Sunday 17 May 2015

The slow death of literacy and numeracy


Haven't been posting much simply due to a lack of time.  I'm in the final stages of a PhD and a little under the gun.  However, I did think it was worth putting this out there following listening to a conversation between tutors and managers, and observing some worrying trends.

I'm worried that the adult literacy and numeracy domain is being nibbled away.  In a 'death by one thousand cuts' kind of way.

Literacy and numeracy is morphing into policy decrees, assessment, and qualifications.  One would think that gaining credits is the goal, rather than developing the ability to use literacy and numeracy to further one's agency in the world.

Question:  What will happen if this continues?

In my mind, four substantial changes will occur.  At which point L&N will be indistinguishable from general education.  To appear in part two!

2 comments:

  1. and this is also why I've been so opposed to folding the literacy and numeracy professional development into the generic and newly revised Adult Tertiary Teaching qualification... looking forward to your part 2

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  2. Agreed. Folding them into general ed had two big downfalls in my mind. One, the absolute impossibility of doing it well. And two, the fact that L&N would be losing ground it desperately needs. It would have shot us back to the nineties. I don;t think we (in our current state) would have the resources to gain it back for a long time.

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