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A further quote from another British educator states:
(1)
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(the most prevalent attitude in today's society is) ...to
put it simply, the good guys can read; the bad guys cannot ... Reading has been
identified as a critical element in social mobility... It does not seem to
matter whether reading is necessary; it is simply required to get up the
ladder... This situation can be described as "the reading elite" - - a sort of
cultural elitism which means you are a second class citizen if you cannot read.
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We had some difficulty finding a concise statement which truly
reflected our concern about this issue. So we combined several sources plus our
own experience and developed two parallel lists showing: (2)
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a.) the generalized characteristics of undereducated
learners, provided as a series of anecdotal comments; some of the possible
behaviors which could result from this type of thinking and which could be
observed by others; some possible interpretations which could be made about the
observable behavior by service-providers; and some of the possible component
parts of an overall attitude which might develop. These attitude components
would coalesce into one larger attitude and should not be read as separate
attitudes. Note that many of these parts are conflicting which suggests that
the overall attitude would be inconsistent. Sometimes a service-provider will
be overly helpful to an undereducated person who appears helpless, passive and
dependent; and sometimes rejecting of those who appear competent or
aggressive.
b.) a similar list starting with the characteristics of
service-providers and ending with the attitudes which might be acquired by
undereducated learners. |
We recognize that there is always a danger in developing
generalized statements of this type. We would agree before-the-fact that not
all Undereducated learners and not all service-providers have these generalized
characteristics and not all would interpret the others behavior this way.
However, the attitudes and behaviors listed are prevalent enough to risk making
such statements. Note that the list is intended to illustrate our main
contention that the attitudes held by service-providers and learners about each
other tend to be mutual reinforcing and often negative.
(1). R. J. Kedney (ed.) The adult illiterate
in the community, (Bolton, U. K.: Bolton College of Education,
1975),
p. 3
(2). Sources used include: Anderson and Niemi,
op. cit. pp. 7 - 28
Jones and Charnley, op. cit.
Department of Regional Economic Expansion, Who knows? Report of the
Canada Newstart Programs (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973).
J. M.
Heffernan and others, Educational brokering: A new service to adult
learners, (Syracus, N. Y.: National Center for Educational Brokering,
1976). |