Ontario Literacy Coalition's Weblog

Why care about history? I care because I love stories. And, there are many in the field of adult literacy who feel the same way, including many learners. My experience suggests literacy classrooms depend on story telling. Stories are almost as important to a good literacy class as food is to the body. So history can be a great teaching source. But history can be a great learning source too.

While our history cannot give us all the answers to many of the questions that face us today, it can show us trends. It is in the trends that we can see

• where we have been
• why we do the things we do
• what has gone well and what has not
• where we seem to be headed

You do not need to look very far back in time to see that three groups have the greatest interest in our field. The “Triangle of Decision-Making” for our field, or, the three stakeholder groups that have shaped literacy education as we know it today include Literacy Sponsors, Literacy Educators, and Literacy Learners.

The influence of each of these groups has changed over time.

In our early history, those who organized the classes decided what was taught. The Bristol School Movement, started by the Methodists, taught adults to learn to read the Bible. Having adults read the Bible was the formula for filling readers with Christian values, behaviors and morals. Nothing more was needed according to the beliefs at that time.

How could writing increase values and morality? Reading and writing then was not about education as we know it today. It was about salvation.

The Sabbath day was when many adult Bible classes were held. Work was not to be done on the Sabbath Day. Writing was thought to be work (not reading though) so writing was not taught in the Bristol School Movement in the early years.

Certainly neither the Port Royalists nor those who organized the Moonlight Schools wanted learners to decide what they would learn. The Learner voice is new to literacy. Lessons were filled with moral ideas on how important it was to have an orderly home and how one must learn the value of hard work and clean living.

The late 19^th and into the 20^th century, saw a power shift. The educator had decision-making power over much of the content and teaching methods. Adult educators set and influenced the lessons. They also gave rise to adult education as social policy. Cora Wilson Stewart was hired as the literacy expert for the US army and wrote many of the reading texts used through World War One by the American military. She was chosen to lead the first major US literacy campaign. Adult teachers began to get recognition nation-wide.

They were asked to decide what and how adults were taught. The Bible was dropped from the mainstream literacy program. Although, there are some faith-based literacy programs across North America that still use the Bible. The values, ethics and morals of society continue to be found in many mainstream reading materials.

It is interesting to see how the needs of the learner take on greater importance for Jane Addam’s Hull House movement and Alfred Fitzpatrick’s Frontier College movement. In the Antigonish Movement, the learner needs decided what was taught rather than the Catholic Church.

The power-shift has been towards an increase in the learner and community voice. So we see the move from the voice of the sponsor, to educator, to learner over the past 200 years. But where is this pointing us?

Adult literacy policy is in a constant tug-of-war among the three decision-making groups. Today, some believe that faith, morality and mainstream values are the real purpose of adult literacy. Others argue that literacy needs to be about education so learners will have the workplace skills they need.

Still others argue for stronger learner voice in the field of adult literacy and basic education. Is there “one best way” for the future?

If the balance of power has shifted, so has literacy programming. The literature tells us that there are but three approaches to learning:

1) formal

2) informal

3) non-formal

Adult literacy began standing on the single pillar of formal classroom courses in 1812. Formal means a teacher-student approach. Knowledge is passed from the teacher; received by the student. This approach is still used today across North America in many adult literacy courses. It works for some learners, but not for all.

The Antigonish Movement had thousands in informal literacy learning. Here learning activities were largely defined by and run by families and communities. No credit, no diplomas, no certificates. For some adults, being able to learn with other adult learners around them was the very best way to develop their skills.

Today, Saskatchewan’s community-based SaskSmart program and the new literacy Community Planning Tables in British Columbia are examples of what is becoming the second pillar of literacy. Here are province-wide, sponsored, informal, community-based learning programs. A whole new delivery system is appearing. But it is not really new. Our history tells us this. Many numbers of developing nations have used informal community literacy as the best way for literacy–from Cuba to Nepal.

We have informal choices to learn from, both in Canada and in many other nations as well. But we could go much farther and do much more in adult literacy.

If we look at the three ways available to learning and consider how both adult learning and society itself is changing, there should be a third pillar for this field. The fact is, most of the learning we do occurs on our own. According to Livingstone, some 1500 hours per year are spent by the majority of adults in learning outside formal classrooms. This is about 15 hours per week, which more time than Canadian adults are spending in classrooms.

