"Learning as an Adult"

One of the reasons I chose to read this essay was one of a personal interest. Being an adult learner myself, I was intrigued by Susan L. Lytle title of her writing, “Living Literacy: Rethinking Development in Adulthood”. Lytle starts out her essay with some alarming facts about various degrees of illiteracy in adulthood, with many causes contributing to these factors. Many individuals refer to these adults as "incomplete adults" that are "incompetent" and lacking the needed skills to perform higher level thinking (Lytle 376-378). I feel this goes beyond the truth and is not the case for all adult learners. I like how she goes in depth later on in her paper in the section, Issues and Assumptions in Rethinking Development: Portraying Adults. She looks beyond just illiterate adults and looks at understanding literacy development in adulthood even with literate adults. Breaking down literacy into four dimensions, beliefs, practices, processes, and plan gave insight to and reality to what goes on in the mind of an adult learner. A lot of her findings hit home with me. It is not as simple as people think it is for adult learners, even for ones that are literate. As this article states, there are many factors that contribute to the continuing education of adults. Let’s not all assume because we are adults we know everything. We want to learn, at least most of us do. Understanding the complexity that Lyle inquires throughout her article, we as adults can open our minds, enjoying the literacy we all strive for.