The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education E-Book
36,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
THE JOSSEY-BASS READER ON Contemporary Issues in Adult Education With contributions from leading experts in the field, The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education collects in one volume the best previously published literature on the issues and trends affecting adult education today. The volume includes influential pieces from foundational authors in the profession such as Eduard C. Lindeman, Alain Locke, and Paulo Freire, as well as current work from authors around the world, including Laura L. Bierema, John M. Dirkx, Cecilia Amaluisa Fiallos, Peter Jarvis, Michael Newman, and Shirley Walters. In five sections, the book's thirty chapters delve into a wide range of compelling topics including: * social justice, democracy, and activism * diversity and marginalization * human resource development * lifelong learning * ethical issues * the meaning and role of emotions * globalization and non-Western perspectives * the role of mass media, popular culture, and "social learning" * technology * health, welfare, and environment Each piece is framed within its larger context by the editors, and each section is accompanied by helpful reflection and discussion questions.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 915
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Sources
Preface
Overview of the Contents
Acknowledgments
The Editors
About the Contributors
Part One: Defining a Field of Practice: The Foundations of Adult Education
Chapter 1: For Those Who Need to Be Learners
Chapter 2: The Negro in America
Introduction
The Present-Day Problem (circa 1933)
Chapter 3: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Chapter 4: Building a Knowledge Base in U.S. Academic Adult Education (1945–1970)
Introduction
Knowledge Production as Cultural Production: The Constitution of a Productive Knowledge Base in U.S. Academic Adult Education (1945–70)
Knowledge Is Power to Control Power: Locating Knowledge as a Productive Force in Post-Industrial Society
The Space and Place of Liberal Adult Education and the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Adult Education in the Culture of Productive Knowledge
Postscript: What Knowledge Is of Most Value?
Chapter 5: Adult Education at the Margins
Historical Underpinnings
Purposes of Adult Education
Adult Education at the Margins
Adult Education as a Profession
Adult Education as Social Action
Multiple Goals for Adult Education
Embracing the Margins
Chapter 6: African Americans in Adult Education
Conceptual Framework and Method
FINDINGS
DISCUSSION
Chapter 7: Ethical Issues and Codes of Ethics
LITERATURE REVIEW
RESEARCH DESIGN
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
Part Two: Positioning Adult Education in a Global Context
Chapter 8: Rediscovering Adult Education in a World of Lifelong Learning
Part I: Global Capitalism
Part II: Towards a Totalistic Society
Part III: Lifelong Learning and Adult Education
Conclusions
Chapter 9: Research and Policy in Lifelong Learning
Introduction
Background
Researchers, Educators and Policy-makers
Case Study: The Learning Society Programme in Britain
Conclusion
Chapter 10: Social Movements, Class, and Adult Education
What Are Social Movements?
Social-Movement Learning
Social Movements in South Africa
In Closing
Chapter 11: Social Change Education
POPULAR EDUCATION—ORIGINS AND CHARACTERISTICS
MOVING WEST—A DIFFERENT CONTEXT
Popular Education Applied to a Western Context
Acknowledgment of Political Objectives
CONCLUSION
Chapter 12: Adult Education and the Empowerment of the Individual in a Global Society
Conceptual Bases That Support Global Society
An Alternative Focus on Development and Globalization
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF ADULT EDUCATION
Chapter 13: Active and Inclusive Citizenship for Women
Deliberative Democracy, Active Citizenship and Lifelong Learning
Structural Inequalities for Women
Broadening Our Understanding of Lifelong Learning
Identity and Democratic Inclusion
Implications for Policy, Pedagogy and Practice
Part Three: Adult Education's Constituencies and Program Areas: Competing Interests?
Chapter 14: Social Class and Adult Education
What Is Class?
