Dear Tom,
 
Thank you for the historical insight in teaching literacy.  Ceci and I agree 
with your three conclusions at the end of your message.   Learning is 
certainly enhanced by multiple communication methods and "Having fun  with a purpose."
 
In workplace literacy training, I believe the focus is on what  one has to 
know and do on the job.  The instructional methods  are tailored to the job 
goals.  But in health education, except for  Rima Rudd's work, we don't see much 
being done to determine the literacy  demand of the tasks the public or patient 
is being asked to  perform.  Do you know of a task analysis template, model, 
or instrument  that docs and nurses could adopt so they could more easily 
tailor their  instructions to the tasks?
 
For info:  Ceci and I are now in our mid 80s and we are  retiring from giving 
workshops and presentations.  Thanks for your help and  advice along the way.
 
best wishes,
 
Len and Ceci
 
 
In a message dated 11/14/2008 10:36:32 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
tsticht at znet.com writes:

November  14, 2008


>From Battalions to Book Publishers: Bridges in Teaching  Reading With Adults,

Adolescents, and Children

Tom  Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

At times in the  United States it has been necessary for the military
services to recruit,  train, and utilize personnel whose literacy and/or
English language skills  were low. In these times the military has
implemented literacy programs for  illiterate or non-English speaking
recruits. Later, some of those who  worked on literacy programs in the
military have gone on to apply methods  used in the military programs to the
literacy education of adults,  adolescents, and children in the civilian
world. Three of these bridges  from military to civilian literacy education
are summarized below to  illustrate some salient principles in teaching
reading across the age  span.

World War I

In World War I some 700,000 recruits were  determined to be illiterate, many
of whom were non-English speakers. To  prepare these recruits for regular
military duties they were sent to  Recruit Education Centers (REC) around
the country. At Camp Upton, New  York, the REC taught illiterate and
non-English speaking recruits following  a course of instruction developed
by Captain Garry C. Myers and instructors  in the REC. With a Ph.D in
Psychology from Columbia University, Myers was  concerned that the military
teaching of adults should “stimulate sentiment  in favor of better
educational opportunities for coming generations.” This  was an early
interest in the intergenerational transfer of literacy that  today underpins
many family literacy programs.

The course of  instruction at Camp Upton was divided into six levels from low
to high, and  for each level special materials were prepared using
illustrations,  cartoons, caricatures, and stories. The goal was to make
materials with a  diversity of activities to meet the various interests of
the  recruits.

Long after World War I, in 1946, Myers and his wife Caroline,  the first
woman hired to teach illiterate adults in the Army in World War  I, started
a magazine for children called Highlights for Children. The  motto of the
magazine was “Fun with a purpose”, which is still used on the  magazine. As
with the World War I materials, the magazine uses lots of  illustrations,
puzzles, cartoons and stories aimed at catching the interest  of both
children and their parents. The latter are encouraged to read to  their
children in keeping with the earlier idea of the intergenerational  transfer
of literacy from parents to their progeny. Today, with a  circulation of some
2 million, Highlights for Children shows a continuity  of teaching of
children with those ideas and methods used by Myers in  teaching literacy
with adults in World War I.

World War  II

During World War II, just as in World War I, the armed services once  again
faced the need to utilize hundreds of thousands of men who were  poorly
literate. Like Myers, Paul Witty had a Ph.D from Columbia University  in
Psychology. He specialized in understanding the process of learning to  read
and in developing methods for helping students who were having  difficulties
in learning to read. With this background, he was called upon  to serve as
an education officer in the War Department.

Witty’s work  before his Army job emphasized the importance of meeting
children’s  interests when teaching reading. This emphasis was brought into
his work in  the Army when, in May of 1943, the War Department published the
"Army  Reader". In this book, produced under Witty's direction, soldiers in
the  Army's literacy programs were introduced to Private Pete, a  fictional
soldier who was also learning reading, writing, and arithmetic.  The idea
was that soldiers would identify with Private Pete and be  interested in
what they were reading because they shared common  experiences, such as 
sleeping in the barracks, eating in the mess hall,  and so forth. He used
this novel approach along with the use of various  media, film strips, comic
strips, photo novels, and other  innovations.

After the war, Witty focused on teaching reading to  children from primary
through secondary school. As with the Army program,  he stressed the
importance of meeting children’s interests in teaching  reading and  the use
of a variety of media, radio programs, comics,  newspapers, and books to find
and present materials that matched these  interests. He wrote two reading
series for children.  He also served  as an associate editor of the Myers’
Highlights for Children magazine  discussed above and the children’s
newspaper, My Weekly Reader. Today, the  International Reading Association,
which Witty helped found, offers the  Paul A. Witty short story award for
writers of children’s literature. This  reflects his enduring concern that
teaching reading, whether with adults,  adolescents, or young children,
should be built on matching the interests  of these groups.

The Vietnam War

During and after the Vietnam  war, the writer directed the development of the
Army’s Functional Literacy  (FLIT) program for marginally literate personnel.
This was the first  program that introduced systematic methods for studying
literacy practices  of personnel in various jobs and job training programs,
incorporated these  practices into the design of job-related literacy
programs, and compared  the effectiveness of general literacy programs to
job-related programs. It  was found that the latter produced as much
improvement in general literacy  as did the Army’s general literacy programs
but three to five times the  improvements in job-related literacy, which was
what the programs were  supposed to do.

Later, the U. S. Navy and Air Force developed adult  literacy programs
following the job-related, functional context approach  developed in the
FLIT project . In 1987 colleagues and I published Cast-off  Youth: Policy
and Training Methods From the Military Experience (Praeger,  1987) which
articulated the principles for Functional Context used in the  FLIT program.
These principles were used in the U. S. Department of  Education’s National
Workplace Literacy Program.  FCE principles were  used by Wider
Opportunities for Women (WOW) in their work with welfare  mothers
integrating literacy and vocational education. WOW demonstrated  that the
education of mothers could produce an intergenerational transfer  of
literacy and motivation for learning from parents to their  children.

In the early 1990s, I co-authored for the McGraw-Hill  publishing company a
15 volume set of materials following FCE principles.  These books integrated
(embedded, contextualized) occupational, literacy,  and numeracy education in
five career fields for use with adolescents in  secondary schools and adults
in post-secondary education.

Three  Bridges From Military to Civilian Literacy Programs

As indicated, ideas  and innovations produced by adult literacy educators for
military personnel  have found their way into the literacy education of
children, adolescents,  and adults in civilian literacy programs. Three of
these ideas are: First,  program developers should take stock of the
functional contexts of the  learners, under what circumstances they live,
etc. and draw upon this  context in developing materials and methods.
Second, programs should focus  on meeting the interests of students and use
a  variety of media,  methods, and materials to meet these interests. Third,
educators should be  aware of the intergenerational transfer of literacy and
motivation for  learning and strive to promote an understanding of this
transfer with their  adolescent and adult students who are or are likely to
become  parents.

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult  Literacy
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax:  (619) 444-9133
Email:  tsticht at aznet.net





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