CHAPTER 10

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF ILLITERACY

Perspectives as Ideology

In the preceding two chapters, arguments and evidence presented which, while admittedly incomplete, nevertheless raise serious doubts about the adequacy of the liberal perspective as an explanation of the causation of poverty and the role of illiteracy in it. At the same time, they suggest that the critical perspective, although only an emerging viewpoint at present, points the way to a superior theoretical explanation of poverty and guide for adult literacy and basic education. If we provisionally accept these conclusions, how then can we account for what has been the remarkable success of the liberal perspective in dominating adult education thought and practice from the late 1950's through to the present

It is argued here that to answer this question, we must look beyond the function of the liberal perspective as a scientific description of social reality, a category in which it has been found wanting, to its exceptional practical value as a means of cementing prevailing power relationships.

For example, Marxist political economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argue that the "human capital" economic theory on which the liberal perspective rests:

provides an elegant apology for almost any pattern of oppression or inequality.... for it ultimately attributes social or personal ills either to the shortcomings of individuals or the unavoidable technical requisites of production. It provides, in short, a good ideology for the defense of the status quo. But it is a poor science for understanding either the workings of the capitalist economy or the way towards an economic order more conducive to human happiness.1