Class and Education
Focusing on Adult Education
Summary
Chapter 15: Poverty Reduction and Adult Education
Poverty Reduction
Conclusion
Chapter 16: Aligning Health Promotion and Adult Education for Healthier Communities
Health Promotion
Aligning Health Promotion and Adult Education
Summary
Chapter 17: Critiquing Human Resource Development's Dominant Masculine Rationality and Evaluating Its Impact
Challenging Dominant Masculine Rationality in Human Resource Development
Unsettling HRD
A Critical HRD
Women in HRD
Challenging HRD's Dominant Masculinity
Conclusion
Chapter 18: Organizational Learning Communities and the Dark Side of the Learning Organization
Learning Networks as Learning Communities
The Dark Side of the Learning Organization
Contradictions in the Quest for Organizational Learning
Overcoming the Dark Side
Conclusion
Chapter 19: Negotiating Democratically for Educational and Political Outcomes
Why Planning Tables Matter
Dimensions of the Planning Table
Negotiating Democratically at the Planning Table
Conclusion
Part Four: The Changing Landscape of Adult Learning
Chapter 20: Reflection Disempowered
Chapter 21: A Theory in Progress
Connected Knowing
Social Change
Groups and Organizations
Ecological View
Extrarational Approach
Research on Transformative Learning
Summary
Chapter 22: “Social Learning” for/in Adult Education?
Introduction and Purpose
Methodology
Mapping the Discourse of “Social Learning”
Implications for Theory/Practice
Chapter 23: The Meaning and Role of Emotions in Adult Learning
Ways in Which Emotion Is Manifest in Adult Learning
The Nature and Meaning of Emotion
The Role of Emotion in Human Experience
Emotion and Alternative Ways of Knowing in Adult Learning
Conclusion
Chapter 24: Adult Education and the Mass Media in the Age of Globalization
Media Concentration and globalization
Global Media and The Control of Consciousness
STANDARDIZATION: THE ESSENCE OF MASS CULTURE
Mass Media, Mass Culture, and Adult Education
Closing Comments
Chapter 25: Non-Western Perspectives on Learning and Knowing
Globalization and the Non-Western World
Learning and Knowing from Non-Western Worldviews
Non-Western Perspectives and Our Practice of Adult Learning
Conclusion
Part Five: New Discourses Shaping Contemporary Adult Education
Chapter 26: Attending to the Theoretical Landscape in Adult Education
Chapter 27: Popular Culture, Cultural Resistance, and Anticonsumption Activism
Popular Culture, Cultural Resistance, and Public Pedagogy
Culture Jamming as Critical Public Pedagogy
Conclusion
Chapter 28: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy
Postmodern Knowing
The Death of the Teacher
The Subversion of the Student
The Diffusion of Power
Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy
Chapter 29: Activism as Practice
LGBTQ Lived Reality
Taking Up Critical Practice: Queer Is as Queer Does
The Ebb and Flow of Questions and Answers
Glocalizing: The Intersection of Micro- and Macropractice
The Politics of Queer Practice
Visibility: Seizing Opportunities to Mobilize
Critical Practice as Wildness and Mischief: A Kind of Conclusion
Chapter 30: Using Freirean Pedagogy of Just Ire to Inform Critical Social Learning in Arts-Informed Community Education for Sexual Minorities
Critical Social Learning About Sexual-Minority Differences
Living Out Freirean Pedagogy of Just IRE Through Artistic Expression
Concluding Perspective: Say “No” to Backward Forces
Name Index
Subject Index
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Jossey-Bass reader on contemporary issues in adult education / [edited by] Sharan B. Merriam, André P. Grace.—1st ed.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-87356-4 (pbk.)
1. Adult education—United States. I. Merriam, Sharan B. II. Grace, André P., 1954– III. Jossey-Bass Inc.
LC5251.J775 2011
374′.973—dc22
2010051344
Sources
From Lindeman, E. C. (1961/1926). The Meaning of Adult Education. Montreal: Harvest House. pp. 3–9. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
From Locke, A. L. (1933). The American Negro. American Library Association. Used with permission from the American Library Association.
Excerpted from Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury. © 1970, 2000. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, the Continuum International Publishing Group.
Grace, A. P. (1999). Building a knowledge base in U.S. academic adult education (1945–1970). Studies in the Education of Adults, 31(2), 220–236. Used by permission of the NIACE.
