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Workshop C
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Workshop A |
Workshop B |
Workshop C |
Workshop D
Workshop C - Session 2 - Questions and Contributions
Q: As women's education has developed in Ireland - the various projects you were outlining and the stage they're at - what has been the reaction of the men? Bernie Brady: I think initially that we experienced quite a lot of backlash, in the sense that I think once women, and especially women who are disempowered, begin to make progress, it is often seen as them having everything. The second thing that happened was advantageous because there is a spin off from women's education into families and also into men who are disadvantaged. I think what is beginning to happen now is that men who are disadvantaged are beginning to identify themselves but instead of doing it the way women did, they have to do it for themselves. On a personal level for many women it could be difficult because their experience of education and development changes their roles and their powers within the home. And in many cases they experienced partners preventing them in taking part in educational processes, and I think that is an issue that really emerges as part of this whole movement. Fiona Blacke: If we're talking about involvement of communities in decision-making I think there is an assumption that the non-participant groups are some homogenous group of folk out of a peripheral housing estate, somewhere on the edge of any of our urban areas. The reality is that if you focus on one particular grouping, be that an ethnic minority group, or a women's group, or a particular religious group, there is often a kick-back, not from those people outside those communities but from within the communities. Q: I am from South Africa, and Bernie Brady's presentation describes more or less the problem similar to the South African one. So what I want to find out is, do you see any achievements and what is the response of the community? Bernie Brady: Yes, I think there are two aspects to it. First of all there are personal achievements for the women themselves in terms of where they want to go in achieving knowledge and skills and qualifications. In our first NOW project we aimed at training key women in the groups and bringing them out of the group, and we thought they could go back into the group and take their knowledge with them. It did not work. The second time round we decided to deliver our training collectively to the groups within the community. What has actually happened now is that instead of having lots of little small groups dotted all over the country, the groups have begun to form networks and they actually provide a fantastic resource to their community as a whole, both in terms of access for people who are educationally disadvantaged, and from the point of view of parenting with their children. They are also involved in a whole variety of other activities within the community. So there are a lot of outcomes from it. The response from the community - I think that the groups are tremendously important within their own communities, but they are very invisible at a political level, so that when they look for resources the policy makers and the decision makers tend not to see or value their work. Q: (Alan Wells, the Basic Skills Agency, UK) We seem to take the view that people don't participate in learning, much as people who do not visit museums, are socially excluded. I work with a whole lot of people who do not want to take part in literacy programmes, but are not socially excluded and do not see themselves as socially excluded. Q: (Paul Miller, Lincolnshire Training and Enterprise Council, UK) I worked in the Probation Service for many years before joining the Training and Enterprise Council. I think there is a relationship between social exclusion and whether or not someone has got a slice of economic prosperity. It is OK to opt out and not want to learn if you have got a slice of economic prosperity. But if you have not, and you do not want to learn, then I actually think the whole process of lifelong learning will make people even more excluded. Bernie Brady: I think what you raise is a very important issue, but I think the key to it is how people are approached and how their needs are expressed. One of the most important parts of some of the work that we have done in Ireland has shown that, basically because people are excluded by virtue of different barriers, they come together and they do things for themselves. I think if those people are listened to in a real sense and their needs are identified and they have the power to do something about it themselves then it can work very well. That is where the bottom-up kind of approach that is used in community based education has been very successful with particular sectors, and other approaches have not been. Q: (Liz Millman, Bilston Community College, UK) I am working with some colleagues, partner organisations, in the community, to address this issue of unfair funding for community education. If you are on a mainstream programme then you do not have to bid for all your funding, unlike those of us who are working perhaps with some of the more challenging and difficult sorts of approaches. Albino Lopes: I believe that the problem of education of adults, especially of the deprived classes, is that they have to have a voice. But do they have a voice, or do they have something to say regarding this matter? Workers, under-paid workers for example, who had joined a union in order to know more about the Euro heard that this would lead to outsourcing, to redundancy, and they wanted to know what Euro could give them, could bring to them, or would that just lead companies to create more jobs in other countries in Europe. Fiona Blacke: It seems to me that there are three key issues:
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