| 2. |
The goal of adult basic education programs is to
credential participants. This is |
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generally expressed as "providing an
opportunity to complete one's education" Such goals are generally viewed as a
priority by participants more often than by service-providers. In terms of
outcomes, this goal has illusory success. The credentials obtained through
academic upgrading, no matter how we describe them or promote them, are never
precisely equivalent to those obtained through the regular elementary-secondary
system. The credentials obtained through BTSD programs, when they lead directly
to occupational training programs, are valid for those programs but may not be
acceptable in other post-secondary programs. |
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| 3. |
Adult basic education programs assist participants to
solve immediate functional |
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or instrumental goals (eg. obtaining a driver's
license; improving communication between parents and the child's school). This
is listed as an important priority for many basic literacy and ESL
participants. They tend to express this goal in personal terms such as .... "I
want to be able to do what others do" or "my children are ashamed of me when I
can't understand their teacher". These are highly individualistic needs and are
not viewed as a priority by the service-provider. In terms of outcomes, this
goal is very often successful and generally leads to further participation for
long-range or expressive goals. Such immediate goals are of relatively low
importance to academic upgrading participants since the nature of their
participation requires some notion of a long-range goal (i.e. finishing my
schooling, getting a job). |
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| 4. |
Adult basic education programs are to help participants
improve their ability to |
|
contribute to society. The service-provider
generally views this as contribution through employment and economic
participation for both men and women; and as political participation for men
but domestic and child welfare participation for women However, women tend to
interpret this goal in terms of improving their own lot in life by improving
the conditions in which they live and work. Defining contributions to a society
in two different ways sets up conflicts in the goals of the programs which also
appear in the processes and resources used. |
In one Unesco study, (1) 27% of the
countries surveyed viewed literacy programs for women as providing an advantage
to the family and to child care; while only 12% of the women in these same
countries viewed this goal as a priority for them. The goal implies societal
judgments of what constitutes "good participation" and out of these implies
judgments comes the process and content of the programs themselves. Programs
which do not conform to these judgments and learners who deviate from these
norms will not belong tolerated. The outcome is that adult basic education
programs tend to form the basis of political education which conforms to the
politics of the controlling group in the society. Education of adults which
leads to conformity is equally unacceptable since individuals view their own
situation as unique and as not necessarily requiring conforming behavior.
The Declaration of Peresopolis, drawn up by the International
Symposium for Literacy and addressed to the member nations of Unesco, states
that: (2)
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(The Symposium)... considered literacy to be not just the
process of learning the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, but a
contribution to the liberation of man and to his full development. Thus
conceived, literacy creates the conditions for the acquisition of a critical
consciousness of the contradictions of society in which man lives and of its
aims; it also stimulates initiative and his participation in the creation of
projects capable of acting upon the world, of transforming it, and of defining
the aims of an authentic human development ... Literacy is not an end in
itself. It is a fundamental human right....
Literacy work, like education in general, is a political
act. It is not neutral, for the act of revealing social reality in order to
transform it, or of concealing it in order to preserve it, is political
....
Experience has shown that literacy can bring about the
alienation of the individual by integrating him in an order established without
his consent ....
Literacy is effective to the extent that the people to
whom it is addressed, in particular women and the least privileged groups...,
feel the need for it in order to meet their most essential requirements, in
particular the need to take part in the decisions of the community to which
they belong.
Literacy is therefore inseparable from participation,
which is at once its purpose and its condition. The illiterate should not be
the object but the subject of the process whereby he becomes literate ....
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(1). J. Chabaud, The education and
advancement of women, (Paris: Unesco, 1970) ,p.109
(2). Final Report, International
Symposium for Literacy, Peresopolis, Iran, September 1975, "The Declaration of
Peresopolis", pp. 35 - 38. Available from the International Co-ordination
Secretariat for Literacy, Paris. |