University Adult Education in England and the USA

A Reappraisal of the Liberal Tradition

Richard Taylor, Kathleen Rockhill, Roger Fieldhouse

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138366763
• eBook ISBN: 9780429771934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Originally published in 1985 this book is a critique and comparison of the nature, structure and provision of university adult education in England and the USA. The focus is both contemporary (twentieth century) and historical and is interdisciplinary, involving both social scientific and historical modes of enquiry and analysis. A central concern of the book is the liberal tradition as it has operated in its different ways and the erosion of this tradition and its consequences for the contemporary structure of university adult education form a large part of the book's discussion.

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

This book is a critique and comparison of the nature, structure and provision of University Adult Education (hereafter UAE) in England and the USA. The focus is both contemporary and historical, as the intention is to identify ‘from where we have come, where we are now, and where we might be going’ during the closing years of the twentieth century. The current structures, and even more important the ideology or ideologies of UAE cannot be understood without detailed reference to earlier events and movements. This study is thus interdisciplinary, involving both social scientific and historical modes of enquiry and analysis.

Similarly, although the focus is upon University Adult Education, this cannot be discussed in a vacuum: both in England and the USA the relationship with other agencies has been of considerable importance and, whilst these are not discussed here in detail, some contextual consideration is necessary. In the USA especially, where UAE is not an autonomous arena of practice, developments are discussed within the broader frameworks of higher and adult education.

This study is not a general comparative analysis of UAE in the two countries. The central concern, as the title makes clear, is the liberal tradition as it has operated, in rather different ways, in both England and the USA. The second chapter opens with a discussion of the nature and importance of this tradition. Here, it need be noted only that it is a central contention of this study that the liberal tradition has been of crucial importance throughout the development of UAE, but that this tradition has been under attack, both explicit and implicit, for some time, and is now considerably weaker than in the past. The reasons for, and nature of, this erosion, and the resultant contemporary structure of UAE, is the major theme of this study.

The specific development of UAE has been part of the response of the tertiary educational system to the wider socio-economic and political pressures of twentieth century society. In order to explain how and why UAE has developed in the ways that it has, this study also considers the relationship between UAE and the wider society.

In general terms, it is argued that, in their very different ways, UAE in England and the USA has been characterised increasingly by provision geared towards the already relatively highly educated, and, to a greater extent in recent years than previously, has fallen outside the liberal tradition in terms of both content and approach. Paradoxically, it is also argued that this transition is the logical consequence of the contradictions inherent within the liberal tradition as manifest in advanced capitalist societies. In England there have been notable exceptions to the general pattern of liberal elitism – particularly working class education, and community adult education – and some more detailed consideration is undertaken of both these areas. In the USA there have also been exceptions, but in general these have been so marginalised as to be beyond the pale of UAE at the present time. In what ways, if at all, the liberal tradition is, or can be made, relevant to working class education and/or education for social transformation, is an important subsidiary theme.

There can be no doubt that UAE in both countries is in a period of profound change, if not crisis. This is in part due to the recession, the ideologically inspired squeeze on public expenditure, and its corollary of encouraging self-financing education. Augmenting these trends, technological and educational expansion exert strong pressure upon UAE to develop a much more post-experience and professional training orientation, at the expense of the wide range of traditional priorities and objectives.

In these circumstances, the future of UAE, with its increasingly disparate provision and objectives, is very much an open question. Whether or not the liberal tradition, in a revitalised form, has anything to offer UAE in this new situation, forms the final focus of attention for this study.

The structure of the book follows these major thematic concerns. In the remainder of this introduction a brief historical and descriptive outline of UAE development in both England and the USA provides the setting within which the specific themes of the study are pursued. The second chapter begins with a discussion and definition of the liberal tradition, and outlines the major cluster of themes to be developed later in the study. Centrally important to the whole discussion are the related questions of objectivity, social purpose and political bias within UAE, and the third chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of these within the English context. The fourth chapter analyses the contemporary structure of UAE in England and links this to the wider development of tertiary education in the post-war period. The key exception to the predominating pattern of development in English UAE has been the various modes of provision for working class and other ‘educationally disadvantaged’ groups. This is, of course, of particular importance in the context of this study, given the ‘social purpose’ orientation of the liberal tradition, and chapter five discusses these various aspects of the provision. Chapters six and seven are devoted to the American experience. In chapter six, the legitimation of UAE in terms of the liberal values of democracy, equality, service and excellence, is outlined, and the consequences for the institutionalisation of a set of ideological practices that define UAE to the present time, are analysed. This includes not only the specifically educational concerns of UAE in the USA, but also a discussion of the wider ideological and socio–economic influences upon the development of UAE. Chapter seven, mirroring the concerns of chapter five, concentrates upon the workers’ education movement in the USA and considers the ways in which the values of the liberal tradition were invoked to delegitimise the education of workers as a class in UAE. In the process of the controversy over working class education, it is contended that the ideological premises which define current professional practice in adult education were sealed. In setting up false dichotomies between education and propaganda, education and action, and in delegitimising notions of class, separatism and socialism, UAE was severed from its progressive base in movements for social transformation.

