Module #1

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Over the past decade, there has been a very rapid increase in programs with the label "family literacy". These programs are regarded, both by local communities and national government, as a way to raise the educational level of children and prepare them better for school and adult life. However, there is considerable variety of approach among these family literacy programs. Some of them concentrate entirely on the child, providing pre-school education to young children or encouraging adolescents to read. Other programs involve parents as well as children, either in a supporting role (e.g., parent involvement programs in schools) or more directly providing adult education and parenting classes, usually in connection with pre-school education for 3- and 4-year-old children. Most of these latter programs target at-risk populations, including those where the parents are unemployed high school dropouts or immigrants with little English. Many such families are locked into a cycle of poverty, which repeats itself generation after generation. Education is a way of breaking this cycle, particularly the education of young children. In fact, the attraction of these programs to many parents is the chance that it gives their children to do better than they did at school.

In the United States, much of the government and private funding available for family literacy has been provided for these disadvantaged groups. Morrow, Tracey and Maxwell (1995) have surveyed program evaluations of hundreds of family literacy programs which have developed in recent years through a host of federal, state, local, and private-sector initiatives. They observe that there has been an explosion of such programs during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The single largest initiative has been and still is the federal Even Start program which began in 1989 with a $14.8 million budget for 76 projects in 44 states and by 1994 grew to $70 million with 340 projects in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. In July of 1995, $102 million became available for these programs (McKee & Rhett, 1995). The Even Start program is one of the few education initiatives not facing reductions in recent federal budget projections. In addition to Even Start, hundreds of programs nationally associate themselves with the National Center for Family Literacy in Louisville. Increasingly, states like New Jersey, Nevada, Hawaii, and Kentucky have begun to incorporate family literacy into state funding policy and many family literacy projects are informally incorporated into thousands of adult basic education programs across the country (Brizius & Foster, 1993).

But what do all these programs mean by "family literacy"? In fact, practitioners and researchers in this area are not in complete agreement about how to define family literacy or even about which family members are intended to benefit from it (see the report by Nickse in this module and Morrow, Tracey and Maxwell (1995)). However, both Even Start and the National Center for Family Literacy include the education of both child and parent (Brizius & Foster, 1993). The goals of the Even Start program are:

• •to help parents become full partners in the education of their children;

  •to assist children reach their full potential as learners;

  •to provide literacy training for their parents.

The National Center for Family Literacy is more specific about how such goals are to be achieved by listing the following components of a family literacy program:

• •developmental experiences for young children;

  •basic skills instruction for the children's parents or primary caregivers;

  •time for parents and children to share learning experiences;

  •parent peer support groups to share experiences and overcome obstacles to family learning.

Thus these two major influences on the family literacy field recommend that programs address the needs of both generations: children and parents. This emphasis arises because Even Start and the National Center for Family Literacy support programs for families at risk, in which parents are in need of basic education and young children need positive developmental experiences to prepare them for school.

However, many family literacy programs address other audiences. Some also concern themselves with young children and their preparation for school, but the parents' role is different. These programs do not provide basic education for the adults (who may not need it), but do teach the parents how to be their child's teacher. The programs provide, for example, assistance with reading to children, suggestions for ways to play with children that will enhance their future education, or sources of educational books and materials. Other programs target older children or adolescents with the purpose of keeping them in school and succeeding there. These programs provide interesting reading and other activities for the children and involve parents to the extent that they are urged to follow up the program's activities at home and to become active in their children's schools. The parents' role here is to provide positive literacy models for their children and to show that the family supports literacy and education as a lifelong process of learning.

In summary, "family literacy" is a multitude of things: ranging from a meeting each week or month of a group of parents and children interested in books to full-time schooling for children and their parents, where both generations need basic skills to succeed in life. But these programs have one factor in common: they all involve arousing and sustaining a long-term interest in literacy among children with the support and encouragement of their parents. In fact, family literacy could be summed up as the promotion of the mutual learning of child and parent in the family setting.

The need for family literacy

The current rapid expansion of family literacy comes at a time of great need for families and for the U.S. and other nations. Changes in technology and the economic climate put a premium on education and higher-level skills. (See, for example, U.S. Department of Labor, 1991). Yet, at the same time, many families remain in poverty and both children and parents lack opportunities to benefit from the education that could break the cycle repeated generation after generation. The following statistics for the U.S. indicate that the problem is large and may be increasing:

• •"One of six babies born in America today is to a teenage mother. Forty percent of these teen mothers have an eighth grade education or less. Fewer than half will complete high school.

