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Rethinking social purpose in contemporary British adult education Paper presented at SCUTREA, 32nd Annual Conference, 2-4 July 2002, University of Stirling Janice Malcolm & Rebecca O’Rourke, University of Leeds, UK Introduction The traditions of radical adult education claim a special relationship with movements for progressive social change. There is a clearly identifiable, if historically varied, set of values, sites and practices that share a commitment to educational pedagogy and purpose rooted in social and transformative, rather than individual and conformist, aspirations. This tradition, like the social movements and political cultures with which it has been aligned, foundered in the last two decades under the combined impact and discontents of the radical right, de-industrialisation and globalisation. We track the legacy in adult education provision and research, consider how contemporary social movements, of the right and left, engage with lifelong learning and consider what twentieth century radicalism might look and feel like. The legacy in provision The radical tradition in British adult education exists because most of the social movements with which it was linked -late twentieth century feminism as much as late eighteenth century working class and labour movement struggles – privileged education as both means and medium of their campaigns. This provided radical adult education with sound institutional and ideological foundations. Throughout the twentieth century, radical education grew (often in struggle) with the demands made upon it by the changing social and educational context. Community education and women’s education in particular were sites of practice that enriched and expanded the democratic traditions of educational activity and their providers within the labour movement. The last twenty years have seen a period of hard times for such initiatives: those that have not withered away have become all but unrecognisable. Where once we had trade union education, we now have the workplace as the site and subject of educational work promoting, because that is what it funds, instrumental and competitive forms of learning. And these not only seem more attractive and purposeful to people negotiating everyday life in global capitalism, promising as they do the really really useful knowledge of vocational skills and training, they also undermine and diminish, as merely social, the purposes of non-vocational education. Where once we had women’s studies courses challenging the fundamental basis of knowledge construction and education’s social purpose and institutional form, we now have the blandest of commitment to equal opportunities, more often driven by compliance with the law than engagements with power. Where once we had community education at the cutting edge of social change (common ownership and cooperatives, action on child poverty, health and disability rights, rent strikes, social housing, feminist and anti-racist campaigns), we now have co-option into the local state’s management of change as urban regeneration becomes one of the few growth industries in the wastelands of Britain’s former industrial heartland. Where once we had alliances built on issues of race and gender which linked all sites and sectors of education from pre-school to post-compulsory, we now have a rhetoric of lifelong learning and divisive competition within and between sectors and sites of lifelong learning. Working class communities, whether in industrial-rural or inner city setting, were fruitful sites for the kinds of community activism and social change that radical education supported and instigated during the late 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, all of these movements had become much more defensive in the face of de-industrialisation and the systematic asset stripping of civil society conducted by the New Right. Richard Johnson, the cultural historian of education who conceptualised the radical tradition as the source of ‘really useful knowledge’ (Johnson, 1988), argues convincingly that the New Right is a kind of new social movement in its own right, formed in struggle with the ideas and practices of the 1 critical social movements which developed from 1960 onwards (Johnson, 1991). Following this analysis, we can see that the radical adult education tradition was systematically captured for, and denatured by, the New Right. The co-option of its potential for transformation and critique was secured through a variety of ideological and material means. Debbie Epstein, in a discussion of the New Right’s remaking of higher education, analyses the ways in which marketisation, the entitlement culture and discourses of derision work against education’s radical and transformative potential by inscribing it as a site of subversion in urgent need of control (Epstein, 1995). Although the specificity is different, just as Epstein translates from schooling to higher education, it is possible to see the same forces at work in radical adult education. Provision is now less about local activism and more bounded by policy, linked as it is with social inclusion and regeneration agendas which put the emphasis on learners and learning rather than knowledge and criticality. At the same time, and perhaps as a result of this shift, its contradictions are starkly revealed and thus more accessible to practitioners and theorists alike (Crowther, et al, 1999, 2000; Bamber, Ducklin and Tett, 2000). Shaping the Research Agenda In order to gauge the influence of radicalism on adult education in more recent times, we analysed papers presented at this conference - the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA). This strategy is flawed in that it shows us only the influence of radicalism on research and public writing in adult education, rather than on practice; and we are conscious that much radical educational activity has been undocumented, or recorded only outside the educational literature. It will clearly be necessary to look further than this, especially to the more practitioner focused literature of Adults Learning and the like to reach firm and comprehensive conclusions. Nevertheless, the ‘audit’ of these papers provided some interesting indications of the directions which adult educators’ concerns have taken over the past thirty years. The first SCUTREA conference took place in 1970. For the first five years, there is very little evidence of radicalism in the contributions; the history, philosophy and management of adult education, and the training of practitioners, dominate the early proceedings. The Russell Report in 1973, and the (Scottish) Alexander Report in 1974 do succeed in focusing members’ attention on ‘need’ as an organising principle in provision, although they are largely preoccupied with the restructuring and management of new forms of community education, rather than with any explicit political purpose. It is not until 1976 that clear political links are made between the commitments and practices of adult educators and the social impact of their work. Community education becomes a constant, if minor, concern over the remainder of the 1970s. There is no specific engagement with feminism and women’s education until 1980 when five women adult educators seize the initiative with a series of papers written from a feminist perspective, including one analysing the field of continuing education (Oglesby, et al, 1980: 28). There are then only occasional ‘radical’ papers until 1985 when radicalism in the form of feminism, labour education, Marxism and, occasionally, anti-racism become regular features of the conference proceedings. In the mid-1980s, much of this writing was firmly related to emancipatory educational practice; the 1987 conference, for example, was given over almost entirely to a discussion of the concept of praxis (Armstrong, 1987; Haffenden, 1987). From 1990 onwards things change again. Several factors contribute. The post-modern turn had begun, and is expressed both in terms of theoretical unravelling and rewritings, and in the idea of politically ‘new times’, the latter borrowed from the disintegrating Communist party. Feminism and anti-racism staked out their claim to a voice in the academy, but academic respectability loosened their organic connections with the social movements from which they sprang. The war of attrition waged by the Thatcher government on education was beginning to be felt more keenly in higher education. This led to fierce policy critique, but was also accompanied by a change of focus as linguistic and deconstructionist analysis, and auto/biographical approaches to research, replaced attempts to reconcile grand radical narratives with 2 everyday educational practice. In some ways, adult education seems to become more inward looking from this point onwards. If we look for evidence of the radical concerns of the 1970s and 1980s in current adult education writing, the distance travelled becomes apparent. The 2000 SCUTREA conference took the theme of ‘inclusion’ – a linguistic change which itself illustrates some of the political differences that have emerged. Paper titles mention social inclusion, inclusivity, diversity, (widening) participation and (community) regeneration, and some papers focus on the ways in which curriculum, assessment, teaching and ‘pathways’ through learning can promote these qualities. Others offer a critique of the discourse of inclusion (Armstrong, 2000; Edwards and Miller, 2000). In 2001 the theme was Traveller’s Tales and in 2002 Altered States. Our chosen ‘radical’ foci of feminism, race, labour and community do not feature strongly in relation either to practice or to the terms in which critique is offered – although gender, ethnicity, ‘difference’, disability and ‘learning at work’ do. This is not just a change in the language used, but a move away from understanding these issues as movements, and towards seeing them largely as ideological constructs and aspects of identity. This may be a particularly British problem. Proceedings of the international adult education conference for the same year (AERC Proceedings, 2000) organised by SCUTREA and sister organisations in North America, Canada, Australasia and Europe reveal a different picture. Feminism and anti-racism are clearly present, though their form has changed; in most cases, they are used as interpretative devices in descriptions of particular forms of educational practice (Hayes and Way) or aids to identity analysis (Clark). Writing driven by labour movement activity or commitment is replaced to a large extent by analyses of work-related learning at either the individual or organisational level (Fenwick, Xu). Community education is alive and well, though largely of a different ideological stripe to that promoted by Fordham and others in the 1970s. There is some emphasis on the individual and identity impacts of community-based education, although Tom Heaney offers a Freirian analysis focusing explicitly on social change. Contemporary social movements in relation to lifelong learning Despite the fact that the once ‘new’ social movements described here have diminished as important sites of political activity, and thus receded from the theory and practice of adult education, other social movements emerge to engage radicals