Resources of hope: Towards a revaluing of education

International Journal of Lifelong Education

An inseparable aspect of citizenship": marking a centenary in "universal and lifelong" adult education "We need to think out educational methods and possibilities from the new point of view, that of the adult learning to be a citizen. All this can only be effected by giving him a share of responsibility for his own education. . .." 1 This year we mark a major adult education centenary: the publication, in November 1919, of the Final Report of the British Ministry of Reconstruction's Adult Education Committee. This was a landmark in our fieldprobably the first major official report on adult education in any country to be based on serious empirical research. More important, perhaps, it set out a strong political case for a broadlifelong and lifewideadult education curriculum as essential for democratic citizenship. Though well written, the Final Reportover 400 tightly packed pages, around a quarter of a million wordswas not a quick read, and the Committee's chairman, A.L. Smith, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, wrote what was in effect an eight-page summary introductionthough he cast in the form of a letter to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. The 'necessary conclusion' to be drawn from the Committee's work, Smith wrote, 'is that adult education is a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong', adding that 'the opportunity for adult education should be spread uniformly and systematically over the whole community'. (Ministry of Reconstruction Adult Education Committee, 1919, p. 5) 2 The International Journal of Lifelong Education tries to live up to its name: though founded and based in Great Britain, we have always tried to be international. At first sight, therefore, it may appear odd for an editorial to stress the importance of a British report. It is hardly necessary to mention that other important things were happening across the world in 1919. The Great War had only recently ended; much of Europe was in turmoil; Europe's global empires, reaching their zenith, were also beginning to fray-1919 saw widespread unrest in India, for instance, most notoriously the Amritsar massacre; the Irish war of independence was getting under way.) Nor was it only in Britain that important things were happening in adult education: German adult educators are rightly celebrating the centenary of a landmark year for the Volkshochschule movement. Yet there is a good reason to argue that the Ministry of Reconstruction Report's influence was indeed international. Of course, it was directed at a British audience, and concerned itself with policy and practice in Great Britain. 3 But partly because Britain was then the centre of a global Empireone on which the sun only set 50 years laterthe opinions of a British committee had a wider impact. Trivially, perhaps, we find the Report discussed at some length just a few weeks after publication in the Japan Advertiser (1920, p. 6). More substantially, as its ideas bore fruit in British practiceand that was a process that developed over two or three decadesthey wormed their way into the thinking of adult educators not only in the British colonies, but in the independent countries ('dominions', particularly Australia and New Zealand) then regarded as integral to the British Empire. Arguably, they played a part also in shaping the thinking of UNESCO (Elfert 2018; Holford, 2016).

History of Education, 2010

2005

Chih-Hao Lee This study examines the practical application of Oxford Idealism to education reform and the adult education movement. According to Idealist philosophy, enlightened and active citizenship was the cornerstone of a participatory democracy. This thesis thus explores how Oxford Idealists used the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) to pursue the aim of cultivating good citizenship and forming a common purpose for the future society they wished to see emerging. The WEA, founded in 1903, embodied the Idealist vision by promoting its two-fold practices: first, it organised university tutorial classes to foster mutual learning and fellowship between intellectuals and workers; second, it campaigned for a state-funded 'educational highway', from nursery to university, so that every citizen would have the opportunity to receive the kind of liberal education which had hitherto been limited to upper and middle classes. By exploring the development of the dual initiative, this thesis examines the achievement and limitations of the Idealist project. In particular, it investigates whether and how this pursuit, in the long run, contributed to the rise of professionalism, a trend which has been ascribed to the efforts of Idealists but which in many ways contradicted the ideal of participatory democracy. In so doing, this thesis explains why the influence of Oxford Idealism-this highly moralistic philosophy which inspired a generation of intellectuals and politicians and lent a distinctive flavour to British public policy at the beginning of the twentieth century-gradually ebbed in the public domain.

2, 2021

2017

This thesis considers the place of workers’ adult education in the world of the British labour movement, and what impact it may have had on worker-students as citizens. It concentrates on three voluntary working class adult education organisations – the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), The National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC), and the Co-operative. The WEA delivered an impartial, non sectarian, non-political programme of education in the liberal arts and humanities with the support of universities and Local Education Authorities. The NCLC promoted a programme of Marxist education, and accepted support only from working class organisations, predominantly trade unions. The Co-operative wished to develop ‘Co operative character’ through education as a means to building a ‘Co-operative Commonwealth.’ This thesis explores the extent to which each organisation made an impact in Yorkshire between the wars. It does this in a variety of ways; by analysing the diversity of though...

This research seminar will focus on historical variations in relationships between adult education and learning, collective and individual emancipation, and social movements in Europe during the 19 th and 20 th centuries. In a Europe characterised, on the one hand, by nationstate formation, and, on the other hand, by breakdown of multi-ethnic states, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Czarist Russia, exceptionally diverse economic, political, social, and cultural movements were responsible for the 'social organisation of communication and adult learning', which played a key role in the circulation ideas concerning social change, organisation of society distribution of opportunities, and civil rights. Adult education and learning were central to the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge organised by multilayered civil society movements which sought to empower groups and individuals in interpreting and sharing their experiences of class, religion, gender, region, race, language, citizenship, and nationality during the differential modernisation of European societies. Although marked by significant variations in industrialisation and urbanisation, the social organisation of adult education and learning in European societies involved the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge among diverse audiences of potential adult learners. These learning activities ranged, on the one hand, from recruiting and training national and local organisers, and, on the other hand, organising and delivering learning activities for the rankand-file membership of political, social, workers, women's, suffrage, and temperance movements. The core modalities of these 'social forms' of adult education and learning were characterised by a) institutionalised 'formal' instruction, classes, lectures, and demonstrations; b) sociability of non-formal 'mutual learning' organised by reading circles, book clubs, popular

2014

If journalism is the first rough draft of history, books like these-a conference volume, a collection of papers from a major research project, and a presidential memoire/analysis-are the second drafts. But these drafts are polished, the quality of the analysis uniformly high. Government policy choices through time are being documented and data are being collected; the patterns are being identified, causality argued, international commonalities and local specificities discussed. Although most of the papers have a time horizon too short to constitute history (with the exception of the Fisher et al. book, which examines the period 1980 to 2010), taken all together, these books are a second draft of history. And of course, in history, there is no final draft. The three books are quite different from each other, but are unified by a focus on post-secondary education (PSE) policy and by a focus on Canada, in an international context. The Axelrod et al. book, Making Policy in Turbulent Times, is an anthology of eighteen papers presented at a conference organized by York University's Faculty of Education.

Stephen Roberts (ed) Centenary Essays on the Workers' Educational Association, 2003