Identifying and Dealing with Educational, Social, and Political Issues
Thomas W. Heaney
A historical reflection on the role of adult education in focusing on issues as a prelude to informed, democratic decision-making is juxtaposed to a more dominant instrumental and corporate view of the field.
In his now classic text, The Meaning of Adult Education, Eduard Lindeman admonished the fledgling field that adult education could only become an agency of progress "if its short-term goal of self-improvement can be made compatible with a longtime, experimental but resolute policy of changing the social order" (Lindeman, 1989, p. 105). This chapter is about what adult education almost was and still could be. The medium is the message, since to reflect on the history of our field is already to identify and navigate educational, social, and political issues that lie at the core of our self-understanding and our practice as administrators of adult education.
The Founding Vision: Building a Democratic Society
The importance of adult learning to the empowerment of society is never so clear as in the formative years of a democracy. Our earliest identification of the American adult education enterprise was embraced, as in the writings of Lindeman and others, within a broader quest for freedom and participation in decisions that affect day-to-day life. To cast off restraints, to decide resolutely and wisely the course of our affairs, we must identify and comprehend the social and political issues of our day. This is an educational task of monumental consequence, and on it rests the success or failure of our most basic freedoms.
Forums for Reflection and Action. Adult education was, first, a forum for reflection and action, the Lyceum and the town hall meeting being two sides of the same coin, one emphasizing mutual self-education, the other strategy-building and decision-making (Bode, 1956). During the early part of this century, over 300 workers' schools awakened among America's working class first a questioning, then disquiet and resistance, eventually giving birth to a historic labor movement (Heller and Schulman, 1990). Understanding of embedded contradictions in the social fabric grew in the expanded consciousness of liberal studies.
The democratic function of adult education is nowhere as evident as in the ongoing work of the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Beginning in the 1930s with the education of workers in the newly formed unions of the South, and continuing into the Civil Rights era with the education of that movement's leaders, Highlander has consistently nurtured a vision of political and economic democracy through reflection and action. For Myles Horton, Highlander's founder who believed that "people have within themselves the potential, intelligence, courage and ability to solve their own problems," adult education always began with "a goal arising out of a social problem that the students perceive" (Horton, 1990, p. 153).
The historical identification of adult education with democratic social change is evident in numerous social and revolutionary movements beginning with the Southwide Citizenship Schools in the early 1950s to more recent campaigns for literacy that have accompanied a transition from dictatorship to democracy. As demonstrated in the work of Paulo Freire, people first learn to retell their history, then make history through reconstructive action (Freire, 1970).
Gaining a Voice in Shaping the Future. Literacy in the work of Freire and others becomes a metaphor for adult education. Adult education is the task of learning to name our world, coming to understand the connections between seemingly disparate elements of our experience, naming our reality in order to control it. In a word, literacy is about the identification of issues. It is a mastery not only of language, but of the reality that language communicates. Literacy is not the acquisition of words, but the acquisition of a voice in matters that affect day-to-day life. Hence, both literacy and adult education in this view are about liberation. They are about dialogue, about shared understandings, about empowerment for collective political and economic action.
The content and not the process of literacy is the key to these claims for a liberatory adult pedagogy. Vital, experienced-based texts are far more important than pedagogical methods in achieving literacy. Adults learn to read and write their world before the relevance of books and print are self-evident. Adult education is not merely coming to know new facts; it is coming to know what we know, reflecting on our experience, so that that knowledge becomes a power in us-a power to take action in a rational and decisive manner. Adult education can, like the reading of texts, provoke reflection and critical judgment as a prelude to change. Adult education is learning to swim in a sea of issues that otherwise threatens to drown us. This is the insight with which Lindeman, Meiklejohn, and other visionary educators launched the American adult education movement.
