Posted on behalf of Tom Sticht.


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May 15, 2006

Adult Literacy Education, Geographical Mobility, and Children's School
Achievement: Toward A Life Cycles Education Policy

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Four decades ago a colleague and I published a paper discussing
relationships of geographical mobility, dogmatism, anxiety, and age (The
Journal of Social Psychology,1966). In surveys with undergraduates in a
college psychology class, we found that students who reported only 1-3
changes in residence (average 1.88) scored lower on measures of dogmatism
and anxiety, and were older at the time of their first move (average 7.3
years) than a high mobility group (7-20, average 10.48 moves) with first
time moves at age 2.9 years.

Additional analyses indicated that early age of first move (before age 5)
was more related to anxiety while numbers of moves were more associated
with the cognitive/personality variable of dogmatism, i.e., a resistance to
change in a belief system. Additional research in the 1960s and earlier also
pointed to the idea that more mobile populations have higher rates of
psychoses, neuroses, psychopathological personalities, and other types of
personality disorders among children and adults.

Forty Years Later

Moving forward forty years, there is a growing body of research showing that
geographical mobility as well as mobility in changing schools is related to
numerous problems that children have with schools, including lowered
achievement in learning and higher dropout rates (Hanna Skandera and
Richard Sousa ,http://www.hooverdigest.org/023/skandera.html, 2002 No.3;
Virginia Rhodes, Kids on the Move: The Effects of Student Mobility on NCLB
School Accountability Ratings 2005
http://www.urganedjournal.org/articles/article0020.html)

Recent studies even suggest a significant, positive correlation between the
mobility of students and the schools that are failing to make the grade
with the No Child Left Behind objectives. One factor that seems likely to
moderate the effects of mobility is the socioeconomic status of the
children's parents, including the education level of the parents. Better
educated parents provide more stabile environments -mentally, emotionally,
and geographically- for children and hence are more likely to reduce
anxiety levels of children, and promote cognitive/personality traits of
less dogmatic thinking that welcomes new ideas encountered at school.

Toward a Life Cycles Education Policy

In 1990, International Literacy Year, Barbara McDonald and I wrote a UNESCO
report showing that increasing the education levels of girls and women in
various nations produced positive outcomes of lower fertility rates, better
childbearing, healthier childbirth, better child rearing, and better
educational achievement.

Given the important influences that an adult's education level plays on both
cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of children's development and
educational achievement, we need to move from thinking about education in
terms of how it affects just one life cycle, to thinking about how it
affects multiple life cycles. Attempting to intervene on the lives of
children alone, even starting at birth, to improve their development and
educational achievements is too late. We need to start by thinking about
the intergenerational effects that the education of parents can have not
only on the ability of the parents to support themselves and their children
better in an economic sense, but also how the parent's increased education
can affect the cognitive and emotional development of their children.

This shift from focusing on how education affects one life cycle to a focus
on how it affects more than one life cycle is what I mean by "life cycles"
education policy. It requires that we recognize that adult literacy
education is not merely a second chance at education for millions of
adults. It may well be the first chance for education for millions of these
adult's children.

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net