AMERICAN ADULT LITERACY

TAGS: #adult, Functionally illiterate, #reading, #literacy instruction, #Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) #CCC

(1933-1942) |FINANCIAL LITERACY| The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps were in operation. The educational programs provided jobs for unemployed teachers. Standardized tests and interviews prior to entering CCC camps determined individuals’ educational needs. As a result, enrollees studied a wide range of subjects at a wide range of levels. Options included “elementary subjects” (reading, arithmetic, spelling); “high school subjects” (English, history, mathematics); “college subjects” (accounting, psychology, French); “vocational courses” (forestry, photography, agriculture); “correspondence courses” (diesel engineering, mechanical drawing, civil service); and “lectures” (health and hygiene, first aid, sanitation).

One gap that CCC administrators considered critical to fill was that left by illiteracy, defined as “an inability to read a newspaper or write a simple letter” or less than three years of schooling (5).

Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC] In June 1933, the ECW decided that men in CCC camps could be given the opportunity of vocational training and additional education. Educational programs were developed that varied considerably from camp to camp, both in efficiency and results. More than 90 percent of all enrollees participated in some facet of the educational program. Throughout the CCC, more than 40,000 illiterate men were taught to read and write.

In fact the CCC did a better job with literacy than the Department of Education which should have shut them down in 1945. People realized their gov’t jobs were in jeopardy so the department of education mounted a campaign to kill off the CCC and they did. Sadly for America they won the battle – we still have the incompetent department of noneducation.

WHERE DO WE LOOK
TO SEE WHAT EDUCATION CAN BECOME?

The Question that you ask  will determine much of the answer that you get.

The School System as we know it, is an inheritance of the 19th century from the Bismarckian model of german schooling that got taken up by the English reformers and the religious missionary, and worked it’s way into the U.S. as a force of social cohesion, but is a Federal Department of Education model that now works against us.