Adult Literacy

As we have seen, perspective on illiteracy formulated during the mid-1800's directly led to the development of common schools for the children of Upper Canada, but there has been no similar long-range institutional response to the problem of adult illiteracy. Programs responding to it have never grown large enough or lasted long enough to reach the majority of illiterate adults, and illiteracy rates have remained substantial over time.

Elite support for adult literacy programs has tended to coincide with the immediate threat to the existing order posed by the marginal groups to which illiterate adults belong. Unlike childhood education, which mainly aims for long-range intergenerational effects, adult literacy education directly absorbs those adults who are currently most exploited, and therefore potentially the most dangerous to the established order. Therefore, such programs have been "thrown into the breech" in times of crisis, when these adults have become most restive. However, once the crisis of control and legitimacy has subsided, elite support for literacy education has faded as well. This has imparted a "boom and bust" quality to efforts to deal with adult illiteracy in Canada.

This variation in the level of elite support can be explained by the fact that although the capitalist class is able to sponsor a strategy of incorporation of exploited groups in order to resolve an immediate crisis, in the long run they cannot continue to do so because the capitalist accumulation process periodically requires a super-exploited stratum of workers. To support a long term strategy of elimination of that stratum would be to undermine the very economic structure upon which their existence as a class depends. However useful such a strategy may be for them in the short term, it is out of step with their long-range interests.

For their part, mainstream adult basic educators have not recognized the contradiction which lies at the heart of. their strategy of incorporation of the surplus population into existing capitalist institutions. Thus, for example, when elite support for their efforts has subsided, adult educators have tended to ascribe this to a lack of public awareness of the severity of the problem of adult illiteracy. The flaw in this interpretation is that it overlooks the fact that such periodic unawareness on the part of economic and political elites is 'caused'. and not simply accidental.

Alternative Perspectives

What have been described above are the dominant responses to illiteracy in Canadian history, the ones which have commanded the greatest attention and commitment of resources. It has been the interests of the capitalist class which have had the greatest weight in their development. However, as we have seen, during each period educators have been confronted by alternative perspectives formulated by Individuals, organizations and movements seeking to organize and mobilize members of subordinate classes in the face of intensified exploitation brought on by a shift in the accumulation process.

In contrast with the dominant perspectives, the alternative (subordinate) ones have identified the economic structures of capitalism, and not illiteracy, as the source of poverty and its associated social problems. Their adherents have valued the capacity for critical thought and collective political action as much as the simple possession of the skills of reading and writing. Their sources have included the labour movement in Upper Canada in the 19th century, the Ukrainian socialist movement in the early decades of the 20th century, and the radical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, as it has informed and inspired literacy and language programs for the surplus population beginning in the early 1970's.