|
|
Plenary Speeches
|
Theme 1 |
Theme 2 |
Theme 3 |
Theme 4
I propose to present you with an overview of the nature and the extent of the social exclusion problem in Europe and to look in a sense at the role which lifelong learning and particularly adult education within a lifelong learning framework can pay in addressing the issue of exclusion. I am struck by the number of assumptions that tend to go unchallenged at conferences such as this and in much of the literature on lifelong learning. One of the main assumptions is that we know what people need to learn and that the question is how do we set up mechanisms to enable it to happen for them. I would like to begin by looking with you at the nature of learning and the nature of knowledge as we enter the 21st century. What is the nature and the purpose of knowledge in modern society? There is a tradition in education of a fairly significant disjunction between high minded and idealistic philosophy and aspirations which we find in the literature concerning education and the reality of its provision, the formalisation of the education process and the reductive nature of what is taught. The syllabus tends to focus on the curriculum. The involuntary presence of most of the participants has meant that the formal system has always had to live with the disjunction between its view of the nature of knowledge and the way in which we organise education. I am attracted to a concept of knowledge as something which is part of what one is, rather than something that which one has. If it is only something which one has it is simply a commodity to be purchased or to be acquired in pretty much the same way as any other consumer good. Whereas if it is the former, that is, part of what one is, I think it becomes indistinguishable from a dynamic process of personal goals. Knowledge and learning then becomes celebratory and vivid and relevant and mysterious. Eric Frome used to talk about knowledge as nothing but a penetrating activity of thought, and it seems to me that we must guard that tradition as educationalists. We must ensure that this view of knowledge is not overtaken by one that is simply concerned with thoughtless activity. And it seems to me that with globalisation we are in a sense threatened by a view of there being only one way of knowing the world. Understanding Knowledge is about creating an active interrelationship between the person and the world as that person goes about searching for a meaning in life. It is also a different challenge for every different generation. It seems to me that perhaps the great tragedy of every generation is that they arrive at some understanding of the way their parents saw the world and yet have a very poor understanding of the way their children see it. In this regard I am interested in the operation of computer games. It seems to me every civilisation's children play with things with which they are going to actually work with as adults. In playing with a playstation a child learns to be on their own. They learn in particular to be on their own with their machine. And at least if they are going to communicate with the world, to communicate with the world through that machine. While all this is happening at one level with children, in my work in Adult Education the main concern that I see adults expressing in their search for education is something to do with the search for connection. In Ireland the two main programmes of adult education study that are being pursued by thousands of people around the country involve areas such as counselling and local history. And it seems to me that both of those areas are to do with the search for identity and are part of the perennial human problem of a search for meaning. Poverty and Literacy With regard to the social exclusion problem specifically in a European context, the current Eurostat figures for 12 countries for the European Union show that there are 57 million people under the poverty line. 13 million of those 57 million are children. There are basically about 6 countries all of which have 20% or more of their individuals living in poverty. The countries Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, the UK and Portugal, all of them have between 20 to 25%. These figures graphically draw attention to the fact that Europe has not yet solved the poverty problem. The other problem which it has not solved is the literacy problem. The OECD report, the ILS survey, shows that in a significant number OECD countries between 25-50% of the people in these countries have a literacy problem. What then is the purpose of Adult Education and lifelong learning in area of exclusion? It seems to me that most of the documentation on citizenship tends to equate citizenship with the capacity to make informed choices. But I think Adult Education especially has shown that citizenship is more than simply that. It is now seen as being about making things happen for yourself rather than having things happen to you. This view of citizenship moves the concern away from simply informed choice to informed participation. My concern with participation moves on to the issue of equalising or re-articulating power relationships and this I think is the essence of community education. It is where it links historically with the trade union movement and is also where Adult Education and community development converge around the task of re-distributing power. So I would say then that we should look on our role as Adult Educators as being involved in solidarity with the disadvantaged towards their collective empowerment. If we think about citizenship as being informed participation then we have to think about participation not as a methodology but as an ideology. For as an ideology it involves a commitment to power distribution. This brings me to the notion of private space and public space. I find this concept of the distinction within private and public a useful concept in talking about the role and the purpose of Adult Education. We can conceptualise the role as being one of enabling a population who are consigned to the private sphere, to become more active in the public sphere. This does not necessarily mean becoming politically active, but it simply means taking a more active role in decisions surrounding one's own life. The private-public distinction is also useful when we think of expenditure in education. The distribution of public expenditure in education, it seems to me, moves inordinately towards the private good rather than towards the public good. And by the private good here I mean the extent to which resources are transferred from the many to the few. If we think of education as a public good, we think of the way in which it contributes to the overall society and to the needs of the disadvantaged within it. Within a lifelong learning continuum from childhood and pre school upwards, it seems to me the two main sectors in which one would invest if one's concern was with the public good would be early childhood and initial education on the one hand and second chance education at the other. Concern for the public good would call for a re-direction of education resources to those two areas at the expense of the third level sector in particular. Interdependence The last point I want to make concerns the challenge for education as it moves into the 21st century. There are two elements to this. One is the challenge brought about by globalisation. As commentators have said globalisation leads to first of all the interrogation of tradition. Each individual must interrogate who they are and begin to raise questions about the assumptions that they have made in terms of their cultural identity and personal identity. So in a sense it is about a questioning of the commitment to one's culture and to one's place. This leads so some say to a population that is socially reflective, a population that is thoughtful as opposed to being thoughtless. This will give us a population of autonomous individuals not with harsh right wing individuality but with a sense of interdependence between all the sectors of a society leading to generative politics that I would say is essentially a synonym for active citizenship. This generative politics encapsulates a commitment both to thought and to communal or collective action. And the other element is the commitment to sustainability. The challenge of the 21st century must move simply from a concern with equality now to also include one of sustainability and in a sense they are both partially the same thing. The main concern with equality now is to achieve greater equality between the classes. The commitment to sustainability is the concern with achieving greater equality between the generations most particularly between current and future ones.
|