and activists. We call these contemporary social movements. They are both more diffuse and more narrowly focused: more diffuse in that they are not usually built upon a clearly defined understanding of the world (or ‘grand narrative’), but narrower in that they often take as their focus a quite specific area of social, economic or political activity. This focus can be inflected to the right as well as the left, as recent campaigns about issues as diverse as the cost of fuel and rehabilitation of sex offenders have shown. Some current examples are: Anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism Poverty and debt Asylum seekers and refugees Animal rights Countryside National or religious identity Fascism Environment Sexuality and gender identity Health, e.g. HIV/AIDS; fertility; disability; abortion 3 Several of these movements demonstrate a strong commitment to forms of informal political education for their membership similar to that found earlier in the wider labour movement. There is information and instruction for activism, and statements of position, often explicitly presented for use when putting the movement’s case to others. All these movements are sites of learning, sometimes tacit, sometimes not. Within the context of their organisations, they are sites of popular education and of its service in social change. Some seek links with formal education, usually schools rather than adult education. There is no prerogative for them to be radical, critical or emancipatory. In order to tease out the contradictions (large and small, personal and public, individual and social) of this situation it is important to look across the whole spectrum of social action and to do so having made a clear distinction, following Jim McGuigan, between critical and uncritical populism (McGuigan, 1992). Again, we can use current national and international adult education conferences as evidence of how far these contemporary movements’ concerns are reflected in adult education theory and practice. The two sources used here are the SCUTREA and AERC proceedings for 2000, the latter being on this occasion an international, albeit largely anglophone, event. The SCUTREA proceedings reflect the current policy preoccupation with ‘inclusion’, as discussed above. There is relatively little evidence in the 43 papers of direct engagement with the contemporary movements we have identified, that is, engagement through formal or informal educational practice. The contemporary themes of active citizenship (Benn), flexibility (Clarke and Edwards) and regeneration (Watts) are critically addressed, and issues such as age (Fleming) and disability (Dale) receive perhaps more attention than they would once have had. Several papers address themes related to globalisation and learning in social or resistance movements but as theoretical or policy critique (Crowther; Forrester and Payne; Frost; Johnston; Martin). Significantly, two of these authors have written elsewhere about how Scottish social movements have been affected by devolution (Crowther, et al, 1999). Davidson and Piette also look at this in relation to Wales. There are, clearly, strands of adult education in the UK in which questions of national identity are entwining social movements with adult education. There is also one paper exploring spirituality and adult learning (White), which reflects a contemporary social movement of a different kind. The AERC proceedings are more substantial, containing 98 papers as well as 36 roundtables or symposia; they are also more diverse, since they are not built around a specified conference theme. Spirituality, broadly conceived and including religious identity, seems to figure rather more prominently here than in the SCUTREA proceedings, although the 2001 SCUTREA conference devoted considerable attention to this dimension. Various papers address the theme in relation to gender (Tisdall, Rosenwasser), religious activism (Lander), ageing (Muhamad and Merriam) and ‘holistic’ ecology (Hill). Disability features in only two papers as a principal theme (Gorman, Rocco). Environmental or ecological issues are not prominent either, appearing once in the context of spirituality (LH Hill), and then in the more practical context of a Canadian sustainable agriculture programme (Grudens-Schuck). Sexuality appears largely in relation to health issues, specifically in Egan’s paper on HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, and in a roundtable on identity formation in HIVpositive adults, although there is also an unusual contribution on feminism among transsexuals (RJ Hill). It is perhaps worth pointing out that in the 2001 proceedings of both organisations, issues related to sexuality appear rather more frequently, so this may signal change in progress. There is a category of contributions in the AERC proceedings that might be classed as broadly radical, and in many of which the concerns and activities of social movements are explicitly addressed. For example, symposia on the relationship between adult education and democracy in the third world, and on labour education in the context of globalisation, plus a roundtable on adult education for a civil society, suggest that these concerns are becoming increasingly prominent. A number of individual papers address specific aspects or interpretations of radicalism. One or two look at the ambiguous concepts of ‘citizenship’ or ‘civil capital’ within democracy (Tunmer, Schugurensky, Sumner), others offer a more direct and challenging approach to social change at local and global levels (Heaney, Martin, Newman, Preece). It is notable, however, that most of these contributions cover these issues