Glowacki-Dudka, M., & Helvie-Mason, L. B. (2004). Adult education at the margins: A literature review. In M. Wise & M. Glowacki-Dudka (Eds.), Embracing and enhancing the margins of adult education (pp. 7–16). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 104. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Johnson-Bailey, J. (2006). African Americans in adult education: The Harlem Renaissance revisited. Adult Education Quarterly, 56(2), 102–118. Copyright © 2006 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Gordon, W., & Sork, T. J. (2001). Ethical issues and codes of ethics: Views of adult education practitioners in Canada and the United States. Adult Education Quarterly, 51(3), 202–218. Copyright © 2001 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Jarvis, P. (2008). Rediscovering adult education in a world of lifelong learning. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 1(1). Used by permission.
Griffin, C. (2006). Research and policy in lifelong learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(6), 561–574. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.informaworld.com).
Walters, S. Social movements, class, and adult education. In T. Nesbit (Ed.), Class concerns: Adult education and social class. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 106. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Choules, K. (2007). Social change education: Context matters. Adult Education Quarterly, 57(2), 159–176. Copyright © 2007 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Fiallos, C. A. (2006). Adult education and the empowerment of the individual in a global society. In S. B. Merriam, B. C. Courtenay, & R. M. Cervero (Eds.), Global issues and adult education: Perspectives from Latin America, Southern Africa, and the United States (pp. 15–29). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gouthro, P. A. (2007). Active and inclusive citizenship for women: Democratic considerations for fostering lifelong education. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26(2), 143–154, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.informaworld.com).
Nesbit, T. (2005). Social class and adult education. In T. Nesbit (Ed.), Class concerns: Adult education and social class (pp. 5–14). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 106. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
van der Veen, R., & Preece, J. (2005). Poverty reduction and adult education: Beyond basic education. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 24(5), 381–391. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.informaworld.com).
Daley, B. J. (2006). Aligning health promotion and adult education for healthier communities. In S. B. Merriam, B. C. Courtenay, & R. M. Cervero (Eds.), Global issues and adult education: Perspectives from Latin America, Southern Africa, and the United States (pp. 231–242). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bierema, L. L. (2009). Critiquing HRD's dominant masculine rationality and evaluating its impact. Human Resource Development Review, 8(1), 68–96. Copyright © 2009 Sage Publications. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Owenby, P. H. (2002). Organizational learning communities and the dark side of the learning organization. In D. S. Stein & S. Imel (Eds.), Adult learning in community (pp. 51–60). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 95. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Excerpted from Cervero, R. M., & Wilson, A. L. (2006). Working the planning table: Negotiating democratically for adult, continuing, and workplace education (pp. 80–102). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Newman, M. (1994). Defining the enemy. Sidney: Stewart Victor. Republished online 2007 at www.michaelnewman.info, Chapter 28, Reflection Disempowered. Used by permission of the author.
Lyrics for “Silver Dagger” copyright Chandon Music, used by permission.
Excerpt from Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman used by permission of Nick Hern Books, www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Lyrics for “Joe Hill,” music by Earl Robinson, words by Alfred Hayes, copyright © 1938 (renewed) by Music Sales (ASCAP) and MCA Music Publishing for the United States. International copyright secured. All rights secured. Used by permission. Words and music by Earl Robinson and Alfred Hayes, Copyright © 1938, 1942 Universal Music Corp. Copyright renewed and assigned to Universial Music Corp. and Music Sales Corporation. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
Cranton, P. (2006). A theory in progress. In Understanding and promoting transformative learning: A guide for educators of adults (pp. 39–56). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Niewolny, K. L., & Wilson, A. L. (2009). “Social learning” for/in adult education? A discursive review of what it means for learning to be “social.” In R. L. Lawrence (Ed.), Proceedings of the 50th Annual Adult Education Research Conference. Chicago: National-Louis University. Used by permission of the authors.
