Must the precepts of Knowles’ Andragogy be solved before Mezirow’s Reflection is possible?
Merizow’s (1990) Theories of Transformational Learning reflection leads us into the intellectual culture of ivy league castles and may not provide the resources that students with a life poverty or trauma may have. When people come to our Learning Centers, we must identify in the individual what their personal issues are that both motivate and block them from learning. How do we handle the hurdles of hurt values before clear intellectual thought is possible? When Adult learning methods are used with students of poverty, or trauma, we do not have Carl Roger’s (1959) “Self-actualized” cognitive personalities that would yield a clear reflective process. Instead oppression from poverty and trauma yield a reflective process that drowns the spirit in a downward spiral of failure thoughts and negative self talk. My experience with poverty is that reflections of an oppressed life are filled with failure and pain and can easily turn into a private hell. This battle of the mind in neg...