Professionalization and the Waning of Social Purpose
Unfortunately, the origins of our field are not so simple. There was a competing vision which by the 1970s gained ascendancy. Opening the doors to immigrants from Europe at the turn of the century represented not only an opportunity for a country in need of skilled workers, but in the view of many represented a clear danger as well. Those fearful of the dilution of America's uniqueness saw in adult education a prized tool for the homogenization of those immigrants and a purging of foreign influence. From the government sponsored Americanization program to the more liberal work of Jane Addams and the settlement house movement, the goal shifted from empowerment to adaptation, from decision-making to conformity. The task was no longer to create democracy, but to buttress and support a social order that proclaimed democratic values, while ritualizing the practice of democracy in once-a-year, partisan elections.
The Cult of Efficiency. Industrialization, the growth of the military in two world wars, and the expansion of government bureaucracy demanded a new role for adult education. Americans needed the knowledge and skills to operate competitively and efficiently the machinery of state. Critical reflection on issues and time-consuming participation in decision-making were not only inefficient, but potentially divisive. Workers' education began to focus on procedures and operations, rather than on analysis of economic relations within the workplace. The former would yield a more productive workforce; the latter would breed discontent. Even unions came to insist that the educational needs of their rank and file were better served by training than by encouraging reflection on issues that might lead workers to a critique of an entrenched union bureaucracy. In this new economy of adult learning, content was no longer at issue. The content was reduced to the social or workplace environment to which the adult learner was to be adapted. Emphasis shifted from content to method in defining the practice of adult education.
Two related developments supported this shift in focus from substance to method-from democracy to efficiency-in adult education practice. The first was the redefinition of an adult educator as "high technician," transforming practitioners of the art of adult learning into technicians of the science of "andragogy." As the fledgling field developed its "how-to-do-it" manuals and systems for the administration of an adult education enterprise, questions of social or political purpose such as those raised by Lindeman or Horton receded into the background. Identifying and dealing with social and political issues became problematic for self-proclaimed neutral service providers who facilitated the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills in response to needs prescribed by the employers or by governmental guardians.
The second development was the redefinition of adult education as a "profession," promoted by the expansion of schooling into adulthood and the formalization of adult education in credit-granting institutions that provided a stable and respectable base for an upwardly mobile, aspiring professional class of adult education practitioners.
The "Clientization" of Everyone. Expanding markets for educational services provided the rationale for turning lifelong learning into lifelong schooling. Adults not only "needed" professional assistance in the task of learning, but also in identifying appropriate learning projects. As learners became clients of trainers and other educational providers, it was an easy transition from marketing services for reluctant learners to mandatory continuing education, all in the name of efficiency. Research on why adults participated or, more frequently, failed to participate in adult education had failed to identify a cure for the deficiencies of "drop-outs" and other resisters. Henceforth, in many instances adult educators achieved what the medical profession only dreamed about: forced annual diagnosis and rehabilitation-without, as yet, the specter of malpractice litigation.
Social Control and the Disappearance of Issues. Steven Lukes in his analysis of power observes that the most effective and far-reaching exercise of power does not rest on the use of overt force that is expensive, inefficient, and likely to engender counter force. The most effective power is exercised by the control of knowledge (Lukes, 1974). What we understand of our history, what we believe to be "realistic" expectations for ourselves and for our families, our understanding of concepts such as race, gender, or class-concepts by which we lay hold of our experience and evaluate day-to-day life-these can enslave us or set us free. Therein lies the power of the educator. Two visions of how that power is to be used have shaped adult education in the United States: the first a vision of adult education as a means of deepening our understanding of contemporary issues so we can become full and able participants in deciding the direction of social and political history; the other a vision of adult education as a means of implementing a future which the learner neither understands nor helps to create.
Redefining a Corporate Model for Education
It is inevitable, perhaps, that we adopt the practices and language of our benefactors. The adult education enterprise in the United States, that "almost" movement of the 1920s and 30s, now resembles the corporations it has served so efficiently for half a century. Its "bottom-line" thinking and preoccupation with market share have benefited no one so much as adult education practitioners. While it has rewarded the most diligent and persevering learners with a competitive edge in jobs and social status, it has manufactured needs even more quickly than services in emulation of industry's marketers. Encouraged by expanded investment in human capital, adult educators now produce consumers of education as their flagship product line.