Dirkx, J. M. (2008). The meaning and role of emotions in adult learning. In J. Dirkx (Ed.), Adult learning and the emotional self (pp. 7–18). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 120. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Guy, T. C. (2006). Adult education and the mass media in the age of globalization. In S. B. Merriam, B. C. Courtenay, & R. M. Cervero (Eds.), Global issues and adult education: Perspectives from Latin America, Southern Africa, and the United States (pp. 64–77). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Merriam, S. B., & Kim, Y. S. (2008). Non-western perspectives on learning and knowing. In S. B. Merriam (Ed.), Third update on adult learning theory (pp. 71–81). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 119. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Chapman, V. (2005). Attending to the theoretical landscape in adult education. Adult Education Quarterly, 55(4), 308–312. Copyright © 2005 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Sandlin, J. A. (2007). Popular culture, cultural resistance, and anticonsumption activism: An exploration of culture jamming as critical adult education. In E. J. Tisdell & P. M. Thompson (Eds.), Popular culture and entertainment media in adult education (pp. 73–82). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 115. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kilgore, D. (2004). Toward a postmodern pedagogy. In R. St. Clair & J. Sandlin (Eds.), Promoting critical practice in adult education (pp. 45–53). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 102. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hill, R. J. (2004). Activism as practice: Some queer considerations. In R. St. Clair & J. Sandlin (Eds.), Promoting critical practice in adult education (pp. 85–94). New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 102. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Grace, A. P., & Wells, K. (2007). Using Freirean pedagogy of just ire to inform critical social learning in arts-informed community education for sexual minorities. Adult Education Quarterly, 57(2), 95–114. Copyright © 2007 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.
Preface
There's something of a contradiction when speaking of the field of adult education. On the one hand, adult education programs are everywhere—in the workplace, hospitals, libraries, communities, colleges and universities, and online. On the other hand, adult education as a professional field of practice is nearly invisible, with many educators of adults unaware that they are part of a larger enterprise. This paradox also encompasses adult learners themselves. While the most recent U.S. survey revealed that 44% of adults participated part-time in formal adult education activities and 70% were learning informally (NCES, 2007), most adults don't consider themselves learners unless they are “taking a class.”
These contradictions are not surprising given that the field of adult education has never been easily captured within one definition, one history, or even one theory. Whether we are talking about diverse adult populations, practices, philosophical perspectives, program planning models, or theories about how adults learn, there has always been a colorful collage of various and sometimes competing components comprising adult education as a field of practice. Professional adult educators do believe, however, that there is some common ground that links us together as a field. Learning, for example, is something human beings do throughout their lives; it is indeed lifelong and lifewide. Further, adult education can be a positive force in our lives and can contribute to individual betterment and a more just and equitable society for all.
As with professionals in other fields of practice, adult educators learn to become educators through experience and study. For example, a nursing supervisor in a hospital might be asked to develop a program to train others in the use of new medication; a community resident might organize other residents to help educate the community about safety concerns; an experienced worker might be tapped for some on-the-job mentoring of a new employee; or a carpenter might teach a woodworking class at the local community school. These are all examples of adult education in practice in real-life situations.
While many do learn to be adult educators through experience, others combine experience with formal study, sometimes on their own, but more likely as students in master's and doctoral programs. It is in these programs that learners are systematically exposed to the literature in the field. And as with the field itself, there is a wide diversity of resources with which to study the field. There are numerous research and practice-oriented journals; magazines and newsletters; online resources; a Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education that is published every ten years; a monograph series titled New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education; and dozens of textbooks on various aspects of the field including program planning, adult learning, theory building, philosophy, and history. There is, however, no single volume that functions as a reader on contemporary issues and trends in this very dynamic field of practice.
The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education is designed to be both a stand-alone reader for those self-directed adult educators who want to sample some of the thinking about adult education, and a reader that surveys an array of historical and contemporary issues important to study and critique in undergraduate or graduate courses in adult education. The Jossey-Bass Reader is particularly appropriate for introductory, overview, or social context courses in graduate programs of adult education. Such introductory courses not only provide the base for other courses in the curriculum, but they also typically explore issues and trends in the field.
Overview of the Contents
Two selection processes took place to develop The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education. First, a panel of North American adult educators was invited to brainstorm a list of current issues and trends in the field. These lists varied from four and five broad issues to more than twenty more specific possibilities. A close study of these lists revealed five themes in common, and these structure the book. The next step was to decide on selections for each theme. The two editors independently suggested possibilities for each theme; these lists were combined, and both editors read all the nominated pieces. Finally, the editors decided on selections to be included; this list had to be further adjusted to stay within space allocations. There are a total of 30 selections distributed across five topics, each topic with between five and seven selections.
