kate’s adventure

another old essay i’ve dug up. i recall this being one of the few essays i ever enjoyed, and having lots of inspiring ideas in it, but i hardly dared read it again. i had to though, as i only had a hard copy. on reading every word so that i could type it out, i found it hard to restrain myself from tweaking grammar, explaining and elaborating, smoothing over the dogmatism and idealism, and adding whole chapters on exciting thoughts i’ve discovered in the last six years. still, not bad for a 1200 word essay, and it looks like i didn’t even get an extension; how unusual! i dug it up because i’m about to start thinking about educational philosophy again in my MEd, and besides, i’ve recently agreed to put starting a school onto the agenda at Sydney Atheists. it is, after all, my biggest life goal. so here goes…

The various perspectives relating to education and which were outlined in the first four weeks of the unit provide a benchmark against which to position our views about schooling and teaching. In truth, these views are likely to be eclectic, drawing on aspects of all four perspectives. Outlining your own philosophy of education (an aspect of your identity as a teacher) indicate, through reference to the relevant and related literature, the ways in which it reflects aspects of these various perspectives.

The current system of education in Australia swings between Liberalism and Instrumentalism, neither of which recognise the needs for societal change or individual difference. This does not mean there are no other options. This proposal is heavily influenced by the Libertarian Free Schools, tempered with Critical Pedagogy. Drawn particularly from the works of Paolo Friere, Ivan Illich and A. S. Neill, it is radically different from prevailing systems. To be adopted would require changes in societal attitudes, but the ability to critique is something it attempts to foster.

The nature of our society is largely determined by three interlinking institutions, family, church and school. In Illich’s distinction between manipulative and convivial institutions, (McLaren & Leonard, 1993) all three tend to be manipulative. The influence of family and especially church are fading, but it is both possible and incredibly important to work towards a convivial system of education.

Friere’s Critical Pedagogy (Shor, 1980) draws generative themes from the students’ lives to introduce critical perspectives on power relations in their lives, and to teach literacy as a means of empowerment. It was used teaching adult literacy in South America, but such characteristics as dialogic communication, problematisation, praxis and shared choice of content can be adapted to Australian school life. It is not enough, however, to merely apply the methods of Critical Pedagogy to traditional structures and subjects.

Once the concept is accepted that schools are not, or should not be knowledge factories, there is so much that can be done. The first step is to integrate the school into the community. At present schools tend to take advantage of the community in a very limited fashion, stylised and primarily to do with work – from work experience in high school down to excursions to the local vet and police station in kindy, the way the outside world is presented to students creates and enforces the distinction between school and the child on one side, and the professional and the workplace on the other. When people leave school they carry this view with them, and many never continue with education because of it. This is all despite the very public knowledge that this does not happen, that children cannot always be protected from life and they will be pushed through to adulthood regardless of whether they can read or any other of the multitude of skills supposed to be necessary to existence.

If we are serious about freedom, we must break down some of the distinctions between the child at school and the adult world. Some Libertarians (Spring, 1975) advocate the abolition of school altogether, but it does not need to be taken that far. To make the school a community centre where anyone can study would integrate the two worlds, to their mutual advantage.

A University or Community College style arrangement would facilitate this integration. Instead of either age grading or streaming, courses would be organised by subject, with various levels being provided as required. A wide variety of courses should be offered, not restricted to those preferred by a particular perspective. Practical, Critical Instrumentalist subjects are important, but so are Liberal subjects, the stipulation being that they must also be taught critically, instead of pretending they are value-free. If accreditation is by competency on individual units and workload is negotiated with one’s counselor, then compulsory courses become unnecessary, though some courses will naturally be strongly recommended, especially at lower levels.