If “non-formal” learning, which is learning on your own, was available we would reach the 42% who are in levels 1 and 2 of the International Adult Literacy Survey. This could be done through …

• personal computer programs,
• televised and radio-broadcast literacy series,
• self-study home-material learning materials, and
• correspondence-style programs from our adult education institutions, agencies, and governmental ministries,
• other delivery possibilities,

Done well, with real learner input, such non-formal learning programs could be advertised and made available through

• family literacy
• school children-to-parents
• religious institutions
• the workplace
• community-based informal and institutional formal programs

Millions of adults learn on computers every day. Those who want to improve their literacy skills on their own time could be helped where they are and when they are ready to learn. Why is this so hard to do in Canada?

Saskatchewan and British Columbia are finding ways to build community-based informal literacy. Why is technology not more accessible as a learning tool? Greater gaps in knowledge will happen if technology is not made available to those who need it. This will result in a larger portion of the population living with literacy challenges.

We know that most adults who leave school early do not return to formal literacy and basic education programs. It is thought that fewer than 10% of those able to return to adult education courses do so.

Our history shows that up to now, classroom teaching was always involved. But what if there were no classrooms? Would literacy teaching and learning still be possible? The Antigonish Movement shows us what is possible with informal learning. Today’s growth of technology shows us possibilities for non-formal learning.

Will anything change in this century? We have a history of politicians and the media rediscovering adult literacy issues every 10 years or so. Then comes the media and public outcry followed by recycled literacy and adult basic education (ABE) programs. All the while practitioners and researchers wait and (politely) lobby for more funding. I believe the triangle of decision-making needs to move towards a fuller balance of voices and delivery opportunities–formal, informal and non-formal.

In closing, it is time for more

• learner voice and independence
• community and family based informal learning
• self-directed learning in the non-formal education format

This is where I believe history points us–to three pillars in literacy education. Let us build on our strengths–including recognizing that current and potential learners play a major role in our history of adult education programming. We need all voices involved for a better 21^st century.

For more information about the SaskSmart program go to (www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/sasksmart)

For more information about literacy Community Planning Tables in BC go to www2.literacy.bc.ca/resourcs/newresc/resspr08.htm

The Antigonish Movement is one of the most famous adult education projects known today.

The movement took its name from the small university town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. For many years, the Maritime Provinces had been the centre of wooden shipbuilding for Canada. They had also had a long history of trade with the “Boston States.” But the golden age of wind and sail was decreasing by the turn of the 20^th century, and was well over by the 1920s. This industry and the population had fallen so much that the Maritimes were called “the graveyard of industry.”

Fishermen and their families were owned by company owners that lived somewhere else. These owners were called the “cod lords.” They owned the fishing boats, fishing gear and the year’s catch of fish. The catch was used to pay off the company’s yearly advance loans. Many fishermen would end the season owing more to the “cod lords” than when they began.

Coal miners also lived a difficult life. They barely survived in rundown houses that were rented to them by the mine owners. The miners were forced to buy everything in the company’s stores. Like the fishermen, they were locked into being servants, not employees. Farmers and their families barely managed to live by taking their products to buyers. These buyers worked for outside companies and marketed their products as they saw fit.

One Catholic priest in Nova Scotia reported that families in his area were living on 4 cents a day. He said that children were wearing flour bags for clothes and sleeping in old feed bags. In late December 1925, after visiting the coal regions, the bishop of the Antigonish Diocese wrote a letter to the priests. He told them that many people were starving. He told the priests to do whatever they could to help the people.

Two priests at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) in Antigonish did “do something.” They used adult education to help people become independent. Beginning in the 1920s, the Antigonish Movement came to include Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and, to a lesser extent, Newfoundland. It was at its peak from the early 1930s to the 1940s and continued into the 1950s.

Father Jimmy Tompkins was on the faculty of StFX. Tompkins published and handed out a pamphlet in 1921 called Knowledge for the People. It said that people needed to learn things that would help them. He called this “useful knowledge.” He told the community members that they needed to begin to share their labor and manage their own products. He told his university colleagues “to go out to the people.”

