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Workshop C
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Workshop A |
Workshop B |
Workshop C |
Workshop D
Workshop C - Session 3
Introduction by Tom Schuller We are continuing the theme of promoting social inclusion and adult citizenship and the topic of this workshop is overcoming barriers. I would like to say two things to start with. The first is draw from a conversation I had recently with a taxi driver. The taxi driver is the classic data source for both sociologists and journalists! Last week as I was going to another meeting I had a long conversation with my taxi driver who asked what business I was in so I told him I was the Director of the Centre for Continuing Education at the University working on courses for adults and so on. He said, 'Oh, that's not really for me.' And then he said, I do go to the gym three days a week.' This is a taxi driver who works over 60 hours a week. I do not think he earns a huge wage, but not only does he go to the gym three days a week, he has also moved from free public gym to a private gym because he found the quality of the public gym was not good enough. The staff at the public gym were not paying attention to him, and so he is now paying not a huge amount, about £30 a month, to go to a private gym. I recount this conversation because two of the most common barriers are time and money and they are both very evident in this case. I produce it as an example of someone being able actually to overcome those barriers at least on an individual basis which does not make them any the less significant for all that. Social Capital The second point I wanted to make was to re-introduce the notion of social capital. This is gaining ground as an analytical frame in some quarters. I introduce it here because I feel there is a great danger of the learning age and the move towards lifelong learning perhaps being over-interpreted as meaning participation in formal educational opportunities. The thinking behind social capital is to stress the links between the networking that goes on often informally and the way in which people learn from each other through informal associations as well as participating formally in courses in which they enrol and for which they get credit. This gives I think a wider view perhaps of the scope for inclusion and the way in which some of those barriers can be overcome.
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