In this article, we examine John Updike's short story "A&P" and its depiction of the grocery store as a curricular space re/presenting consumption and resistance to it. We position Updike's fictional A&P as a space where the "big curriculum" (Schubert, 2006a) of consumption is enacted in everyday life and explore both how the curriculum of…

This paper explores the "social movement learning" operating within one site of critical public pedagogy and, specifically, examines how the anti-consumption activist group "Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping" encourages transitional spaces of learning through a "pedagogy of the unknown." Bill Talen, a.k.a. "Reverend Billy", is an…

Culture jamming, the act of resisting and re-creating commercial culture in order to transform society, is embraced by groups and individuals who seek to critique and (re)form how culture is created and enacted in our daily lives. In this article, we explore how two groups--Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping--use culture…

This chapter examines popular culture as a site of cultural resistance. Specifically, it explores how "culture jamming," a cultural-resistance activity, can be a form of adult education. It examines adult education and learning as it intersects with both consumerism and popular culture. Focus is placed on a growing social movement of individuals…

The field of adult education exists within a context of consumer capitalism, although adult educators have failed to acknowledge how central consumption is to today's society. Traditional consumer education has typically focused on technical skills, and thus positions itself outside the social, political, and cultural realms. In this article, the…

Over a decade ago, Oduran (1993) argued that consumer education was an emerging frontier of adult education. While the Adult Performance Level (APL) project in the 1970s sparked some interest in consumer and life skills within adult basic education and English as a second language (Lankshear, 1993; Levine, 1986; Sandlin, 2000), and while this push…

This chapter explores the connection between consumerism, consumption, and adult education, arguing for a more critical form of consumer education for adults.

Content analysis of five consumer education workbooks used in adult literacy classes examined depictions of the market and literacy learners as consumers. A hidden curriculum that promotes ideologies disrespectful of learners was discerned. The ideologies maintain inequalities by blaming financial failure on consumers, ignoring the larger social,…

Interviews of adult literacy learners were compared with depictions of learners as consumers in textbooks. Texts focused on learners' deficits and lack of knowledge, whereas learners viewed themselves as competent, capable consumers despite limited academic skills and income. (Contains 40 references.) (SK)

Little empirical evidence exists on how adult literacy learners act as consumers. Yet, adult literacy programs often employ a "functional" approach to consumer education and assume that adult learners are deficient in consumer skills. Data from a qualitative study of the consumer behaviors of adult literacy learners are used to explore how adult…