult family 
literacy educator was quoted as saying, Quote: "Between the ages of zero to 
4 we have learned half of everything we'll ever learn in our lives. Most of 
that has to do with language, imagination, and inquisitiveness." End Quote

This doesn’t hold out much hope for the adults in family literacy programs.

Joan Beck was quoting research by Benjamin Bloom in the 1960s. But Bloom did 
not show that half of one's intellect was achieved by age 4. Rather, he 
argued that IQ at age 4 was correlated +.70 with IQ at age 17. Since the 
square of .7 is .49, Bloom stated that half of the variance among a group of 
adults' IQ scores at age 17 could be predicted from their group of scores at 
age 4. But half of the variability among a group of people's IQ scores is a 
long way from the idea that half of a given person's IQ is developed by age 
4. This is not even conceptually possible because for one thing there is no 
universally agreed to understanding of what "intelligence" is. Further, even 
if we could agree on what "intelligence" is, there is no such thing as "half 
of one's intellect" because no one knows what 0 or 100 percent intelligence 
is. Without knowing the beginning and end of something we Can’t know when we 
have half of it.

1990. A report by the Department of Defense shows how these beliefs about 
the possibility of doing much for adults can affect government policy. After 
studying the job performance and post-service lives of "lower aptitude," 
less literate personnel, the report claimed that they had been failures both 
in and out of the military. Then,  on February 24, 1990, the Director of 
Accession Policy of the Department of Defense commented  in the Washington 
Post newspaper, Quote: "The lesson is that low-aptitude people, whether in 
the military or not, are always going to be at a disadvantage. That's a sad 
conclusion." End Quote
A similar report of the Department of Defense study was carried in the New 
York Times of March 12, 1990. Then on April 8, 1990.  Jack Anderson's column 
in the Washington Post quoted one of the Department of Defense researchers 
saying, Quote: "...by the age of 18 or 19, it's too late. The school system 
in early childhood is the only place to really help, and that involves heavy 
participation by the parents." End Quote

Regarding the news articles about the Department of Defense studies of "low 
aptitude" troops, the conclusions were based on analyses of the job
performance of hundreds of thousands of personnel in both the 1960s and 
1980s with Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores between the 10th 
and the 30th percentiles, the range of scores which the Department of 
Defense studies called "low aptitude."

But contrary to what the Department of Defense researchers and accession 
policy maker stated, the actual data show that in both time periods, while 
the low aptitude personnel did not perform quite as well as those personnel 
with aptitudes above the 30th percentile, over 80 percent of the low 
aptitude personnel did, in fact, perform satisfactorily and many performed 
in an outstanding manner. As veterans they had employment rates and earnings 
far exceeding their rates and earnings at the beginning of the study. 
Further investigation by the media would have revealed these discrepancies 
between what the Department of Defense's researchers said and what the 
actual findings were. But as it stands, these popular media types of stories 
reinforce the stereotypes about adults with who score low on intelligence or 
aptitude tests and perform poorly on tests of the basic skills of literacy 
and numeracy.

We can find these pieces of scientific debris all the way back to the
Moonlight Schools of 1911.  Following her account of those educators and 
academics who declared that teaching grown people to read and write was 
contrary to the principles of psychology, Cora Wilson Stewart said, Quote: 
While they went around saying it couldn’t be done, we went on doing it. We 
asked the doubters this question, "When a fact disputes a theory, is it not 
time to discard the theory? There was no reply. End Quote

Today when we ask why the funding for adult literacy education is so little 
so late, there is still no reply. So we just keep on teaching adults to
read and write. And we do it on the cheap, even though it is theoretically
impossible.

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