This arrangement surmounts the perennial problem of streaming by allowing students to make choices – having a range of valid and acceptable choices for every student. It however requires considerable support: students are being presented with possibly frightening choice and freedom, and even in Summerhill (Neill, 1926) one can never ensure every student is equipped to make the choice. Individual care is required, in the form of counsellors, charged with the ongoing care of a small number of students. This not only ensures students have somebody to make sure they are getting the most out of their school, give advice and help with a strong knowledge of both student and school, but this kind of attention to each student and their choices also works to overcome somewhat the structural disadvantages of family (Matthews, 1980).

Another Libertarian system which could benefit the proposal is the Learning Web (Illich, 1970). Illich’s model consists of a sytem of registers, where students can find four things: peers to learn with, teachers, informants or mentors to learn from, resources to learn with and professional educators to help out when required. It was designed for a similar environment to Friere’s work, but would also be valuable adapted to the situation at hand. A school is perfectly placed to keep such registers, and access to them fills out the range of subjects and learning styles that cannot be accommodated by the regular classes, ensuring that tailoring to a student’s needs is not subordinated to the bureaucracy. Running parallel to other classes, a web would be easily accommodated within the given framework. It would be maintained by the counselors, who would interview all parties, rather than review qualifications, for suitability and readiness. The regular teaching staff would superviese and run teacher training within the school. A school is also perfectly situated to both connect students of similar needs and arrange access to resources.

Naturally each and every element requires more funding, yet considering this country has one of the lowest public expenditures on education in the OECD (Martin, 2001), a significant increase in funding is actually quite a reasonable request. In fact, it is a necessary one if even the current education system is to fulfill what is expected of it for a period longer than is being considered by those in control, who are elected every three or four years.

That brings us to another aspect of Neill’s brand of libertarianism: participatory democracy (Neill, 1926). The only way this proposal can remain authentic is if it remains responsive to the actual needs and desires of those involved. Giving students and staff members equal voices and opportunities to change important aspects of the running of the school fulfils this requirement. It also empowers students to takie responsibility, feel ownership over both the school and their lives, and learn to speak, work and organise cooperatively. This need not be a system which can necessarily be transferred to national government to be a valid way to teach people to work, nor need it imply absolute power over all aspects of the school. To accommodate all that is being asked here, the school will probably be too large to meet comfortably as one body, but the system, like much of this proposal, has been well tested and found to work (Apple & Beane, 1999; Shotton, 1993; Chamberlin, 1989), they are not reasons to opt out and elect token representatives to sit on a powerless school council.

A school with freedom, individual care, participatory democracy, learning webs and critical pedagogy would not only give each student the best possible chance to meet their individual needs, but may also prepare society to finally begin to consider its future.

Reference List

Apple, M. W., & Beane, J.A., (Eds.). (1999). Democratic schools: Lessons from the chalk face. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Chamberlin, R., (1989). Free children and democratic schools: A philosophical study of liberty and education. London: The falmer Press.

Illich, I. D., (1970). Deschooling society. London: Calder & Boyars.

Matthews, M. R., (1980). The Marxist theory of schooling: A study of epistemology and education. Sussex: Harvester Press.

Martin, R., (2001). The OECD education at a glance report 2001. Report for Australian Education Union.

McLaren, P., & Leonard, P., (1993). Paolo Friere: A critical encounter. London: Routledge.

Neill, A. S., (1926). Summerhill. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books.

Shor, I., (1980). Critical teaching and everyday life. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Shotton, J., (1993). No master high or low: Libertarian education and schooling 1890 – 1990. Bristol: Libertarian Education.

Spring, J., (1975). A primer of libertarian education. New York: Free Life Editions.

…and the final piece of newly reclaimed work from the adult ed course in turkey, is a list of good stuff, illustrating the breadth of alternative and community education in australia. it’s a bunch of things i’ve come across, and now i have it back i hope to add to it with whatever other goodies i find about the place!