at what might be termed the macro-level – that is, in terms of broad political, economic and social change, and the policy directions which influence these changes. There is little here that parallels, for example, 4 Fordham and Randle’s practice-based but politically framed community education contribution (1976), except perhaps Martin’s call for the conscious re-politicisation of adult education. This is not to say that practice does not feature in the proceedings; on the contrary, numerous papers describe and interpret the intricacies of diverse sites of educational practice. But the analysis of practice tends to happen at the micro - individual or group - level, or alternatively, to focus on more abstract understandings of human experience and learning. The discourses of positionality, auto/biography, identity- and knowledge-construction dominate here, to an extent that would have seemed unthinkable ten years ago, when so much North American adult education research was driven by a crude scientism. What appears to be missing is the link – in terms of both understanding and practice between the emerging macro-political analyses of global change and social movements, and the microlevel analyses of social and cultural impacts on group and individual understandings and identities (‘internalised oppression’, as Rosenwasser puts it). The missing link may well be attributable to the absence of adult educators from the sites of learning within contemporary social movements. Implications for Research and Teaching Griff Foley (2001) suggests there are now three options open to those of us committed to critical and emancipatory adult learning and education: capitulation, nostalgia or fighting on the new terrain. What will it mean to do this? First, it will mean fighting our own inertia and depression, and perhaps our internalised individual competitiveness. We need to relearn the power of organising for activism, and find ways of building alliances which challenge and subvert the provider competition we have so successfully been engineered into. In order to do this, we will need to create and use ‘honest brokers’, perhaps national agencies for adult learning whose situated disinterest can create a framework for genuine collaboration between local players. Second, we will need to contest and critique the dominant ideologies and practices of the educational provision we make, at the macro and the micro level. This may take the form of more attention to the content, as well as form, of what we teach and re-engaging with the critical and emancipatory power of curriculum analysis and development. It will also involve refocussing the widening participation and mass higher education agendas towards questions of changing the mainstream, in terms of funding, access, pedagogy and curriculum content. Third, it will mean embracing a new research agenda, despite (or, perhaps, because) it sits at a tangent to the new politics of research and research funding. Such a research agenda will map new spaces, including virtual communities, as well as new times in its focus on the new embodiments of the old-new social movements, charting the commonalties and differences they share with contemporary social movements in relation to education. It will also engage with existing conservative populism. Underpinning all of these imperatives is the need to construct and inhabit positions within lifelong learning which are both critical and active, that is which are for, as well as against, things. References Space restrictions do not permit full references to all papers cited by name but will be found in SCUTREA and AERC proceedings 2000 respectively. Jackson A and Jones D (eds) (2000), Researching inclusion, University of Nottingham, SCUTREA. Sork T, Chapman V and St. Clair R (eds) (2000), AERC 2000: Proceedings of 41st Adult Education Research Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, AERC. Armstrong PF (1987), ‘Praxis in adult education: a synthesis of theory and practice: an account of the Praxis Study group’, SCUTREA Proceedings 1987. Bamber J, Ducklin A and Tett L (2000), ‘Working with contradictions in the struggle for access’ in Thompson J (ed) Stretching the academy, Leicester, NIACE. 5 Brown G (1980), ‘Independence and incorporation: the Labour College movement and the Workers’ Educational Association before the Second World War’, in Thompson J (ed) Adult education for a change, London, Routledge. Crowther J, Martin I and Shaw M (2000), ‘Turning the academy’, Thompson J (ed) Stretching the academy, Leicester, NIACE. Crowther J, Martin I and Shaw M (eds) (1999), Popular education and social movements in Scotland today, Leicester, NIACE. Epstein D (1995), ‘In our (new) right minds’, in Morley L and Walsh V (eds) Feminist academics: creative agents for change, London, Taylor & Francis. Foley G (2001), ‘Radical adult education and learning’, International Journal of Lifelong Learning, 20, 1/2, pp.71 – 88. Fordham P and Randle L (1976), ‘The new communities project (Leigh Park)’, SCUTREA Proceedings 1976. Haffenden I (1987), ‘A critical response towards a constructive definition of praxis for adult educators’, SCUTREA Proceedings 1987. Johnson R (1988), ‘ “Really useful knowledge” 1790-1850: memories for education in the 1980s’, in Lovett T (ed) Radical approaches to adult education: a reader, London, Routledge. Johnson R (1991), ‘My new right education’, in Education limited: schooling and training and the new right since 1979, London, Unwin Hyman. McGuigan J (1992), Cultural populism, London, Routledge Oglesby L, Keddie N, Thompson J, Swarbrick A and Callaway H (1980), ‘Women and adult education’, SCUTREA Proceedings 1980. 6