Radical Agendas? The Politics of Adult Education.

Overview & Synopsis

This book brings together eight of the most significant papers published in the journal "Studies in the Education of Adults" from the 1970s and 1980s, together with three new essays that place the earlier material in context. It examines the changes in British adult education between 1970 and 1990 and is concerned with the place of radicalism in those years, how it was perceived, and what forms it took. Part I contains the three new contributions to the debates within adult education: "Innocence and After: Radicalism in the 1970s" (J. E. Thomas); "Counting the Cost: Managerialism, the Market, and the Education of Adults in the 1980s and Beyond" (Alan Tuckett); and "Constructing the Future: A Postmodern Agenda for Adult Education" (Sallie Westwood). The four papers in Part II focus on the 1970s: "Community Adult Education" (T. Lovett); "Education at the Bottom" (David Head); "The Concept of Deprivation" (R. W. K. Paterson); and "Adult Education and Social Change" (J. E. Thomas, G. Harries-Jenkins). Part III contains four papers relating to the 1980s: "A University Adult Education Project with the Unemployed" (Kevin Ward); "Conformity and Contradiction in 'English Responsible Body' Adult Education, 1925-1950" (Roger Fieldhouse); "Gender and Education: A Study of the Ideology and Practice of Community Based Women's Education" (Gillian Highet); and "Constructing the Other: Minorities, the State, and Adult Education in Europe" (Sallie Westwood). (YLB)