Alternative and Community Adult Education

In Australia, if you look hard enough, you can find numerous examples of adult alternative and community education. These are a sample I’ve been involved in. Most of the following exist outside of formal educational structures, but even those that are associated with such structures work to enrich the communities within the organisation, and are therefore worthy of consideration as adult community education entities. Some examples are even in corporate settings, which are often excluded from Community education. I believe this is an invalid distinction; we don’t have such a surfeit of community opportunities that we can afford to cut off half the world because of its primary purposes, especially when the sections of them that attend to satisfactory second purposes, offer more scarce resources than all the ‘authentic’ community organisations put together.

Fairwear

Fairwear is the NGO that looks after outworkers in the garment industry. After nine years they’ve finally won a code of practice that makes Australian retailers responsible for the whole chain of who actually makes their products, not just the first middleman. They’ve even been granted some loopholes in the shocking new Industrial Relations laws. Anyway, apart from their legal wranglings, Fairwear organises practical support for outworkers, including seminars about their rights, and help getting their established skills and knowledge accredited as TAFE qualifications.

The Fairwear coordinator also makes presentations in schools, but only those which invite her, which are usually catholic schools, state schools sadly don’t often bother.

In “Unpaid Work in the Home and Accreditation” (Chapter 5, “Culture and Processes of Adult Learning”, Mary Thorpe, Richard Edwards and Ann Hanson (eds.)), Linda Butler examines common aspects of being a ‘housewife’ and compares them to accredited courses. When ordinary tasks like cleaning the kitchen, managing household finances or care of children are broken down into their parts and compared to the same elements in paid work, it’s shocking how much a ‘housewife’ does without even noticing.

Tatting Guild

There are a number of handcraft guilds still running. The Tatting Guild of NSW is a room full of mostly old women who meet every fortnight in a hall, and sit around and chat while they tat. (Tatting being a form of lace made with a shuttle.) Sometimes a class is held on a particular point, but more often if you want to know something, ask and someone will be able to show you. They sell tools and materials cheaply and have a membership to cover costs of hall, tea, newsletter and stands at craft shows, but anyone is welcome to turn up.

Brüel & Kjær

acoustics workshops, ostensibly to sell their product, actually help form a community and educate both new and old hands in details of the field, both about their equipment, and other various matters. though this was not what I would previously have considered community education, it was remarkable that I, as a complete novice, could sit alongside engineers and designers needing to educate themselves on a field related to their own, and veteran acoustic consultants who you’d think knew everything there was to know, and we could all gain much from the day.

Warawara

As a department of my university, Warawara our Aboriginal Education Unit is a remarkable example of Adult Education. Every university, though not every campus has a similar unit, and each one is different, but this is a run down of the one at Macquarie. Warawara runs undergraduate units in Aboriginal Studies as part of mainstream degrees, but it is also a support base, and community, for all Aboriginal students and staff. Warawara staff and volunteers tirelessly run workshops and seminars for the rest of the university community on Aboriginal issues in an attempt to make all classrooms more friendly, and make presentations to every class that invites them. They are a resource both for Aboriginal students and for everyone else. Above all of this, they run certificates and diplomas in Community Management. These are qualifications specifically for Aboriginal people who don’t have much education. Most of their students are middle-aged women in responsible positions within their remote or regional communities. These are very competent people who nonetheless have often not completed school and are understandably scared about white institutions. The courses are run on block release, so the students are flown to Sydney from their homes across the country, and put up for a week or two four times a year, in the university holidays. The rest of the year is run as a correspondence course.

Queeruption

An even more radical alternative source of education that has developed in the last 10 years around the world is Queeruption, a “free DIY gathering for queers of all genders and sexualities.” (www.queeruption.org/sydney) In February 2005, Queeruption9 was held in Sydney, and since the first organisational meetings a year previously, there has been a strong emphasis on community and on skill sharing within the queer and alternative communities of Sydney. A major part of the actual gathering was skill sharing workshops. Some workshops were arranged before the gathering starts by those who contacted the organising collective with proposals, but the majority of them were spontaneous. At the beginning of the week a large timetable was put up on site, and anyone who felt a desire to share a skill or hold a discussion, wrote a time and place and topic on the timetable. People wishing to learn a particular skill wrote messages asking those with the skill to help run a workshop. After the gathering, any locals who were involved keep the community alive by arranging other community events that are social, political and/or educational, such as reading groups and gardening days. The next Queeruption will be held in August in Tel Aviv, and connections have been made to hopefully share what we learnt in Sydney with the new organising collective.

