The PIMA Bulletin Number 19 dated August 2018 can now be read in full below. It features a cluster of four articles about China (PRC) to coincide with a small invitational seminar in Beijing following the PASCAL Annual Conference in Suwon, R of Korea, to explore closer involvement of PRC in PIMA and PASCAL affairs. Note that China hosted the launch event for the UIL Global Learning Cities Network which has gone from strength to strength with the active partnership of PASCAL. 

Roger Boshier takes us back to the earliest post-Mao and Maoist days: “Chinese leaders live behind walls in the Zhongnanhai complex adjacent to the Forbidden City. There are three sections in the Zhongnanhai leadership complex. After 1949 Chairman Mao lived in the first zone where he had a swimming pool in his villa. The next tier of leaders lived in the second section and leading civil servants lived and had offices in the third zone.  Passes were needed to get from one zone to another. 

In 1925 Yao was born in Yaojiazuo village near the Wutai Mountains in Hebei province. In 1953 he was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Workers and Peasants Education in the Chinese Ministry of Education…” read more 

Other papers address the Shanghai Conference when China first became engaged with the International Council for Adult Education. There are then two contemporary studies, of the Chinese OU, and of LLL policy in China.

There are updates on two core PIMA interests, Later Life Learning, and the Sustainable Development Goals (Thomas Kuan, Archanya Ratna-Ubol, and Bruce Wilson).

Dr Muzinga Pierre, a new member of PIMA writing from the Coalition COCEDA in Congo (DRC) addresses the huge challenge of recurrent Ebola on that large and poor country 

“For us in the Congolese Coalition for Adult Education COCEDA, it is clear that the policies and practices of Adult Education (EA) must be part of the response to multiple crises: climate, energy, health, the socio-economic and food challenges that we face in this large country with continental dimensions.

DR Congo, a country in central Africa with an area of ​​2,344,885 km², has at least 70 million inhabitants. Despite its mineral wealth, the largest country in Central Africa, its gross domestic product (GDP) dropped from $10 billion in 1991 to $5.7 billion in 2003….”.

Turning attention to the governance of higher education John Rushforth in England and Gavin Moodie writing from Toronto about Australia explore how governance is changing and how it may affect universities’ capacity to engage.

“What is the current state of UK HE Governance? And what does it do for institutions’ engagement with the needs of their local and regional communities? The argument on the benefits of diversity has been won, but the achievement of diversity is proving difficult. We see increasing numbers of women joining and leading governing bodies (GBs), but progress on other protected characteristics is glacially slow and the age profile of GBs is still heavily skewed to the ‘experientially gifted’ (or old) end of the scale. More recruitment to Boards is by open advertisement, with increasing use of head-hunters to seek people from diverse backgrounds. To what extent do new members represent stakeholders with significant influence from community and regional interests with authority and knowledge to critique the role and curriculum of the university?”

“For the head of an Australian university in the middle of the 20^thcentury the ideal chair of their university’s governing body was like the queen or the governor-general of a Commonwealth country: a ceremonial figure who welcomed unimportant dignitaries and did not ‘interfere’ with important business. While few enjoyed their ideal, the fall back was that the chair of the governing body would be primarily responsible for the university’s external relations, which were then considered of lesser importance, while the head would be responsible for internal management. This was consistent with many chairs of university governing bodies being retired judges who were mainly concerned with the observance of procedure and the maintenance of tradition. 

But this was never a good description of Australian universities’ governance…”

Peter Kearns, a member of the PASCAL Board, takes up the Bulletin theme of a crisis in (Western) democracy:  “A number of events and developments over the last decade have suggested that a crisis exists in democracies in western countries such as America, Europe including Britain, and Australia. Events such as Brexit in the UK and the 2016 American presidential election have added to the general lack of confidence in government in many countries as revealed in a succession of polls and elections. The failure of governments to carry through necessary reforms adds to this sense of malaise in democracy. Is the world now too complex and uncertain for democratic government to work well?

This note has a focus on the established western liberal democracies, but indicators such as the Freedom House Democracy Index Score also tell a depressing story of democratic decline in a large number of countries…..”.

In a Letter from India, Chris Brooks asks whether India will inspire the 21st century: “I am sometimes a little doubting of the claims made about what education can and cannot do. This comes from all the failed 1960s enthusiasm about social revolution through education. But it does seem to me that the culture of a changing society is much influenced by education – as well of course as reflecting it. In that sense India may play a disproportionate role of shaping the 21^stCentury patterns and behaviours, which will emerge. Building a society where education creates values and patterns of behaviour that allow people to live and interact together without authoritarian pressures is for me a massively importance responsibility of education and lifelong learning. Hence looking at the challenges in what will become the world’s largest population is important: they will weigh heavily on the 21st Century globally.

I was born into that post Second World War time of momentous change. It included the end of the British Empire; the end of colonialism on the Indian sub-continent…..”

All the articles above are featured in full in the Newsletter below...