Part One, “Defining a Field of Practice: The Foundations of Adult Education,” contains selections related to social justice, ethics, and the historical evolution of the field. Three pieces are by historical “giants” in the field— Eduard C. Lindeman, Alain Locke, and Paulo Freire. Four pieces by contemporary scholars reflect upon the marginal place of the field in universities and society, African American adult education during the Harlem Renaissance, the evolution of the knowledge base, and ethics in the field.
Part Two is titled “Positioning Adult Education in a Global Context.” While globalization, or the movement of goods, services, people, and ideas across national boundaries, is not new, the speed with which this movement is occurring is unprecedented. Part Two contains readings that consider the position of adult education in today's world from various perspectives including lifelong learning, policy, women's roles, social movements, and individual empowerment.
Part Three, “Adult Education's Constituencies and Program Areas: Competing Interests?”, presents a sampling of the diversity of constituencies and program areas. As there were dozens of possibilities for this section, we tried to select pieces that went beyond description; rather, the selections we chose are thought-provoking, raising questions about an area of practice that we might not have considered before. There are readings on social class and adult education, poverty and its link to adult basic education, the need to bring health promotion and health education together, a feminist critique of human resource development, the “dark side” of the learning organization, and finally, program planning considered from the perspective of negotiating power and interests.
Part Four, “The Changing Landscape of Adult Learning,” addresses the heart of all adult education practice. Adult learning is the key to understanding how areas as diverse as adult literacy programs, continuing professional education, workplace learning, and a nature hike in a national park could all come under the umbrella of adult education. As with other parts in this reader, our selections are intended to offer a sample of ways to look at and think about adult learning. There are readings on the changing meaning of reflection, transformative learning, and social learning. The final three selections consider the role of emotions in learning, how mass media is a global system of informal adult learning, and what non-Western perspectives have to tell us about learning and knowing.
Part Five is a selection of readings that we've aptly titled “New Discourses Shaping Contemporary Adult Education.” Adult education has always been a dynamic and changing field of study and practice, one informed by various disciplines and philosophical schools of thought. In Part Five we offer a sampling of new thinking about our field. The first piece sets the stage by considering the role of theory in adult education. The other four selections explore anticonsumption activism, what it means to engage in a postmodern pedagogy, queer pedagogy, and critical social learning.
Finally, in our prefaces to each of the five parts, we introduce each of the selections in more detail so that readers will have an idea of what to expect as they engage in the readings. At the end of each preface, we have included several reflection and discussion questions to further engage readers in issues germane to adult education today.
Acknowledgments
This reader is the brainchild of David Brightman, our editor at Jossey-Bass, who had a vision of what this book might be. David and editorial coordinator Aneesa Davenport have been enormously supportive in helping us bring this book to fruition. We thank you for your assistance throughout the project. We also want to thank the panel of North American adult educators who helped us brainstorm themes and issues—Ralph Brockett, Tal Guy, Cathy Hansman, and Vanessa Sheared. Finally, we are indebted to our colleagues in adult education from across the globe who authored the selections we chose for this reader. Without your work, this book would not exist, nor would our field be such an exciting and dynamic place to be!
Sharan B. Merriam
André P. Grace
January, 2011
Reference
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
(2007). Adult education participation in 2004-2005. Retrieved August 2010, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/adulted/
The Editors
Sharan B. Merriam is professor emeritus of adult education and qualitative research at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, U.S. Merriam's research and writing activities have focused on adult and lifelong learning and qualitative research methods. For five years she was coeditor of Adult Education Quarterly, the major research and theory journal in adult education. She has published 26 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. She is a four-time winner of the prestigious Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education for books published in 1982, 1997, 1999, and 2007. Her most recent books are Learning in Adulthood (2007), Non-Western Perspectives on Learning and Knowing (2007), and Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (2009). In 1998 she was a Fulbright scholar to Malaysia, and in 2006 she was a distinguished visiting scholar at Soongsil University in South Korea. From 2009 to 2010 she was a senior research fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences, University Putra Malaysia.