U3A

The University of the Third Age is an organisation for people over fifty. Members pay an annual administration fee, and can then offer or take as many courses as they wish. My mother takes courses in French and Hebrew, both in small groups meeting in the teachers’ houses. The atmosphere is casual and flexible, and the groups are quite mixed in terms of backgrounds, levels, goals and purposes, but my mother doesn’t mind that they go too slowly for her, as it is a social occasion and pleasant as well as useful.

Community Colleges

In Sydney these are independent organisations that offer short courses quarterly. They are advertised in shopping centres and libraries, and operate in schools and halls. Teachers are not necessarily qualified, and there are fees. Standards obviously vary.

GASSP

A recent development in Queensland is the Gender And Sexuality in Schools Project, which held its first teacher education symposium in November 2004. This project, initiated by a group of students at the University of Queensland supported by their Student Union, seeks to educate teachers working in schools about the issues faced by GLBTIQ people in schools. By making teachers aware of queer issues, it hopes to equip them to deal effectively and sensitively with any issues that arise in their schools. The first symposium was extremely successful, attended by teachers from all over the state, and from both private and state schools. Lectures from leading Australian queer educators, a panel discussion on current government policies with members of Education Queensland, the government body responsible for all state-run education, and a session with a group of brave queer students who shared their experiences of being queer at school had a great effect on the teachers present. In the future the group hopes to be able to run short seminars in schools as part of the normal teachers’ professional development program. Unfortunately the future of the program is threatened by the recent introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism in Australia, which will make the union unable to continue to provide the same level of support, either financial or infrastructural, while the reception by the management of Education Queensland has been less than wholehearted.

PRL CLG

The Parramatta Rail Link is being built under my suburb, and one of the terms they need to fulfil in order to receive state funding is to hold Community Liaison Groups. These are small groups of interested community members and some other stakeholders, who meet every fortnight with nice folders and nametags and notes and pictures and sandwiches and cake and juice. We have toured the worksites and tunnels and learnt about blasting and tunnelling and big machinery, noise and vibration and dust traps, town planning and environmental management.

The meetings are clearly held to keep us happy and stop us making trouble for the project, but as there are some very real concerns, it is also a way for people to find out what and who we need to know, to get changes made. The project runs under very strict controls, which they demonstrably abide by, and there are staff to ensure every concern we raise is attended to, which is a good thing when a railway is boring under your house.

Volunteer Literacy Tutoring TAFE course

this course is currently scaled back and still under further threat. Not all migrants are able to come in to the TAFE (Technical And Further Education, the public technical School system) to take up their free language course, either because they’re not at an appropriate level, or for mobility or family reasons. So volunteers are trained in a free certificate. half the credit is classes about tutoring and literacy, quite practical, and for the other half you are assigned a student and you go to them for ten weeks. most of the volunteers are retired women who want to ‘give back’ or do something useful.

ARCH

The Association to Resource Community Housing sets up free seminars about all aspects of how to set up, run and live in community housing for means tested groups of people wanting to set up a cooperative. On completion of the course you get TAFE accreditation, and ARCH will recommend you to the government who will offer a new or renovated block of flats to live in for a quarter of your income.

Squatting Caretaker status

A few years ago a group of squatters won a landmark case for Caretaker status of their home and the right to live there until the owners definitively started work on the building. Part of the agreement was to be training for Caretakers, probably through TAFE. This has not happened, as the Broadway Squats were shortly evicted and noone else has yet won a similar situation, but it’s a start, and when it happens, education will be the factor that makes a revolutionary practice more publicly acceptable.