In the final chapter, chapter eight, an attempt is made to craw some conclusions from the general comparative analyses, with particular attention being paid to the future prospects for UAE and the relevance for these prospects of the liberal tradition. Before beginning these analyses, the general historical context within which UAE has developed in both countries is briefly outlined.

UAE IN ENGLAND

From the mid-nineteenth century, ‘missionary dons’ from Oxford and Cambridge began to travel the country, giving lectures to mechanics ‘institutes, ladies’ educational associations and other organisations as part of the movement to reform the universities by making them less exclusive. After Cambridge formally agreed to organise ‘local lectures’ in 1873(followed three years later by London, and by Oxford in 1878), a network of university lecture courses developed throughout the country. In this early phase it was closely associated with the founding of provincial university colleges, both developments being part of the university reform movement. This nineteenth century university extension movement was a mixture of democratic idealism (providing intellectual nourishment for ‘the whole nation’) and Oxbridge paternalism (tying the new university colleges to the ancient universities). However, as the colleges increased their independence, they gradually cut their ties with the Extension movement. Another problem the movement encountered was financial: the lectures had to be self-financing and this forced student fees up to a level beyond the means of most working class men and women. Far from being university education for ‘the whole nation’ it became almost exclusively middle class.

These university extension lectures began to decline from their peak in the early 1890s, when there were some 5 74 extramural centres, but UAE was given a new lease of life by the foundation of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in 1903, whose object was to make university scholarship available to the working class in order to equip the workers with the necessary knowledge to help them in the struggle for social change. At first it was hoped to achieve this by promoting university extension lectures, but the problem of high fees led the WEA to press Oxford to support a network of tutorial classes in industrial towns, ‘specifically adapted to the needs of workpeople’(1), and to provide machinery for ensuring that a number of working class students progressed to study at the University itself. Oxford acceded to the former request (although not the latter) because powerful university reformers were seeking to extend the ancient universities’ cultural influence to the working class as it emerged onto the political scene (with the extension of the franchise, the growth of a mass trade union movement, and the formation of the Labour Party). The famous Report on Oxford and Working Class Education stated in 1908: ‘It seems to us that it would involve a grave loss both to Oxford and to English political life were the close association which has existed between the University and the world of affairs to be broken or impaired on the accession of new classes to power’. (2)

In recognition of the significance (and political reliability) of the tutorial class movement, the government agreed in 190 7 to pay a grant towards the cost of running tutorial classes, thereby enabling the WEA to reduce students’ fees to a realistic level. This direct grant was paid to the rapidly growing number of Joint Committees (of WEA and university representatives) which sprang up in imitation of Oxford’s example, enabling them to promote a significant programme of liberal, non-vocational adult education, while allowing the government to exercise a degree of control over this provision.

It was the fear of this controlling influence which led to a split in the Adult Education movement. Rusk in College had been founded in 1899 by two Americans, Walter Vrooman and Charles Beard, as a workingmen’s college, with the object of equipping the students for more effective service in the working class movement. In 19 08 a group of rebel students formed the Plebs League to promote ‘independent working class education’: that is, independent of establishment control. In the following year, after a students’ strike, they abandoned Ruskin and established their own Labour Colleges, to teach workers to identify and then eliminate the economic causes of social injustice. A National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) was formed to coordinate and extend ‘the education of the workers from the working class point of view’ with the specific object of ‘bringing an end to the system of capitalism and enabling the workers to achieve their social and industrial emancipation’.(3) But the financial support given to the “WEA and the Tutorial Class movement by the state and the bulk of the politically cautious trade union movement, gave structural confirmation of the ideological marginality and isolation of the NCLC’s Marxist orientation. Meanwhile, the WEA attempted to introduce more orthodox university scholarship to the working class by forging closer links with the trade unions through the Workers’ Educational Trade Union Committee (WETUC), formed in 1919. Throughout the inter-war years this provided a direct, if sometimes tenuous, means of providing university education for trade union students.

