Over the past several months, a lively discussion has been taking place on the NLA (National Literacy Advocates) listserv regarding recent changes in adult basic education policy and the federal ABE system. Thomas G. Sticht, a nationally-known researcher and consultant in adult literacy education, has contributed to this exchange a number of research and opinion notes which we feel would be of interest to practitioners. So, with his permission, we are reprinting some of these pieces here in the newsletter; the first installment appeared in the March, 2000, issue.
The Digest of Education Statistics for 1998, available on the U. S. Department of Education's web page (www.ed.gov) presents a schematic diagram called "Figure 1. The Structure of Education in the United States." The figure reads from kindergarten at the bottom to post-graduate college studies at the top and includes vocational/technical and 2- and 4-year colleges as post-secondary education programs. Noticeably missing to me was the adult education program. Then I came across the footnote to the figure which read: "Adult Education programs, while not separately delineated above, may provide instruction at the elementary, secondary or higher education level."
Setting aside the quaint idea that adult education provides "elementary" education for adults, I wondered about just how aware the American public, including those who work for the U. S. Department of Education, are about the adult education system that is rapidly approaching service to some 5.0 million adults a year. The Digest of Education Statistics points out that in 1998 the K-12 system served some 46.8 million enrollees with expenditures of around $350 billion, close to $7500 per enrollee. The post-secondary, higher education (college) system enrolled about 14.6 million students with funding of some $233 billion, or roughly $16,000 per enrollee. But the adult education system, with enrollments reaching some ten percent of those of the K-12 system and almost a third the number of the higher education system, received combined federal and state funding in 1998 of $1.3 billion for 4.2 million enrollees, only about $310 per enrollee.
Could a failure to appreciate the magnitude of the adult population seeking adult education explain why the system was left out of the figure depicting the structure of education in the United States and instead was relegated to a footnote at the margin of the figure? Or was it just that the dollars spent per enrollee were too small for the adult education system to be included in anything but a footnote at the margins of education in the United States?
Maybe we need to include a really big awareness campaign to educate people about the adult education system as part of the vision making of the forthcoming literacy summit. Maybe this could start by getting the government to include adult education on the map of the education structure of the United States. If there is any appreciable awareness of the magnitude, nature and value of the adult education system among the media, the public, and even government education specialists today, I am unaware of where that awareness is. (written January, 2000)
In 1970 the federal adult education program received federal funds of some $40,000,000 and enrolled 535,613 adults. By 1980 federal funds for state grants had increased to over $99 million and enrollments rose to over 2 million. In 1990, federal funds stood above $192 million with enrollments of over 3.5 million adults. Now Congress has passed and the President has signed legislation providing for some $450,000,000 for state grants to adult education. So in thirty years there has been a ten-fold increase in the federal funding of state grants for adult education.
While a ten-fold increase in funding may seem large, when expressed in constant 1997 dollars and calculated as dollars per enrollee, the picture changes dramatically. In 1970, the per enrollee funding was $309 in constant 1997 dollars. In 1980 this dropped to $95 and in 1990 it fell further to $66.
Assuming an enrollment of some 4,500,000 adults in 2000 (extrapolated estimate from data for 1996, 1997, & 1998), the per enrollee dollars rise back to around $92 in 1997 dollars, a figure very near that of 20 years ago in 1980, and 70 percent below the per enrollee funding of thirty years ago in 1970. If enrollments increase to 5 million, then federal per enrollee funds are closer to $83 in constant 1997 dollars.
Over the years the federal share of adult education funds has declined while the share of matching funds by states and local education has increased. In 1966, federal funding for adult education was around $20 million for some 377,660 enrollees while state and local funding was around $10 million. By FY 1998, federal funds for adult education were about $345 million for some 4.2 million while around $958 million were available for adult education from state matching funds.
In constant 1997 dollars, funding per enrollee from combined federal and state sources for adult education was around $394 in 1966. Assuming combined federal and state funds of $1,500,000,000 in 2000 and enrollments of 4.5 million, then funding per enrollee in 2000 in constant 1997 dollars will be $308, a 20 percent decrease in funding per enrollee in the last third of the 20th century! (written December, 1999)
On Sunday, October 13, 1991, the San Diego Union newspaper reprinted an article by Joan Beck, columnist for the Chicago Tribune that argued for early childhood education because, "Half of adult intellectual capacity is already present by age 4 and 80 percent by age 8, the great education researcher Dr. Benjamin Bloom reported in scholarly studies in the 1960s that helped establish the importance of early learning. No matter how good schools are, how capable and caring the teachers, they will not have as much effect on a child's permanent level of intelligence as has the environment in which he has lived before he started to attend first grade."
