Self-Actualization as a Form of Humanization

      For Paulo Freire (1970), humanization represents the underlying goal for a politics of literacy by linking personal and collective consciousness to the transformation of oppressive social conditions which is never fully achieved within history. While I share Freire's emphasis on "process," I view with considerable skepticism much applicability of his notion of liberation in the context of literacy programs in mainstream settings within the United States (Demetrion, 1997, a).

       Rather, among students who participate in such programs, the quest for "self-actualization" is a much more central value than any cultural politics of emancipation as articulated in the Freirian perspective. Radical critical educators may decry an emphasis on literacy education that equates empowerment with "the process of appreciating and loving oneself" (Freire and Macedo, 1987, p. 152). I maintain that such a goal is of inestimable value for those who have been marginalized. Given the importance of self-actualization within the culture of the United States, moreover, any sense of realism requires a strong linkage between such a value and literacy education.

      The "myth" of self-actualization is one of the most potent beliefs that motivate adult new readers in the United States and represents almost a "foundational" precondition for any broader pedagogy of humanization. This is not to deny the value that adult literacy learners place on enhancing community, nor the desire to speak out and act on critical public issues that effect their lives. Self-actualization is not synonymous with the self in "splendid isolation." Still, identity among such learners, with exceptions, remains profoundly individualistic, requiring literacy to make sense to the self as constructed if it is to be embraced (Fingeret and Danin, 1991; Lestz, Demetrion, and Smith, 1994).

      Such an individualistic sense of self (however socially mediated) is pervasive in much of the student-generated literature published through adult literacy centers. Throughout this genre, one of the major identified purposes for program participation is to "have a better life," expressed in countless ways. While stating this, one of the most compelling reasons why students attribute to self-actualization such importance is because they believe it will provide them with more effective abilities to interact with others in various public and social ways. Such a notion of the self, far less a reflection of "false consciousness" than an acute "reading" of pervasive cultural, social, and psychological "realities" of our times, is the primary interpretive force field out of which adult literacy learners in mainstream programs go forward into personal and social being.