Central to a corporate model of adult education is administration and administration requires control. It is essentially a hierarchical function even if performed collectively by two or more individuals. As a result, the goals and objectives of adult education organizations are seldom determined or even shaped by learners. In this sense, administration is generally inimical to participation and democracy. Learners are not expected to be informed on matters of policy, even when that policy affects their own learning. Except for those instances in which institutional interests prevail-as when public subsidies for adult education are required-, the inclusion of social and political issues or other policy-related matters within the curriculum is deemed inappropriate and threatens the assumed neutrality of the educational enterprise. On the other hand, adult education activities organized for the purposes of democratic social action avoid the corporate model and its administrative function.
Administration as the Juggler's Act. Despite the functional limitations of the corporate model of education (and because of the older tradition of adult education grounded in the building of democracy) many adult educators strain against their corporate traces and have sought ways to focus their art on more liberatory aims. They have sought to be critically reflective in their work, as well as facilitate critical reflection in the learners for whom they serve as educators. In seeking to restore social purpose to their work, they have identified at least two common strategies for redefining the corporate model for adult education.
Critical Analysis of "at Home" Issues. An honest and forthright analysis of the social functions and consequences of our own adult education practice is a place to begin. Adult educators who unquestioningly believe their own advertising copy are unlikely to aid learners who struggle to understand the issues embedded in their day-to-day lives. The most important educational, social and political issues to comprehend are generally those that implicate us, because they are the issues about which we can take action. Administrators can facilitate a process of reform which involves circles of staff and learners engaged in the critical evaluation of program and the identification of barriers to improvement-including institutional barriers. This participatory task is already "adult education" in its most progressive sense: adults engaged in the task of understanding their reality in order to change it.
Navigating Bureaucratic Limits and Discovering Open Spaces. Secondly, such an analysis will undoubtedly disclose that bureaucracies thrive on the illusion of impenetrability and changelessness. It is this illusion-the internalized axiom that things are as they will be-that prevents action and thwarts change. On the other hand, all bureaucratic systems are loosely woven fabrics with room for those who study their scope and contours to take initiatives and create pockets of resistance. Imbedded contradictions within the educational milieu-such as the principle of academic freedom-make it possible for sensitive and socially conscious educators to link issues of race, gender and class with the prescribed curriculum. Administrators, building on adult education's commitment to lifelong learning, can facilitate this expansion of the curriculum through the ongoing staff development of teachers. Such development activities could include workshops critically analyzing gender or class stereotypes in the curriculum, the relationship between race and employment, or reflection on and application of current legislation on access or sexual harassment.
Models with "Wiggle Room" for Action
In combination with these strategies, several models for socially responsible, issue-oriented adult education have evolved over the past decade-two generated within the corporate sector itself.
TQM and Freire's "Circulo de Cultura." Total Quality Management (TQM), highly regarded as an administrative model for maximizing productivity in the workplace, emphasizes collective responsibility, decentralized controls, and participatory decision-making (Wellins, Byham and Wilson, 1991). At least on the surface, it embodies features which characterized Freire's approach to organizing adult literacy education in Brazil, Chile, Guinea Bissau and other developing countries. In both TQM and Freire's work, a circle of learner/workers begin with an analysis of their collective experience in order to understand it. Building on that understanding, they make decisions affecting future action. TQM, of course, operates within the narrow and administratively defined context of the worker. That is, while a circle of workers are empowered to identify and solve problems at their worksite and then implement the solution, they are generally unable to impose remedies on administrative problems, even when those problems directly affect them (Nemoto, 1987).
Freire's circulo de cultura also operates within prescribed limits, however. Solutions to all problems are not within the grasp of a study circle, even in a revolution. Here, as in the corporate world, the most important issues to comprehend are generally those that implicate us because they are the issues about which we can take action. Even in an idealized democratic context we cannot prescribe the actions of others except as they affect the fundamental rights and obligations of all.
