by Kristyn Joy, Adult and Higher Education Masters Program, Western WA U, 2016
The U.S. Census abandons questions pertaining to literacy (“Can you read or write in your native language?”) and begins asking instead for the highest grade in school completed.
Literacy programs funded by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration claim to have taught 1.5 million adults how to read
Myles Horton, Don West and Jim Dombrowski found the Highlander Folk Center in Monteagle, TN. Highlander quickly becomes a political education center for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the left-wing branch of the growing labor movement.
The General Educational Development (GED) test is created by the U.S. military to allow veterans returning from World War II to use their military service, in place of formal education, to qualify for a high school diploma equivalent. This allowed (predominantly white) veterans to find employment and enroll in college under the G.I. Bill.
Prior to becoming President, Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a Columbia University study, “The Conservation of Human Resources.” Literacy education is framed as a tool to protect national economic and defense interests.
A stated purpose of the Adult Education Section is to "Help Americans become more aware of the importance of lifelong learning and how it can aid in solving many of their problems"
Civil Rights Movement organizers Septima Clark and Essau Jenkins coalesce with the Highlander Folk School to found the Citizenship School movement to provide literacy education by and for African Americans in the south as a pathway to voting rights.
The Highlander Folk Center is raided by the State of Tennessee, their assets seized and the school shut down. “You can padlock a building, but you can’t padlock and idea.” -Myles Horton
The day following its closure by the State of Tennessee, The Highlander Folk School re-opens as the Highlander Education and Research Center
Adult Basic Education program is established as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. The ABE program is created under the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, along with several anti-poverty measures such as community action agency grants which continue to fund community-based non-profits today
Civil Rights Movement wins the Federal Voting Rights Act, which bans the use of literacy tests as a prerequisite to registering to vote.
1966 Passage of the Adult Education Act in U.S. Congress moves the ABE program into the Department of Education, linking federal funding for adult literacy to a “school-based model” , and framing adult literacy’s purpose as “to enable employment, and not as a right in itself.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paolo Freire, is published in the United States and inspires the work of community-based, popular education literacy and organizing groups such as the Institute for Popular Education for Southern California, CHIRLA – Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in L.A., and Casa Latina in Seattle
Amendments expand the scope and purpose of the Adult Education Act to include high school completion and GED programs, and ESL programs. Minimum age for participants is lowered from 18 to 16.
Reagan administration advocates for the broad-based use of volunteers to reduce costs of adult literacy programs; then drastically reduces federal funding for adult literacy education.
A national coalition of community-based literacy organizations forms to advocate passage of the National Literacy Act, winning the right for community based non-profits to lead literacy education programs with federal dollars.
Adult Literacy Act passes in U.S. Congress, emphasizing “workplace literacy and economic productivity,” over other literacy goals.
President Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act passes Congress and ends AFDC (“welfare), replacing it with TANF. TANF dramatically restricts adult and higher education options, forcing hundreds of thousands of low income women into low wage jobs.
Congress passes the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act under the Workplace Investment Act, permanently marrying literacy education and job training; and imposing “performance measures” on all federally funded adult education programs.
Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education (VALUE) is founded as the only organization led by and for current and former adult literacy learners to advocate for progressive adult literacy policy.
President Obama signs the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which reauthorizes the Workplace Investment Act that expired in 2003.
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