For nearly four decades after the birth of the Tutorial Class movement, which was coordinated and institutionalised by a Central Joint Advisory Committee on Tutorial Classes (CJAC), the WEA remained the major agency through which UAE was organised. But gradually an increasing number of universities and university colleges established their own extramural departments to organise courses quite separately from the WEA and tutorial class network. This process was given further impetus in 1924 when the government relaxed the adult education regulations, not only extending recognition to each of the twenty-one WEA Districts as separate ‘responsible bodies’(RBs), each in receipt of its own grant, but at the same time extending the range of university courses qualifying for grant aid. The result was to loosen, although by no means cut, the ties between the universities and the WEA, and to divert some of the energy and limited manpower of the Adult Education movement from its original objective of organising and stimulating a demand for tutorial classes, towards the offering of shorter, less demanding courses which were organised and provided both by the WEA and the universities themselves. These easier alternatives to the rigours of the tutorial classes lacked some of the earlier commitment to university level work. At the same time the Adult Education movement between the wars began to lose some of its social purpose dynamic, becoming more concerned with general provision which satisfied the needs of individual members of society, rather than with a social studies orientation, geared to the objective of providing the working class with the necessary educational means to pursue the struggle for social change.

This trend was magnified after the second world war with the expansion of university extramural departments and non WEA UAE. In 194 8 the Universities Council for Adult Education (UCAE) declared that extramural departments should no longer ‘regard their services as available exclusively to any one organisation or section of the community’.(4) During the next twenty-five years, although there were some exceptions (e.g. the development of university day release courses for trade unionists), the generai drift of English UAE was away from its earlier commitment to the needs and aspirations of the working class. At the same time there was a large expansion of relatively short, undemanding courses in response to the ‘popular demand’ of a predominantly middle class constituency seeking leisure and relaxation. This further shifted the emphasis of adult education away from social studies subjects to a broader spectrum of subjects studied ‘for their own sake’. This quasi-populist phase had little in common with earlier UAE, with its class orientation and social purpose dynamic, except that both could be classified as liberal, non-vocational education. However, even here, in the post-war period, there was a – significant dilution of the traditional liberal approach, with the rapid increase in certificated courses which narrowed considerably the gap between vocational and non-vocational adult education. An important milestone along this road was the establishment of the Open University in 1969, offering part-time degrees for adults through a process of distance learning, based mainly on a combination of television, radio and correspondence modular courses.

The ‘Russell Report’ in 1973 gently hinted that the universities should ‘concentrate on work of university quality1 and satisfy ‘the need for adult education at a high intellectual level’.(5) It was envisaged that this would involve the universities in a continuing provision of liberal studies of the traditional kind, together with liberal, academic education for all levels of industry; research project work; role education for both professional and voluntary groups; ‘balancing’ studies to complement earlier specialisation in education; and ‘pioneer work’. The latter included: refresher and post experience vocational education (PEVE) courses for professional or vocational groups; informal courses with disadvantaged sections of the population; and part-time degrees.(6)

It could be argued that there was a certain lack of coherence or prioritising in the Russell recommendations and that this has been reflected in UAE in the years since the Report’s publication. (The recommendations were, of course, never formally implemented). Different aspects have been emphasised by different universities, but generally there has been a downgrading of the traditional liberal studies provision whilst PEVE courses, and the complementing of previous tertiary education, have been given higher priority. These forms of continuing education reflect a growing trend towards elitism, utilitarianism and ‘relevance’ – that is, provision relevant not to the forces for social change but. to the perceived socio-economic needs of the existing society (a tendency that has characterised university priorities in general).

English UAE has moved radically from its early twentieth century commitment to both the educational advancement of the working class and the achievement of social change (however muted and controlled). In the post-war period there has been a growing tendency for UAE to see its primary purpose as the servicing of the needs of ‘the economy’, as interpreted by government, industry and the professions. As always, however, contradictions and counter tendencies can be identified, and it is to an exploration of these and their significance, in the contemporary context, that this book is in part devoted.

UAE IN THE USA

The idea of university extension in the USA was imported from England. John Vincent, President of Chautauqua Institution, and Herbert Baxter Adams, a professor of history at John Hopkins University, were the most influential early proponents. Reacting to the entertainment ori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter One: Introduction
• Chapter Two: The Liberal Tradition in Adult Education
• Chapter Three: The Problems of Objectivity, Social Purpose and Ideological Commitment in English University Adult Education
• Chapter Four: The Ideological Determinants of University Adult Education in England
• Chapter Five: Radical Developments in Unversity Adult Education in England: Redefining the Liberal Tradition
• Chapter Six: The Liberal Perspective and the Symbolic Legitimation of University Adult Education in the USA
• Chapter Seven: Ideological Solidification of Liberalism in University Adult Education: Confrontation Over Workers’ Education in the USA
• Chapter Eight: The Future of University Adult Education
• Index