TQM is an effective tool for legitimizing the introduction of issues into the otherwise instrumental content of peer education in the workplace. The development of Quality Circles is already an educational function, with participants themselves being peer resources to one another in problem-posing-a necessary first step in the task of problem-solving. Furthermore, Quality Circles foster democracy at the work site to the extent that participants retain the power to make decisions and act (Semler, 1989).
Strategic Planning as Participatory Research. Strategic planning, to the extent that it involves all those concerned with its outcomes in an ongoing cycle of reflection and action, also fosters the identification of issues in a democratic context. While more formally structured, it is similar in its underlying assumptions to participatory research which affirms the importance in problem-solving of having those whose problem it is be part of the solution. In a sequence of steps, participants in strategic planning review the stated mission, identify strengths, weaknesses and strategies for change, establish priorities, and take action (Rice, 1990). The planning cycle of reflection/action is repeated regularly. While the process is limited by parameters set within the corporate mission, critical reflection even on the mission itself is possible.
Both TQM and strategic planning are built on the realization that adults are more committed to implementing solutions which they have helped to create and, therefore, more likely to be productive. While both mechanisms can be used to exploit workers, the "open spaces" within them make possible the identification of issues and open the door to democratically determined resolution of contradictions.
Partnerships with the Movers within Movements. The most far-reaching strategy for redefining the corporate model is found in partnerships between business and social change organizations and groups. Business and industry have occasionally worked hand-in-hand with local reform organizations to their mutual benefit. For example, national attention has been focused on leading corporations in Chicago which have formed partnerships with Local School Councils in connection with that city's school reform movement. In other areas of the country, businesses have joined forces with economic development corporations and with neighborhood self-help organizations. Such alliances broaden the context for the identification of issues beyond those narrowly defined within the workplace and encompass the impact of the workplace itself on the community and on society.
Similar examples are found among educational institutions that make their resources available to community-based and democratically controlled organizations, many of which are committed to social, political, and economic change. Examples would include the Center for Urban Affairs at Northwestern University and the Center for Community Education and Action with its linkages to the University of Massachusetts. Such institutions are, on occasion, able to transcend the barrier of their proclaimed neutrality by supporting with critical analysis, knowledge, and skills the social and political citizen action.
Choosing a Path for the Future. The identification of issues is not a minor task for adult educators. It is, at least in the origins of the American tradition of the field, the central preoccupation of adult learners as they seek a voice in those matters that directly affect their lives. Whether in the workplace or at home, the democratic ideal of collective problem-posing, strategy-building and action requires a critically informed public, cognizant of issues and confident in its power to act. Adult education has evolved in two paths. One has facilitated democratic reflection and action through a critical identification of issues; the other has served to domesticate learners, to ignore contradictions and adjust minds to the inevitable conformities of a mass society. In the older tradition, adult educators exercised leadership and vision: leadership by building democratic leadership; and vision by not merely seeing what is, but foreseeing what could be.
References
Bode, C. The American Lyceum. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury, 1970.
Hellyer, M.R., and Schulman, B. "Workers' Education." In S.B. Merriam and P. Cunningham (eds.) Handbook of Adult Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Horton, M. The Long Haul. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
Lindeman, E. The Meaning of Adult Education. Norman, Oklahoma: Oklahoma Research Center for Continuing Professional and Higher Education, 1989.
Lukes, S. Power: A Radical View. London: The Macmillan Press, 1974.
Nemoto, M. Total Quality Control for Management. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1987.
Rice, C.S. Strategic Planning for the Small Business. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Bob Adams, 1990.
Semler, R. "Managing Without Managers." Harvard Business Review, Sept.-Oct. 1989, pp. 76-84.
Wellins, R.S., Byham, W.E., and Wilson, J.M. Empowered Teams Creating Self-Directed Work Groups That Improve Quality, Productivity, and Participation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.
Heaney, Thomas. "Identifying and Dealing with Educational, Social and Political Issues," in Patricia Mulcrone (ed.), Changing Roles and Strategies for the Adult Education Administrator. Jossey-Bass (San Francisco 1993).
Contact:
thea@chicago1.nl.edu
Entered: 4 July 1997
