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[ProfessionalDevelopment 2659] Literacy From Battalions to Bookststicht at znet.com tsticht at znet.comFri Nov 14 13:29:10 EST 2008
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. Wittys work before his Army job emphasized the importance of meeting childrens 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 childrens 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 childrens newspaper, My Weekly Reader. Today, the International Reading Association, which Witty helped found, offers the Paul A. Witty short story award for writers of childrens 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 Armys 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 Armys 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 Educations 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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