Community education as citizen organising for democratic accountability

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of adult education in community development initiatives that intentionally aim at more general and equitable power-sharing arrangements at local and regional levels. It argues that community-based learning is a necessary component of community development and the rejuvenation of democracy. In the new millennium, citizens participating in civil society need the vehicle of a city-wide broad-based organisation to act for the attainment of these goals. Adult education in North America was founded on citizen action—often around migrant issues: adequate shelter, jobs, English language acquisition, poverty, and urbanisation. Responses to common needs in the Mechanics Institutes, Citizens' Forums, and the Antigonish Movement are only a few examples of how citizen learning changed lifeworld conditions. In this unsettled and unsettling historical moment, as we move from late modernity or post-modernity to some version of a “new world order”, the potential contributions of critical adult education to the future well-being of a global civil society are becoming increasingly apparent. Identifying and assessing means of resistance to the escalating encroachments of international finance and administrative power into the domains of individual and community autonomy is one practical role for adult education.