Inching Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy

Parents is the backbone of good school achievement

3.10.10 - Tom Sticht - In the book I learned that Diane Ravitch, advocate of standards, testing, accountability, and school choice, had changed her mind. In her new book (The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Basic Books, 2010), she says she was wrong about all that. Instead

Inching Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy

Tom Sticht

International Consultant in Adult Education

Recently I picked up a new book at the bookstore, browsed through it, and then I thought, sooner or later they always come back to it!

In the book I learned that Diane Ravitch, advocate of standards, testing, accountability, and school choice, had changed her mind. In her new book (The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Basic Books, 2010), she says she was wrong about all that. Instead, she lists a number of things she now thinks would be useful for helping students achieve better in school, and then she comes to it—parents are their children’s first teachers!

She cites research indicating that before they enter school children from families with professional parents are exposed to tens of millions more spoken words than children from welfare or working class families. This massive exposure to oral language provides a basis for more effective learning of literacy later on, contributing to the achievement gap between children of these groups. Much of our educational policy and billions of dollars of compensatory education is aimed at closing this gap.

When I got home from the bookstore, I picked up the mail and found the Winter 2010 Policy Notes from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). I was amused to find that educational researchers have discovered that much learning occurs outside of the school classroom and this may affect academic achievement in school!

Not much further into the Policy Notes I came across it again, the need for intensive parental involvement in children’s education. According to psychologist Edmund Gordon, speaking at ETS, quote:” And nobody needs to hear that message more than some of our economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized families.” end quote.

What made me somewhat amused about all this was my recall of the 1908 book by Edmund Burke  Huey (The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, MIT Press,

1908/1968) in which he commented both about the relationship of oral language to learning to read well, and the need to educate some parents about how to help improve their children’s reading and school achievement.

About oral language Huey said,  quote"The child comes to his first reader with his habits of spoken language fairly well formed, and these habits grow more deeply set with every year. His meanings inhere in this spoken language and belong but secondarily to the printed symbols.To read is, in effect, to translate writing into speech." (Huey, 1908/1968, pp. 122-123).” end quote. Diane Ravitch has now brought us up-to-date on this!

About parents and learning outside the school, Huey said, quote” "Where children have good homes, reading will thus be learned independently of school. Where parents have not the time or intelligence to assist in this way the school of the future will have as one of its important duties the instruction of parents in the means of assisting the child's natural learning in the home." (pp. 311-312)” end quote. Educational researchers convened at ETS have now brought us up-to-date on this!

So, over a hundred years later, Huey’s advice rises to the fore again. And once again there they are---the parents! Slowly we are inching our way toward a Multiple Life Cycles education policy that recognizes that educational policies do not affect only one generation but through the intergenerational transfer of motivation, attitudes, character, language, and literacy they may affect the educational achievement of lives across generations.

For this reason we need to invest a great deal more  in America’s Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) which largely serves the economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized adults that Weiss addresses. This investment can provide returns not only in increased productivity and  tax revenues, health cost savings, and improved civic participation by adults, but also in the increased educational achievement of the adult’s children.

As both Ravitch and the ETS Policy Notes suggest: good adult education for parents is the backbone of good school achievement by children. In short, the real head start for children starts with the heads of the parents. I hope we don’t have to learn this lesson again another hundred years from now.

tsticht@aznet.net