Many of these adults faced with the problem of not being able to read, feel very uncomfortable returning to the institution that failed them in the first place. They will put up with their handicap rather than enter the schools.27

The brief suggests that as an alternative, funding can go to reading programs in organizations like the local YMCA or library. As well, the brief argues for innovations like "self-planned and peer-group learning".28 When the substance of these suggestions is examined in the context of the brief, it Is clear that they would lead to genuine improvements in program development, outreach to illiterate adults, improvements in the class environment, etc. However, as with the 'old' methods, the problems to be addressed are presumed to be located in deficiencies of the adult---in his or her "handicap"--and that he or she must change in order to "participate" in the society. No mention is made of a class structure which reproduces and perpetuates both illiteracy and poverty, and the possible role of education in its radical transformation.

Another supporter of the need for new methods is the MCL Board member cited above, who argued at the Adam's Report conference that:

We've got to begin looking at new alternatives. The research that demonstrates that new alternatives are required is absolutely conclusive...In the education industry we have been marketing a product .... there's an awful lot of people that haven't bought the product .... So more of the same is not the answer... What we're looking for is not one answer but multiplicity of answers, and answers that are community based ... So where do we begin? Developing pluralistic, community-based programs .... industry-based programs designed to meet the specific needs.... We can't do it bureaucratically, following the same tried and failed methods that we've already demonstrated.29

The research the speaker refers to, and the concept of "pluralistic community-based" programs which is advocated, are from a Ford Foundation report entitled Adult Illiteracy in the United States. Its principal recommendation for the:

establishment of new, pluralistic, community-based initiatives whose specific objective will be to serve the most disadvantaged hard-core poor, the bulk of whom never enrol in any existing program.30

What is unusual about the report, and what sets it apart from most writing in the field, is its rejection of the liberal perspective on illiteracy--i.e. the belief in a direct causal connection between illiteracy and poverty. It offers in its stead a conflict theory account of the class structure in the U.S. which, while vague and falling short of a coherent, adequate analysis of it, is sufficiently critical to be noteworthy (especially considering its source--the Ford Foundation, an establishment institution). However, the MCL Board member's remarks reflect none of the critical thrust of that report. Perhaps the speaker does indeed accept the need for a fundamental transformation of the class structure that the authors of the report, Hunter and Harmon, quite obliquely imply, but no indication is given of this, and in the context of the speaker's other comments, the phrases "plurastic" and "community-based" leave the impression of being simply two more' variations on the liberal theme of the need for illiterate adults to become better adjusted to the prevailing class structure (although now through "participatory" means).