Maleny

I don’t know much about education in Maleny, but it is a town in Queensland, where last I checked, there were above thirty running cooperatives. They run a credit union, collective schools, a pub, a food collective, an artists collective… I don’t think the schools are particularly special, but they can’t be too boring in such a place.

definitions of community:

Many theorists have tried to divide communities into different kinds. Tonnies (in Galbraith) for example, distinguishes gemeinschaft communities, where people work together out of a sense of mutual goals and concerns, and gesellschaft communities, where people relate to each other only to further their own goals. Such a binary view, like Galbraith’s communities of interest and communities of function, seems overly simplistic and too inflexible to cover all the communities that could exist. Such theories set up an artificial distinction between paid work activities and other activities, which is unfortunate as it suggests that the workplace, where people spend so much of their time, effort, and hopefully interest, is somehow excluded from the possibility of community on a level deeper than instrumental, means-end relationships.

definitions of community education:

Similar concerns about simplistic inflexible categories are raised by Galbraith’s divisions of formal, non-formal and informal education. Galbraith describes formal education as having qualified teachers, credentials and being the primary function of an organisation, while nonformal education may not have some or any of these. Informal education exists outside of any sort of organisation and is the way most adult education takes place, generally within community structures. Unfortunately, many unusual and innovative forms of community education don’t fit neatly into any of these categories. Divisions are not a good way to talk about community education.

A less divisive description of community education that gives a better idea of the underlying function and motivations, is that provided by Hamilton and Cunningham. They suggest “Community-based education operates on the assumption that a given community, whether urban or rural, has the potential to solve many of its own problems by relying on its own resources and by mobilizing community action for problem resolution” (in Galbraith). This implies that instructors in the fields the community requires should be found within the community without the need for going outside to formal education providers. Such assumptions promote seeing the community itself as a resource, and not just a consuming entity.

In Deschooling Society (1973), Ivan Illich proposes “learning webs” as an alternative to formal schooling systems that could be useful – and useable – in adult education. His proposal consists of four parts: providing “reference services to educational objects” (i.e a library of tools and resources) “skill exchanges” (a database of skilled people willing to be mentors), “peer matching” (a list of other students who could be learning companions in a mutually desired skill or area) and “reference services to educators at large” (access to trained educators who can coordinate, assist and train mentors). This is an interesting and promising model with great potential, but, in its full form, is perhaps a little too radical for today’s developed world.

A similar suggestion is Galbraith’s National Mentoring Institute, which could possibly fulfil all four of Illich’s suggested components, but in a slightly more formalised way that may be a workable format for developed countries. Such an institute could both train mentors and educators, and house the coordination and resource library for a broad, far reaching web of education. This model could also encompass such initiatives as skills-based, authority-rated, optional assessment and accreditation scheme.

Mentoring is an excellent way to enrich community-based education. It straddles the boundaries between formal, nonformal and informal education, and can occur in any kind of community that makes space for it. It can also be effectively used in conjunction with other forms of education, not just replace the traditional schooling system as in Illich’s original prescription. There are many benefits of mentoring: it is a very flexible form of education provision that promotes interaction and cooperation between community members, encourages skill sharing within the community, adapts to community and individual needs and is not only an efficient use of available resources and skills, but actually generates them as well. Mentoring also acknowledges the desire, or even right, to teach as well as learn.

References:

Galbraith, M. W. (1995). “Community-Based Organisations and the Delivery of Lifelong Learning Opportunities” www.ed.gov/pubs/PLLIConf95/comm.html

Illich, I. (1973). “Deschooling Society” Harmondsworth: Penguin

some definitions from week one of ED541, adult education:

There are many definitions of Adult Education in currency, however most of them share a limited number of aspects, which need definition themselves for the greater statement to have any meaning.

One could define training, learning, teaching, development, schooling, lifelong learning, continuing education, andragogy, recurrent education, nontraditional education, community education, community development, vocational education and liberal education, to compare or contrast adult education with each of them, but the bare necessities are ‘adult’ and ‘education’.

