Source: PIMA Bulletin 17, April 2018

Darlene Clover and I are returning to London on the train from Wolverhampton where we had the pleasure of attending a conference organised by the irresistible Sir Alan Tuckett on the subject of The Learning Age 20 Years on. The Learning Age: A Renaissance for a New Britain (1997) was a green paper brought out by New Labour under the political leadership of David (Lord) Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Employment.

It was seen to be a delicious cafeteria of ideas to promote lifelong learning as part of the New Labour agenda to tackle poverty and inequality.  It was the latest in a series of English government reports, reports dating back to the famous 1919 Report and appearing in increasing rapidity in the last 30 years of the 20^th Century. The Foreword to the report was seen as one of the most powerful statements linking the social and economic benefits of adult learning.

Let me say that if adult education has disappeared from the policy priorities of English government circles, it is not for a lack of intelligent, persistent and even passionate leadership of the generation of adult educators who have cared for the field over the past 40-50 years. The Learning Age at 20 Conference was in many ways a ‘Who’s Who’ of the English adult education world. Invited by the newly minted ‘Sir’ Alan Tuckett (slightly ironic for Alan to get his well-deserved recognition by a Government that has arguably lost interest in the field that he has loved), the Chancellor’s Hall at Wolverhampton University was filled by a network that might have been mistaken for a NIACE old girls and boys gathering. Many of the best and the brightest whose names I have known over the years were there: John Field, Lorna Unwin, Andy Westwood, Jackie Dunne, Peter Lavender, Jan Eldred, Martin Yarnit, Joanna Cain, Leisha Fullick, Vicky Duckworth, Lyn Tett, Tom Schuller and more.

The conversations were deeper than those at a reunion of the faithful, although that aspect was no doubt a motivating factor in attendance. The conversations were about what had been gotten right by the Learning Age report, what was a bust, where do we stand now and what is the vision for the future. It would take someone like my friend Chris Duke with his depth of policy experience and more familiarity with those who were in the room to make more in-depth sense of what the day represented, but as someone who has followed English adult education at a distance for a number of years, I offer some thoughts. Let me remind readers that the 20^th century discourse of adult education that spread around the world, during the last 30 years of the 20^th Century by the International Council for Adult Education often in partnership with UNESCO, was strongly linked to the English roots and traditions. Certainly, for those of us in English-speaking Canada, the historic links with the Mechanics Institutes, the Workers Education Associations and the Women’s Institutes (which originated in Canada) have been well noted.

Lord Blunkett, who was present via a video interview conducted by Alan Tuckett, reiterated his thoughts from the introduction to the Learning Age Report that ‘social policy is fundamental to economic policy’ and that ‘lifelong learning is more needed now as we face a world of technological change and artificial intelligence than ever before’. John Field’s opening included the question of whether the Learning Age report represented “too many bright ideas to make a difference”. He noted that the recommendations of the Report were like a kind of lifelong learning confetti thrown into the social policy arena. In fact, few of the ideas ended up being funded and some of those that were funded ended up being distorted from what was originally intended (i.e. Individual Learning Accounts). Lorna Unwin noted that the report was framed in a ‘deficit’ assumption about the learning needs of ‘others’, seeing people ‘needing’ a kind of middle class education that they had missed somehow. She noted the ‘wrecking ball’ principle of government policy-making as each new government, or even each new Minister, feels the need to wreck the work of the previous government or Minister. Generally, the feeling from the opening panel was that the report concentrated too much on the supply side of the lifelong learning or adult education equation, to the neglect of the demand side. The report seemed to fall at the boundary of the idea of adult education as a broader, open, ‘liberal’ (English usage) provision and the emergence of the market-oriented and skills-focused lifelong learning. The report placed the responsibility for learning if not the benefits on individuals. 

The day included a number of smaller group sessions led by veterans of the NIACE era with conversations about the strengths and weakness of Skills for Life, the challenges facing the Further Education sector and the continued existence of considerable new energy emerging from the Community Learning sector. It was pointed out that the emergence of a vigorous political right with its openly racist and xenophobic discourses has produced a new wave of young people organising opposition, often through social media platforms but also taking to the streets in many cities.

Several reflections came to mind during the day. First is the obvious point that the discourse of adult education in the mid-20^th century English sense has disappeared in most political jurisdictions. Market, skills focussed and instrumentalized approaches to the learning of adults have become the focus of most of the government policy agendas around the world.

A second reflection is to query whether the success of adult education to institutionalise and professionalise itself as it did in England in the end undermined its dynamism and transformative potential and as the very best minds were drawn into 50-60 years of dialogue with a series of successive governments. NIACE had many roles, but its leadership was engaged often brilliantly with scores of civil servants and politicians to ensure good funding for the professional field of adult education. Did the leadership in the movement become disengaged with the changing face of England? Did it continue to be part of the social movements that created the early adult education movement in England? Did the focus shift to provision, to professionalization to the exclusion of what working class, diverse, newly immigrant women and men were wanting? 

Another thought is that the adult education field represented by the clever and decent people at the Wolverhampton gathering, including Darlene Clover and myself, is not the ‘full’ movement of adult education. Where are the radical movements of anti-racism, even those young people attracted to Momentum and the changing labour party, those calling for ‘decolonization’ of higher education, environmental activists and more? Where are the vibrant feminists’ educators who are working with the arts and culture for deeply transformative purposes? And where are the popular educators’ voices, those working to address the grinding inequality, the housing crisis in London and the big cities, and the deep divisions caused by years of austerity?

The day ended with a panel with Leisha Fullick, Tom Schuller and Alan Tuckett reflecting on whether the Learning Age agenda has any meaning today. The room still believed in the vision of the report or at least in the vision of the power and potential of adult education. But as Tom Schuller said, “who would own the vision”? What would a contemporary vision mean in a concrete way? What is the material base for a potential vision? At the end of the event I asked Alan Tuckett how he thought a new vision might be moved forward and by whom. He said, “It will take more meetings like these, but this time it will have to come from the bottom up”¹.

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¹Secretary of State for Education and the Economy (1997) London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (available on line at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000654.htm