{"id":14062,"date":"2014-07-21T13:11:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14062"},"modified":"2014-07-21T13:11:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:11:41","slug":"civic-education-workforce-redevelopment-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14062","title":{"rendered":"adult civic education in the Workforce Redevelopment Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doleta.gov\/usworkforce\/wia\/wialaw.txt\">Workforce Investment Act of 1998 <\/a>consolidated federal adult education programs. Congress just passed a re-authorization that has gone to the president for his signature. Section 201 deals with Adult Education and Family Literacy. The reauthorized section 201 &#8220;create[s] a partnership among the Federal Government, States, and localities to provide, on a voluntary basis, adult education and literacy activities.&#8221; The list of purposes for these activities begins with employment and job skills, as one would expect for a Department of Labor program. But the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicmissionofschools.org\/\">Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools<\/a> alerted me to section 4(b), which mentions another outcome: &#8220;acquiring an understanding of the American system of Government, individual freedom, and the responsibilities of citizenship.&#8221; Section 243 then specifically mentions &#8220;integrated English literacy and civics education.&#8221; Funds for this purpose are to be allocated&#8211;in part&#8211;on the basis of the number of newly naturalized citizens per state. Money can flow to nonprofits, state agencies, universities, libraries, etc.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of course, everything depends on how these provisions are implemented. Civics education for new immigrants could be mere jingoistic propaganda, or it could be well-intentioned and yet poorly handled. However, as I argued in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/05\/06\/opinion\/levine-citizenship\/\">CNN.com column last year<\/a>, we can and should educate new immigrants for effective and responsible civic participation. That will be good for them as individuals, good for their communities, and good for democracy. I am enthusiastic about these provisions in the Workforce Investment Act. It is now up to us to make sure they are well implemented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 consolidated federal adult education programs. Congress just passed a re-authorization that has gone to the president for his signature. Section 201 deals with Adult Education and Family Literacy. The reauthorized section 201 &#8220;create[s] a partnership among the Federal Government, States, and localities to provide, on a voluntary basis, adult [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocating-civic-education","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14062"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14070,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14062\/revisions\/14070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}