“A wide range of concepts is involved when we use the term ‘adult’. The word can refer to a stage in the live cycle of the individual; he or she is first a child, then a youth, then an adult. It can refer to status, an acceptance by society that the person concerned has completed his or her novitiate and is now incorporated fully into the community. It can refer to a social sub-set: adults as distinct from children. Or it can include a set of ideals and values: adulthood.” (Rogers (original emphasis) in Tight, p14.)

There is indeed a wide range of ways to define adults, but I don’t think any of these are relevant to who can use adult education, define it, or have it designed for them. I think we can bypass most of them by establishing internal, education-relevant criteria: an adult, in terms of a constituent of adult education, is anyone old enough to have left compulsory education. This way also, while to some extent linking with the arbitrary measure of age, allows for the age in question to vary in different societies, according to local customs. I would not however exclude anyone who considers themself adult from such a status.

Education:

“…the deliberate, systematic and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, or skills, as well as any outcomes of that effort” (Darkenwald & Merriam, p2.)

Here is a cautious, technical definition of education. It acknowledges the importance of reception, not just transmission of learning, and both content and ‘hidden curriculum’,

i) that ‘education’ implies the transmission of what is worthwhile to those who become committed to it;

ii) that ‘education’ must involve knowledge and understanding and some kind of cognitive perspective, which are not inert;

iii) that ‘education’ at least rules out some some procedures of transmission, on the grounds that they lack wittingness and voluntariness on the part of the learner.(Peters, in Tight, p16.)

This is a much more slippery definition, though with some valuable points to consider as it attempts to address finer details. It however acknowledges none of the important points of the previous quote, and is still concerned only with attributes and mechanics.

Adult Education:

Excluding school and tertiary education is a more concrete and specific assessment than merely non-formality, but Education is often defined by the purpose for which it is provided, but though education can exist without teachers, it cannot without learners. I think moreover that this is a very important point to guide our perspectives. I would be inclined to count training as a subset of education, rather than an opposition. This is particularly influenced by the possibilities, which I think very important to explore, of including broader, more cognitive aspects associated with education, in a course specifically designed to train for a narrower skill.

“Adult education is a process whereby persons whose major social roles are characteristic of adult status undertake systematic and sustained learning activities for the purpose of bringing about changes in knowledge, attitudes, values, or skills.” (Darkenwald & Merriam, p9.)

This definition, more or less a synthesis of the previous examples, gives a rough outline of the current situation. This however is not politically neutral as it is framed, in the era of economic rationalism. Looking back to earlier perspectives uncovers a mine of ideas from an entirely different perspective. These would not negate our previous definitions, but would find them appallingly limited and incomplete. I would have to agree.

The purpose of adult education “was to build democracy, to strengthen our resolve and our ability to reasonable participate in those decisions that affected our day-to-day lives.”(Lindeman, in Heaney, p565.)

It was “about problem-posing, thinking through, finding common meanings, and taking collective action.”(Heaney, p565.)

It is abundantly clear that adult education these days mostly operates without regard to these explicit ideals and goals. However there is always one or another political agenda being supported, if only implicitly. A social structure is always being maintained or resisted, a community positioned, fused or isolated, a group economically benefited or disadvantaged.

My definition:

I consider an actual definition of the term Adult Education is unnecessary. It is a complex, global phenomenon, and practitioners and theorists in different places and situations have as much right as us to define it according to their own needs and circumstances. A definition of the scope of our interest in Adult Education may be of value; I will hazard that we are interested in non-tertiary education used by people no longer in compulsory schooling, both for individual purposes including acquiring understanding, knowledge, attitudes, values or skills, and wider purposes including advancing or changing the nature of, or participation in, the social, political or economic system.

References:

Tight, M. (2002). Chapter 1 “The Core Concepts” (pp. 12 – 36) in Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training, London: Routledge (second edition).

