Educated Parents, Educated Children: Toward a Multiple Life Cycles Education Policy

Overview & Synopsis

Given the important intergenerational effects of parents' education level on the achievement of their children, education policies should shift from a focus on one life cycle to a focus on "multiple life cycles". Such a policy would explicitly recognize that adults transfer their educational achievements to the achievement of their children. It would also recognize that adult education should be valued as much as early childhood education, and that nations should provide adult education systems on a par with children's education systems. Poorly educated children are the source of adult functional illiteracy, and functionally illiterate adults are the source of poorly educated children. Perhaps through education based on a Multiple Life Cycles policy, in which children are guaranteed a right to educated parents, the vicious intergenerational cycles of functional illiteracy can be stopped at both sources. (Contains 14 endnotes.)