On the face of it, there appears an overwhelming national consensus on the problem of illiteracy that transcends issues of class and ideological persuasion. But, that is far from the case. In fact, wide gaps exists between policy elites and the viewpoints of progressive and radical literacy scholars and practitioners. The national discourse system is further complicated by the perspectives of adult literacy learners who, as a new body of research is beginning to document (Beder and Valentine, 1990; Eberle and Robinson, 1980; Fingeret and Danin, 1991; Ziegahn, 1992), seek inclusion into the mainstream. They seek approaches to literacy that integrate practical, personal, aesthetic, and cultural knowledge in ways that correspond to the concrete particularity of each learner.

In this essay I examine the prevailing discourse through an exploration of the two key "voices" that structure the current debate. First is the work of policy advocate Forrest P. Chisman, whose structural-functionlist ideology played a pivotal role in shaping the U.S. government's literacy policy in the early 1990s. Next, the essay explores the radical critique of functional literacy through Paulo Freire's "foundational" opus, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).

Freire's early work presented a compelling countervoice to a pervasive post World War II "modernization" theory wherein the "developed" world would provide aid to the "underdeveloped" world in part by linking literacy to national economic development (Graff, 1987, Street, 1984). Freire's text is still widely drawn upon by radical and progressive educators intent on resisting the hegemonization of a structural-functional ideology, currently expressed through a "post-industrial" vision reflecting the contemporary "realities" of an "information-age" society (McLaren and Leonard, 1993).