Darkenwald, G.G. and Merriam S.B. (1982). Chapter 1: “Adult Education” (pp. 1 – 34) in Adult Education: Foundations of Practice, New York: Harper & Row Publishers.

Heaney, T.W. (2000). Chapter 36: “Adult education and society” (pp. 559 – 572) in Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education by Wilson, A.L. and E.R. Hayes (eds.), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

next up…

How important are cultural differences in the classroom? Does a student’s home culture affect their educational experience? And what the ramifications of cultural differences for Adult Education?

There is much evidence that disparate cultures have significantly different teaching and learning styles. The Kamehameha Early Education Program (in Tharp, section 3) which studied a range of monocultural classrooms showed dramatically varying styles, from the calm, considered teaching style of a Navajo classroom, with an emphasis on the individual and lots of wait-time at both ends of a response, to the loud and bubbly Hawaiian class, whose teaching style is very fast paced and cooperative, and where the wait-time is negative! While these different classroom rhythms suit the students of the specific culture, a student from a different culture could have a lot of trouble coping with an incompatible, or unfamiliar classroom style. Children growing up are, naturally, learning constantly, and they learn both to communicate and learn in the dominant style of the people around them. By the time they get to school they have had years of learning in the style of their home culture, and can have problems adapting to a significantly different approach.

“Culture can be analyzed for its variable influence on individuals, taking into account the historical processes of culture of origin, but considering them as they are filtered by events and forces in individual life history, learning experiences, and current conditions” (Tharp, section 1). Culture is indeed a factor we can analyse, and, as seen in the aforementioned study, such analysis has returned startlingly informative results in certain limited circumstances. Unfortunately, the risk is always that many people want to overgeneralise such analyses. Just by knowing what culture someone belongs to does not mean you can determine how they would best be educated. It also then follows, that a teacher from the same cultural group as the students is not necessarily more effective than one from a different cultural group. It must be noted that the latter teacher is usually considered to be educated enough in cultural differences to avoid four attitudes, which are expressions of racism: bigotry, colour-blindness, paternalism and excessive compliance (Greene, in Tharp, section 2). The assumption that teachers are so culturally literate is very generous, but the question of achieving this is an entirely different area of study.

As a teacher, belonging to the same culture as one’s students does, of course, bring some advantages, but there are also some disadvantages as well. According to Tharp, the advantages are mostly restricted to creating rapport and avoiding unfortunate gaffes, rather than anything more important. This may be correct where everyone involved shares the same goals or expectations from the education, but it can be counteracted by the new perspectives an outsider may bring. Teachers are important as role models and examples for everyone. Having a teacher of one’s own culture can strengthen positive identification with that culture, but teachers of other cultures can promote cultural understanding too. Insisting on same-culture teachers means abandoning the move towards multicultural classrooms. Not only is it dangerous to assume any classroom is homogenous, even if it is not obviously multicultural, but generally matching teachers to classes risks cultural segregation, unequal opportunity for teachers and a lack of options for students, especially students who don’t fit perfectly into any designated group. Even in supposedly monocultural classrooms, there are often students who do not fit into the cultural norm.

There are three different broad opinions on how culture influences effective pedagogy. The culturally specific compatibility hypothesis suggests that each discrete culture requires a discrete approach. The two-type compatibility hypothesis sees only two groups to be treated differently from each other: all minority cultures are grouped together with one approach, different to that of the majority. The universalistic compatibility hypothesis does not consider cultural differences relevant to pedagogical decisions (Tharp, section 3). While this typology has something to say, none of the groups cover all the issues. To divide all cultures would be to box students into narrow categories that are not necessarily appropriate for them. To refuse any divisions is to ignore differences that do exist. Although two type sounds like a middle ground, and could be a good compromise, reality is more complex than that. Some minorities are more conventionally “successful” (according to the school system’s values) than others. Wu’s Chinese American school students (in Tharp, section 3), generally achieved higher test scores than even the majority-culture students. This doesn’t work in the two-type approach which supposes the school system designed for the majority culture should serve them better than any other group. However, it also supposes the current systems in America serve the majority culture well, which they don’t, for many reasons.

