Adult Literacy and the American Political Culture

George Demetrion
Manager of Community-Based Programming
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford
Gdemetrion@juno.com

Published in D.R. Walling (ed.) Under Construction: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Postmodern Schooling. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, pp. 169-192

ABSTRACT

Through John Dewey's concept of "growth" and art, this article establishes a "middle ground" between Forrest P. Chisman's human capital vision of adult literacy and Paulo Freire's critical Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Dewey defines growth as the enhancement of experience through critical reflection and art as the "consummation" or fulfillment of experience as an ongoing temporal phenomenon within the stream of time. This position does not uncritically embrace the status quo, but takes a developmental rather than transformational view of change as the "limit-situation" of the politics of adult literacy education particularly with mainstream programs in the United States. Within such constraints, Dewey;'s pragmatic space provides considerable opportunity for individual and programmatic "growth."

In the 1980s, the problem of illiteracy has gained national prominence through the advocacy of Barbara Bush and the perceived "crisis" in education which links the failure of contemporary schooling with a declining ability of the United States to compete effectively in a global economy. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the National Literacy Act of 1991. This legislation provides evidence of the value, whether rhetorical or more fundamental, that the U.S. government places on achieving the stated national goal "[t]o eliminate illiteracy by the year 2000..." (S. 1310: An Act, 1990).

Non-readers nationwide have enrolled in adult literacy basic education and community-based organizations with thousands of volunteers and part-time instructors contributing hours of valued time. In addition to such national agencies like Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) and Laubauch Literacy Action (LLA), regional literacy resource and research centers have sprung up to help coordinate efforts and to provide intellectual coherence and practical support for practitioners.