This essay examines John Dewey’s concept of “growth” as
offering a fruitful angle of vision by which to mediate the
pedagogy and politics of adult literacy education, particularly
within the context of normative settings of adult basic education
classes and volunteer literacy programs within contemporary
U.S. society. That is, his philosophy of pragmatism may be
viewed as a symbolic midway point between structural-functional
views of literacy linked to the stabilization of the status
quo and more radical Freirian variants that seek substantial
transformation of the social order. Dewey succinctly defines
growth as the enhancement of living experience through the
exercise of critical thought and reflective action. For Dewey
(1938), such growth is continuous as long as life endures.
Thus, experience is not an end. Rather, “every experience
should do something to prepare a person for later experiences
of a deeper and more expansive quality
” (p. 47). Such “growth,” or “reconstruction
of experience” (ibid.) contributes both to personal fulfillment,
and in a collective sense, toward democracy wherein “free
social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and
free communication
” Dewey, 1927, p. 134).
If education is growth, it must progressively realize present possibilities, and thus make individuals better fitted to cope with later requirements. Growth is not something which is completed in odd moments; it is a continuous leading into the future (Dewey, 1916a, p. 56).
Each of us knows, for example, some mechanic of ordinary native capacity who is intelligent within the matters of his calling. He has lived in an environment in which the cumulative intelligence of a multitude of cooperating individuals is embodied, and by the use of his native capacities he makes some phase of this intelligence his own. Given a social medium in whose institutions the available knowledge, ideas and art of humanity were incarnate, and the average individual would rise to undreamed of heights of social and political intelligence (Dewey, 1935/1991, pp. 72-73).