ADULT BASIC EDUCATION
Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 1997, 145-164

Student Goals and Public Outcomes: The Contribution of Adult Literacy Education to the Public Good

George Demetrion

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the relationship between student goals in adult literacy programs and policy mandates calling for important public outcomes typically related to the normative values of workplace and family literacy. It is maintained that there are some viable connections if literacy is viewed as an intervening variable that satisfies a range of personal objectives and "the public good" in enabling new readers to become more effective contributors to "mediating" institutions and social settings. This study builds on the recent work of the National Institute for Literacy which identifies three major outcome areas for adult literacy education in the realms of work, family, and citizenship.

We badly need to enrich the way we understand our public institutions and comport ourselves regarding them, particularly by attending to how they affect or even create our identities as selves and as citizens. In an age of cynicism and privatized withdrawal, it may seem quixotic to call for a reinvigoration of an enlightened public. But we believe this reinvigoration is not an idealistic whim but the only realistic basis on which we can move ahead as a free people (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swindler, and Tipton, 1991, 141).

he other day a friend asked me what I did for a living. I said I am a male nurse's aide in the hospital and the nursing home. This person made a face and said, "Oh Lord, I would not do that job for all the money in the world." A lot of people think it is an awful job. Well, believe it or not, there is something special about this job. People depend on me. I not only care for them, I care about them. You see, I like what I do. My work is the kind that many son's and daughter's can't or won't do. Somebody has to take care of the sick and the old. It takes a special person to do the work I do, and we are special people. I am proud of my work and proud that I care ("Proud to be a Nurse's Aide," Smith, 1991, 75).