Behind this widespread belief is another belief based on (faulty) understandings of neuroscience that the brain and its intellectual capacity is developed in early childhood and this has important implications for cognitive development over the lifespan. Even the First Lady of the United States has weighed in with the pronouncement that, "The first three years of life are crucial in establishing the brain cell connections.... By the end of three or four years, however, the pace of learning slows.... The process continues to slow as we mature, and as we age our brain cells and synapses begin to whither away.... With proper stimulation, brain synapses will form at a rapid pace, reaching adult levels by the age of two and far surpassing them in the next several years." (Clinton, 1996).
It has been argued that if children's early childhood development is not properly stimulated, then there is likely to be underdevelopment of the brain and that can lead to lower intellectual ability, poor school learning and to a life characterized by social problems such as unemployment, 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. And so, some might argue, "Why should we invest in adult literacy education? Let's put our money into early childhood programs. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!"
But now trends in both brain science and cognitive science have converged to bring about revisions to these ideas from the conventional wisdom. For over a decade, the James S. McDonnell Foundation in St. Louis has supported extensive research in neuroscience. Recently, John Bruer, President of the Foundation, has written a new book entitled The Myth of the First Three Years (The Free Press, 1999) in which he explains that the findings of neuroscience do not support the claims made above by Mrs. Clinton or Joan Beck or other claims for early stimulation of infants and children under three years of age. He further argues that most neuroscience is irrelevant for early childhood and in-school education (1997, 1998). Following is a brief summary from earlier articles of what Bruer regards as major misconceptions that educators have of brain science (see my paper "Beyond 2000: Future Directions for Adult Education" in the Full Text Documents page at <www.nald.ca> for references to articles by Bruer):
1) Claim: Enriched early childhood environments cause synapses to multiply rapidly. Bruer states, "What little direct evidence we have&emdash;all based on studies of monkeys&emdash;indicates these claims are inaccurate.... The rate of synaptic formation and synaptic density seems to be impervious to quantity of stimulation.... Early experience does not cause synapses to form rapidly. Early enriched environments will not put our children on synaptic fast tracks." (1998, pp. 13-14)
2) Claim: More synapses mean more brainpower. Bruer states, "The neuroscientific evidence does not support this claim, either.... Synaptic densities at birth and in early adulthood are approximately the same, yet by any measure adults are more intelligent, have more highly flexible behavior, and learn more rapidly than infants." (1998, pp. 14-15)
3) Claim: The plateau period of high synaptic density and high brain metabolism is the optimal period for learning. Bruer states, "The neuroscientific evidence for this claim is extremely weak. The neuroscientists who count synapses in humans and monkeys merely point out that during the plateau period, monkeys and humans develop a variety of skills and behaviors.... We do not know what relationship exists between high resting brain metabolism and learning, any more than we know what relation exists between high synaptic numbers and ability to learn." (1998, pp. 15-17)
Bruer goes on to say that, "Truly new results in neuroscience, rarely mentioned in the brain and education literature, point to the brain's lifelong capacity to reshape itself in response to experience." (1998, p.17) In his new book (1999) he references work in adult literacy to make the point that, "Adult literacy programs provide additional evidence that acquiring and improving literacy skills is not time-limited or subject to critical period limitations." (p. 112) He says, "The limiting factor in vocabulary growth, and presumably for some of the other things Verbal IQ measures, is exposure to new words, facts, and experiences. The brain can benefit from this exposure at almost anytime&emdash;early childhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence." (p. 177)
For adult literacy educators, Bruer makes the important policy argument that with a better understanding of the limitations of present day neuroscience for understanding education, "We might question the prudence of decreasing expenditures for adult education or special education on the grounds that a person's intellectual and emotional course is firmly set during the early years." (p. 26) This is a myth he rejects and it is an important point in light of the current budget activities in Congress which place tens of billions of dollars in early childhood and in-school compensatory programs and less than $400 million in programs for educating adults. (written September, 1999)