Histories of Adult Education

Abstract

This chapter argues that in Australia and elsewhere a liberal history of adult education has dominated, one that sees adult education evolving towards ‘highly professionalised and depoliticised field of practice’. It shows how this liberal story has repressed other histories of adult education and learning. The chapter also argues that adult educators have invested Antigonish with too much emancipatory hope, and have turned it into a disabling myth. Adult education became a contested terrain from the early decades of the 19th century because British workers resisted middle-class efforts to provide them with ‘useful knowledge’, preferring instead to pursue the opportunity for ‘free inquiry’ offered by workingmen’s societies and socialist clubs. For both middle-class professionals and labour movement officials, the Workers’ Educational Association provided a mechanism for reaching workers. It was attractive to union officials because it offered them an opportunity to influence workers’ education.