In 1921, the first People’s School was held at StFX. Faculty and invited speakers talked about theories and methods in economics, mathematics, and agriculture. Some public speaking classes were also offered to the fishermen, farmers, and laborers who came to the school. But, as Tompkins was quick to point out, it was all too textbook-based.

St. Francis Xavier University decided to start an Extension Department in 1930. Father Moses Coady led this department. With input from his cousin, Father Jimmy, the Antigonish Movement began. Its mission was to make life better for the people of eastern Nova Scotia.

Father Moses believed that adult education would happen if it was based on peoples’ real lives and problems. He travelled and spoke in village after village. He spoke to crowds in halls, churches, farmyards, fishing piers, anywhere he could get people together. He told people to pool their resources, create co-operatives, and market their own products directly. Above all, he told the people to stand up for themselves. They had knowledge. They had ability. They could learn and they could act.

Study Clubs were started in many communities. The StFX Extension Department provided much of the materials talked about around Maritime kitchen tables. Even though Father Moses was very aware of illiteracy, this grassroots movement began when families helped families, and neighbours helped neighbours. The Study Clubs were some of Canada’s best examples of informal learning. Literacy was a means to an end.

During 1930-31 a total of 192 general meetings were held with 14,856 people attending. In less than five years, 173 clubs had started with 1,384 members. By 1935, there were 940 clubs with 10,650 people and 84 co-operatives or credit unions were in place. By 1938, less than a decade later, 10,000 members belonged to the Antigonish Movement.

Out of the Study Clubs and speeches by Father Moses came co-operatives and credit unions. Fishermen could now own their own boats and equipment. Farmers could get small loans and begin to market their products through co-operatives. Steel workers and miners could begin to organize for better wages. Some villages and towns started to build their own new houses using co-operative housing. Local builders did not like this and said that every house would fall down. Those buildings still stand today.

Considering the low population, few roads, and the fact that many coastal communities could only be reached by boat, this movement is amazing. Through literacy, the economy turned around. Informal adult education made all the difference.

At the head of this all was six-foot tall Father Moses Coady. He used his great speaking skills to bring hope. He even spoke to the United Nations in August 1949 and became a powerful presence throughout parts of the United States and Eastern Canada. His message was always about the power of co-operative movements.

Father Moses never saw his dream of a new world order fulfilled. After a series of heart problems and illnesses, he collapsed at the microphone while speaking at a rally in Wisconsin. He died July 28, 1959 in St. Martha’s hospital in Antigonish. His casket was carried to its final resting place in the local cemetery by a steelworker, a coal miner, two farmers and two fishermen.

Father Moses believed that people can create their own answers by building upon adult education and using their own strength. They can be “masters of their own destiny,” as he called his famous book on adult education if they work together.

A century of literacy has brought many changes. For the Methodists in the Bristol Schools, the Bible was the centre of learning and literacy. For Father Moses Coady and Father Jimmy Tompkins, literacy had become a tool in the adult learning project. For the Port Royalists and the Moonlight Schools, adult students had to come to classes. But, for Frontier College and the Antigonish Movement, literacy did not need to have a classroom base. For Eastern Canada, literacy learning even meant no pre-set courses or programs as we know them today. Literacy became the vehicle, the learners decided the destination.

Literacy education was first centred on the needs as seen by the sponsoring organizations and teachers. The decisions were with those who had the resources and those who taught the program. With some change and with more learner voice, this model is still what we find in most provinces and territories. However, other programs do exist and our history is one source to learn from.

For the Antigonish Movement, learning decisions were based upon what the learners felt they needed, not on what the sponsor/teachers thought they needed. In the Antigonish Movement

• first came learners’ fuller awareness of the issues and powers that were affecting their lives and their communities, – led by educators

then came informed alternatives through literature and the study club brainstorming discussions – led by educators

then came collective action based on what had been read and what had been discussed – led by educators when needed

For the Antigonish Movement, it was the self-identified, self-determined needs of adults that made literacy learning succeed. Informal adult education has a place in our field.

There is so much history to literacy and adult education. There are amazing heroes and heroines that can inspire us and lead us in our future. People have overcome greater problems than we face even today. But, in every program, no matter the decisions made or models created, compassion was the starting point.

Our history gives us choices. It gives us hope. And, it can give us a stronger sense of pride in what our field has done for thousands of Canadians.

