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Worry about adult literacy 1
Why K-12 Educators Should Worry About Adult Literacy
M Cecil Smith Northern Illinois UniversityOctober 26, 2000Presented at 2000 meeting of the Alpha Delta chapter of Alpha Upsilon Alpha (Honor Society of the International Reading Association), Oak Brook, IL.
 
Worry about adult literacy 2
Why K-12 Educators Should Worry About Adult Literacy
Educators in public schools at every grade level from elementary to high schoolhave plenty of things to be concerned about, from episodes of student violence to theimplementation and consequences of high stakes testing. Given the increasing demandsof their jobs, why should they worry about adult literacy? After all, public school teachersare not teaching adult learners, and they can’t be held accountable if adults have failed toacquire the literacy skills needed to function effectively in our society. Or can they? Itcan be argued that adults who have poor literacy skills are, in many cases, products of our  public schools. If these individuals haven’t learned to read, write, and use math in waysthat enable them to get and keep good jobs, get off welfare, support their families,communicate effectively with others, conduct personal business and so on, then somewould suggest that the blame lies squarely in the laps of teachers and schools (NationalCommission on Excellence in Education, 1983).Such blaming tactics, of course, conveniently ignore the fact that many low-literate adults in the United States are immigrants who could neither speak nor readEnglish when they came to this country (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993).Some of these limited-English-proficient persons also could not read or write in their native language. Also, many low literate adults are elderly and were in school decades before recent educational reforms in instruction, teacher training, and the like took place,and during a time when low educational attainment (by today’s standards) wascommonplace. Still other adults have significant organic and learning disabilities, chronicillnesses, and other problems that have impeded their abilities to acquire and use literacy(Vogel, 1998).
 
Worry about adult literacy 3Despite these salient characteristics of low-literate adults, adult literacy is (at leastin some quarters) perceived to be a “problem” in the United States. This perception is based largely on periodic claims by business and industry leaders, and the occasionalsocial commentator, that the literacy skills of a sizeable portion of adults in the labor force are not sufficient to meets the demands of a rapidly-changing, highly-technological,and information-saturated workplace (Fiske, 1988). The results of the 1993 NationalAdult Literacy Survey (Kirsch et al., 1993) also found that nearly half of adults ages 16and older demonstrated significant problems with some literacy tasks, such asinterpreting a bus schedule or finding information in a brief news magazine article. Giventhe collective power of both anecdotal and empirical evidence of an adult literacy problem, there are efforts to locate the sources of this problem. For some, particularlythose who are critical of public education, one source is the lack of “correct” andeffective literacy instruction in school.Over the past decade or more, educators, literacy researchers, politicians, and the public have been embroiled in the most recent round of the “reading wars,” that have pitted at least two groups of literacy advocates against one another (Coles, 2000; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998; Goodman,1998). On one side are those who advocate a return to “basics” in reading, with a focuson phonics instruction, skill development in word decoding, and phonemic awareness(Grossen, 1997). On the other side are those who promote the kind of reading instructionwhere students are immersed in all aspects of language—reading, speaking, writing, andlistening (Goodman, 1998). This is the whole language method, whereby literacy skillsare said to develop naturally whenever the right environmental conditions exist. More
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