Finding the Worker: Adult Education and Workers' Education

Abstract

has been a consistent tension between the generalists who focus on adult education and those involved in workers' education. On the one hand, Spencer (2010) maintains that modern adult education grew out of workers' education, at least partially. Others, however, see workers' education and adult education as distinct and substantially different. This tension also carries over into the more specialized area of union education. Worker educators have a specific end goal, the improvement of workers' lives. This can be broadly defined, but generally includes an emphasis on the workers as part of a movement larger than themselves. Union education is more specific, focused on union-based issues particular to organizing and collective bargaining (e.g., filing grievances, building solidarity). This kind of educational program is found exclusively within unions themselves. The tension that resides between adult education and workers' education and union education lies in both the history of each and in their commitment to different ends. This tension is quite old and predates the beginnings of organized adult education. Jonathan D. Bloom (1990, p. 207) recounts an older version of this tension. In December 1925 A. J. Muste, chairman of the faculty at Brookwood Labor College, received a letter from his friend Norman Thomas asking his opinion of conferences on adult education being promoted by the Carnegie In his reply, Muste reported that he and Arthur Calhoun, Brookwood's Director of Studies, had just returned from one such meeting in New York City. We here at Brookwood are very doubtful indeed whether we are going to go along with the American Association for Adult Education, which it is expected will spring out of these conferences. Those present at the gathering, Muste went on, pretty definitely represent a point of view, whether conscious or unconsciously. That point of view is not the same as ours. A little more than a year later, Calhoun put it more sharply at Brookwood's annual conference of teachers in workers' education: There can be nothing but war between the Adult Education movement, with its 'civic' aims, and the Workers' Education movement, with its class mission. were several reasons for this initial animus. Some had to do with the funding of the Association by the Carnegie Corporation. Andrew Carnegie had a definite anti-union, anti-worker reputation that made anything connected with his name suspect. In addition, there was a definite feeling that the aims of the Adult Education movement were not social change in the way that workers' education was. Additionally, for Muste, workers' education focused on workers learning among equals, whereas he equated adult education with a more top down approach (Bloom, 1990). Another part of the dichotomy between worker and adult education is the confusion over terminology. The education of workers has historically been covered by three terms, workers' education, labor education, and labor studies. According to Dwyer (1977), these terms were developed historically and cover specific chronological time periods. For example, workers' education was used during the first part of the twentieth century until the 1940s. Labor education began to be used in the 1930s and was used predominantly until the late 1960s, when the term labor studies came to pre-eminence. Since the founding of the American Association for Adult Education (AAAE) there has been little con nection between workers'/ labor education and adult education. On the part of adult educators, there is an assumption that issues relating to workers fall broadly under the purview of adult education. Yet, labor educators, for the most part, maintain a distance and a basic distrust. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] With this distancing in mind, this article looks at how administrators and teachers who consider themselves adult educators but who find themselves in a union environment come to think about their role and their context. …