Discussions of cultural differences in the classroom are, like many educational issues, often only discussed in the context of children’s schooling, however, culture also needs to be considered in the field of adult education, which adds a few extra issues to the picture. The building of trust and rapport is crucial in adult education. An issue more specific to adults is that they come to education with all the problems, fears and affective barriers inherited from their times at school, and these need to be accommodated, understood and worked with. Often changing these attitudes is a major part of the education, and cultural issues can play a significant role in this.

Reference:

Tharp, R. G. (1994) “Systemic Reform: Perspectives on Personalizing Education” http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/SysReforms/tharp1.html

kat sent me the contents of her ‘kate’s assignments’ folder. turns out there are a bunch of essays from turkey that i didn’t have copies of, including some things i’d missed!

here goes with another round of essays, starting with:

Consumption, Postmodernism, Adult Education

Much of adult education is rooted in critical and liberatory philosophies. While these theories are worthy bases for progressive education, they are products of modernity, and the current period of postmodernity presents some different challenges though the two approaches share a number of aims. Like modern adult education, postmodernism undermines and raises awareness of assumptions and norms.

The postmodern world is an uncertain place, and the need for education as a way to adapt to the world is amplified. Unfortunately, postmodern theory also has profound consequences for the whole field of adult education. One of the more difficult aspects of postmodernism for an idealistic adult educator to deal with is consumption.

Consumerism, the culture of consumption for its own sake, has long been recognised as a feature of late capitalism, something that oppresses and domesticates people, makes them dependent on the system by manipulating their desires, and blinds them to their own situations. As such, adult education has sought to blunt its power by raising awareness of its mechanisms and insidious charms.

Postmodernism however, puts a different spin on it. In an unsentimental attempt to establish the way things are rather than how we would like them to be, it accepts consumption as an important feature of society, not good or evil. In fact, “consumer behaviour rather than work or productive activity has become the cognitive and moral focus of life, the integrative bond of society” (Bauman, as paraphrased in Usher, Bryant & Johnston, p16) Even though not everyone can consume equally, everyone is affected by the culture, if only in formation of desires and aspirations. What we buy or possess frames the way we categorise things and therefore the way we think and relate to people and the world. “Consumption is not so much about goods and services per se but about signs and significations” (Usher, Bryant & Johnston, p16). If consumption is indeed so embedded in society, and thus not something that can be defeated by a little more education, then it needs to be taken seriously. Ignoring changes in society means our education becomes neither relevant nor effective.

Under postmodernism, the idea of what is consumed has evolved. If purchasing things displays your status and identity, then the fact that we all end up owning too much plastic we don’t need is not the only important aspect of consumption. There is also the fact that images, lifestyle and the self can be consumed. Education can be consumed.

As postmodernism erodes the traditional bases of adult education, the field is diversifying into a much wider one of Adult Learning, which includes a wide range of areas that were previously considered frivolous, such as personal development and cultural creativity. What is on offer is often dependent on those who can afford education as a leisure activity, but the news is not all bad

Engaging with students is a vital aspect of adult education. As consumerism frames the way many people think these days it can be used to better connect to students. Education is generally more effective when presented in a context that students relate to and understand, which argues for the inclusion of consumerist ideas in the classroom.

There is certainly still some place for criticism of consumption, and consumerism, but no longer for complete rejection. How can we negotiate this? One suggestion is that teachers should avoid taking themselves too seriously, though this raises concerns about loss of the idealism that is for many people an important motivation for teaching. Another is to be flexible and acknowledge the importance of consumption and don’t automatically view it as solely a threat to community.

Reference:

Usher, R., Bryant, I. and Johnston, R. (1997). Chapter 1 “Adult Learning in Postmodernity” (pp. 1 – 27) in Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits, Routledge: London.