  •One fifth of our nation's first graders are living in poverty. About half of all poor children begin school as much as two years behind their peers in preschool skills.

  •About one third of our young people do not complete high school on their first try. Poor children are three to four times more likely than other children to drop out of school. Many of those who do complete school read, write, and compute at a sixth-grade level.

  •Tens of millions of American adults are unable to apply basic reading, writing, and math skills in adult life contexts. Millions more are only marginally literate. One in five American workers reads at an eighth-grade level or below.

  •At the same time, our economy requires more skilled, productive workers and citizens. By the year 2000, virtually all the jobs worth having will require a high school education, and most high-wage jobs will require post-secondary training. Eighty-five percent of the workforce in the year 2000 has already left school" (Brizius & Foster, 1993).

These statistics reveal the chain of links binding families that connect poverty to lack of education to unemployment and back to poverty, passed on from one generation to the next. The statistics also point to the consequences for a nation's economy if its workforce is not sufficiently well-educated. (See Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins and Kolstad (1993) and Reich (1992) for mor e details about adult literacy levels and their possible economic effects.) It is therefore not surprising that family literacy has become an issue at both local and national levels in recent years.

So far we have considered the need for family literacy in terms of large-scale statistics, but we turn now to the family level. Many parents want the best for their children's future educational and economic success, but do not know how to achieve this. To take one striking example, some parents do not know how to read with their children. Even when they can read the text of a children's book (and many cannot do this), these parents are not aware of the way that a book can be a springboard for conversations and discussions with children about the story, the pictures, and their own lives. That this is very important is borne out by recent research of Snow and her colleagues (see Snow & Tabors, 1996), indicating that a child's later school success is strongly linked to the quality of parent/child conversation during reading and other family activities. If a family literacy program can help parents only in this area, it will have achieved a great deal.

However, many families have a multitude of other needs. Parents may want to raise their own level of general literacy in order to better help their children, or they may want to obtain a GED to assist them in obtaining employment and improving the economic situation for their family. Other parents may want to help their children with homework or to gain the confidence to visit their children's schools on a regular basis. Still other parents are concerned about the amount of television they and their children are watching and want to know how to make reading a more important and enjoyable experience for their family.

Because of these varied needs, program providers must listen to parents and take into account what the families in their programs want. Parents should be asked about their general and more detailed goals and consulted about the way a program is structured. This learner-centered approach is more likely to succeed than a program imposed from above, because the families will feel that this is really their program when it relates closely to their pre-existing social and cultural context and builds on the strengths already present in the family and community. In summary, families' needs vary widely?and so should the programs provided for them.

Now read the articles and extracts for this module:

• •Nickse, R. S. (1990). Family and intergenerational literacy programs: An update of "The noises of literacy". (pp. 1 - 25).

  •Smith, C. B. (1991). Family literacy: The most important literacy. The Reading Teacher, 44 (9), 700-701.

  •Nuckolls, M. E. (1991). Expanding students' potential through family literacy. Educational Leadership, September 1991, 45 - 46.

You may also want to look at the ERIC documents whose abstracts are included in the module. Then use the information contained in those readings to write your response paper for Module 1.

References

Brizius, J. A., & Foster, S. A. (1993). Generation to generation: Realizing the promise of family literacy. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 357 869)

Kirsch, I. S., Jungeblut, A., Jenkins, L., & Kolstad, A. (1993). Adult literacy in America: A first look at the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 358 375)

McKee, P. A., & Rhett, N. (1995). The Even Start family literacy program. In L. Morrow (Ed.) Family literacy: Connections in schools and communities (pp. 155-166). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Morrow, L. M., Tracey, D. H., & Maxwell, C. M. (Eds.) (1995). A survey of family literacy. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Nickse, R. S. (1990). Family and intergenerational literacy programs: An update of "The noises of literacy". Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 327 736)

Nuckolls, M. E. (1991). Expanding students' potential through family literacy. Educational Leadership, September 1991, 45 - 46.

Reich, R. B. (1992). The work of nations. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Smith, C. B. (1991). Family literacy: The most important literacy. The Reading Teacher, 44 (9), 700-701.

Snow, C., & Tabors, P. (1996). Intergenerational transfer of literacy. In Benjamin, L. A., & Lord, J. (Eds). Family literacy: Directions in research and implications for practice. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, pp. 73-80.

U.S. Department of Labor. (1991). What work requires of schools: A SCANS report for America 2000. Washington, DC: author. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 332 054)