Working Lives & Adult Education

The case is made for a politically and culturally engaged critical pedagogy of work, placing it within the historical legacy of adult education. Prompted by the Work and Learning Network initiative at the University of Alberta, this paper marks a renewal of the author’s interest in the discourse on education and the world of work. The critical commentaries on education and work in Critical Crosscurrents in Education (Collins, 1998) have been pretty much confirmed, if only because the trends noted were apparent enough at the time and have since become increasingly clear-cut: This despite dense neo-liberal rhetoric on globalization, as state-endorsed corporate ideology successfully permeates our educational institutions. At this juncture, and with a fair understanding of what it is up against, a fledgling critical pedagogy of work has its own work cut out in making a case for moving critique from progressive liberal academic concern about the burgeoning effects of marketplace imperatives towards a reasoned normative discourse on the identification of counter-strategies that make sense. No doubt, within the space available, this paper can offer only a plea for a political engagement in line with our critical pedagogy as a prelude to what might constitute an engaged critically informed research in practice (Collins, 2003 a; Collins & Swann, 2003) for education and work. Apart from an emphasis on agency, in the face of our seemingly enduring postmodern sensibilites, this paper seeks to evoke the vital historical legacy connecting adult education to the lives of working people. Historical Legacy: Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital In all three volumes of Capital, Karl Marx (1983) acknowledged the value to his own work of adult educator Thomas Hodgskin’s book (first published in 1825), Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital (1963) along with other “admirable work” by Hodgskin on political economy. Hodgskin was the original co-founder (with radical journalist, J.C. Robertson) of the mechanics’ institutes’ movement which began with the establishment of the London Mechanics’ Institute in 1823 (Halevy, 1956). Though Hodgskin’s aim to provide education for working people, designed and largely controlled by working people, was almost immediately thwarted by the very middle-class patrons who were required to attract funding and legitimized support, mechanics’ institutes sprang up in industrial towns throughout the UK in the 1820’s. At the height of the movement, in the UK alone, there were over 600 institutes, and this first major secular adult education movement of the industrial age spread to other countries in North America, Europe and beyond. From the outset, and not surprisingly, middle-class philanthropists, including notable figures such as Francis Place, George Birkbeck and Lord (Henry) Brougham, saw to it that Hodgskin was sidelined. Even Hodgskin’s proposed course on political economy for working people was rejected. As employers, many of the movement’s middle class sponsors had a vested interest in ensuring that working class members were taught subjects that would add to their usefulness as employees (shades of HRD see section on Management-Speak) or, at least in the case of classes for improving mind and body, did not bring status quo arrangements into question. In this regard, a popular course on political economy for workers was perceived as dangerous knowledge. Among the generous philanthropic donors to the new movement were James Mill and Lord Byron. The latter expressed the hope that “the ancient aristocracy of England will be secure for ages to come.. [for the people] when properly informed will judge correctly” (Parry, 1825, p. 204). Nevertheless, the expectations of these philanthropists and other middle-class promoters were not entirely realized. While in steep decline by 1850, the mechanics’ institutes pre-figured the emergence of the Chartist and trade union movements which were able to be more emphatic in representing the interests of working people against the claims of capital. In any case, Hodgskin’s ambitions for a politically informed adult education from the standpoint of working people surpassed those of subsequent popular education initiatives specifically for workers such as the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and the distinctly Canadian Frontier College (Fitzpatrick, 1999). The circumstances around the emergence of the mechanics’ institutes as the first organized adult education movement of international scope in the capitalist era, especially bearing in mind Hodgskin’s objective to see it develop from the standpoint of worker interests against the claims of capital, remain instructive for a critical assessment of present and future prospects of adult education for working people. This claim for the continuing relevance of historical foundations to a critical pedagogy of work within the discourse on modern adult education practice and research derives from an understanding that commonalities, conjunctions, recurrences and contradictions discernible from history still in the making can lead to a more engaged research in practice. In this view, postmodern “end of history” discourse analysis, for all its insightful brilliance, pre-occupied with disjuncture, difference, irony, metaphor and an evasive relativism treads water outside the tide of history in which we can still discern, with the likes of Thomas Hodgskin, hopeful prospects for a rational society that can better provide for the needs of the vast majority of ordinary men and women against the formidable claims of capital.