Jane Addams was an unlikely champion of literacy. She was born into a wealthy family in Cedarville, Illinois. She was raised in a wealthy area of the city of Rockford, Illinois, near Chicago. Jane attended the Rockford Seminary where she studied the humanities. Most of her wealthy female friends would go on to marry wealthy men and be involved with charities. However, this path was not for Jane Addams. Instead, her work for social justice won her a place in world history and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Jane Addams studied the social problems she saw and then took action. Jane believed she could help get rid of poverty, not just be kind to the poor (Davis 1973, p. 74).

Jane became aware of social inequality when she travelled across Europe. She was shocked to see some living in great wealth and others living in great poverty. She came home to Rockford and moved to an area in Chicago that needed help.

With her lifelong friend, Brenda Starr Gates, Addams moved on September 18, 1889, into a house that used to belong to the Hull family. This was in the heart of the worst slums of Chicago. There was no garbage pickup. Sewage systems did not work well. Children played with rats as pets. Alcoholism, unemployment, disease, death and domestic filth surrounded Hull House.

Jane Addams and her friends looked out on a sea of immigrants who had come for the American Dream, but were in a nightmare of poverty. The women of Hull House started with what they knew best, providing a “liberal education” (Quigley, 2006).

Jane and Brenda began a discussion and reading group for young women. They

· started a lending library of books and of framed photographs of great paintings

· delivered books and art to the poor people in their tenement houses

· held art shows and encouraged people to lend their art work

· offered courses on poets like Dante and Browning to the immigrant working women in the area

· started a Working People’s Social Science Club

· invited speakers such as John Dewey and Susan B. Anthony to visit and speak at Hull House

There were

• kindergarten classes in the morning
• club meetings for older children in the afternoon
• clubs or courses for adults, especially English as a Second Language (ESL) and basic reading and writing classes in the evenings

The response was amazing. About 50,000 people came to Hull House in the first year and then that number grew to 2,000 per week. The Hull House buildings grew to cover several city blocks.

The mission of Hull House was to

• make education possible for the marginalized
• educate the wealthy about the conditions of immigrants
• inform the wealthy about the work of Hull House and other Settlement Houses in other cities

However, they soon saw that their approach had problems. Health problems, unemployment, and disease faced the people in the area every day. Poetry and philosophy were not enough.

Jane and her friends turned to projects that might help people make money. They began

• craft-making courses
• a book bindery workshop
• dressmaking courses
• a Boy’s Club to teach everything from how to work with wood, to how to work with metal, to photography, printing and electrical work
• an unemployment bureau to help people find jobs
• a public kitchen to teach cooking (many of the immigrants did not like this idea though since they would not cook or eat Americn food)
• to teach how to deliver babies and how to wash and prepare the dead for funerals

The movement went from poetry discussions to direct involvement in people’s struggles. But even this was not enough.

At this time, those men, women and children who could find work were working very long hours in poor conditions. If the people in this area ever worked for only eight hours a day at the jobs, they would be called “lazy” and be fired. Young children worked long hours just like adults. As the Hull House team saw it, something had to be done to change the laws. The Hull House women in the 1920s and ‘30s fought to change those laws so young children were not working and adults could have

eight-hour days. Today’s fair labour laws in the United States have roots in the work of these brave women. Some believe this was the beginning of social work in America.

Jane also saw the inequalities women faced. She fought for women’s rights. She became the first woman president of the National Conference on Social Work. She was the

• Founder and first president of the National Federation of Settlements
• National Chair of the Women’s Peace Party
• President and co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Jane’s work for the poor and her work for peace throughout World War One earned her the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane began her work with trying to make people’s lives better but she ended her life fighting the laws that kept people poor and made them suffer. The Hull House story shows the movement towards social justice in literacy.

Today literacy teaching is pulled in so many directions. These directions have grown out of the history of adult literacy. Today, some people want literacy courses to focus on jobs and employment, others want it to focus on community improvement and development, some want a liberal arts education and still others want learners to decide what they need to learn. All programs and funders focus on at least one of these literacy goals. They all come out of our history.

Like Jane Addams, none of us can grow without experiencing, learning, reflecting, and acting–and then starting all over again. When we stop growing, so does the field of adult literacy.