André P. Grace is a professor in educational policy studies and director of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is a past president of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, and he is also a past chair of the Steering Committee for the Adult Education Research Conference in the U.S. His work in educational policy studies primarily focuses on comparative studies of policies, pedagogies, and practices shaping lifelong learning as critical action, especially in the contexts of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Within this research he includes a major focus on sexual minorities and their issues and concerns regarding social inclusion, cohesion, and justice in education and culture. He and Tonette S. Rocco, coeditors of the Jossey-Bass book Challenging the Professionalization of Adult Education: John Ohliger and Contradictions in Modern Practice, won the 2009 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature in the Field of Continuing Higher Education from the University Continuing Education Association in the U.S. At the 2010 Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults, University of Warwick, UK, he won the Ian Martin Award for Social Justice for his paper entitled Space Matters: Lifelong Learning, Sexual Minorities, and Realities of Adult Education as Social Education.
About the Contributors
Laura L. Bierema is professor of adult education and human resource and organizational development at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Ronald M. Cervero is professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy, associate dean for Outreach and Engagement in the College of Education, and codirector of the Institute for Evidence-Based Health Professions Education at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Valerie-Lee Chapman was assistant professor in the Department of Adult and Community College Education at North Carolina State University.
Kathryn Choules is social justice consultant for the Edmund Rice Institute for Social Justice in Fremantle, Australia.
Patricia Cranton is visiting professor of adult education at Penn State University at Harrisburg and adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Barbara J. Daley is professor and department chair of the Department of Administrative Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
John M. Dirkx is professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education at Michigan State University and editor of the Journal of Transformative Education.
Cecilia Amaluisa Fiallos is a specialist in adult education and former National Director of Lifelong Popular Education at the Ministry of Education, Ecuador.
Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.
Michelle Glowacki-Dudka is assistant professor of adult, higher, and community education at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
Wanda Gordon is former program head of health sciences at University of the Fraser Valley, Chilliwack, British Columbia.
Patricia A. Gouthro is a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Colin Griffin is Honorary Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey, where he previously worked in the School of Educational Studies.
Talmadge C. Guy is associate professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Lora B. Helvie-Mason is assistant professor of communication studies at Southern University at New Orleans.
Robert J. Hill is associate professor of adult education at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Peter Jarvis is professor of continuing education at the University of Surrey.
Juanita Johnson-Bailey is professor of adult education and women's studies at the University of Georgia, Athens.
Deborah Kilgore is a research scientist in the Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching at the University of Washington.
Young Sek Kim is a lecturer at Dong-Eui University, Busan, South Korea.
Eduard C. Lindeman was an American educator, serving nearly all his years as a professor at the New York School of Social Work, later part of Columbia University.
Alain Locke was an American writer, philosopher, educator, patron of the arts, and the chair of the department of philosophy at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for most of his career.
Kim L. Niewolny is assistant professor of adult and community education in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Michael Newman is an educator, author, and consultant in the field of adult education.
Tom Nesbit is associate dean of continuing education at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Phillip H. Owenby is an educator and consultant in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Julia Preece is professor of adult and continuing education and honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow.
Jennifer A. Sandlin is associate professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, Tempe.
Thomas J. Sork is a professor of adult education and associate dean of External Programs and Learning Technologies in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.
Ruud van der Veen is adjunct professor of adult learning and leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Shirley Walters is professor of adult and continuing education and director of the Division for Lifelong Learning at the University of Western Cape, South Africa.
Kristopher Wells is a researcher at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, University of Alberta.
Arthur L. Wilson is professor of adult education and chair of the Department of Education at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Part One
Defining a Field of Practice: The Foundations of Adult Education
Giroux (1996) asserts, “History is not an artifact” (p. 51). From this perspective, the history of adult education is alive, bringing issues of who is represented and who works for change to bear on theorizing, research, and practice. In our field of study and practice, a turn to history enables us to explore people, politics, and ideas that have defined modern practice. It becomes a way to reflect on what has been perceived as a divide exacerbating fragmentation of our field. On one side is adult education's tradition as social education in the spirit of initiatives like the Highlander Folk School and the Antigonish Movement. These social-learning endeavors variously focused on education for citizenship, community building, recovering from economic and other hardships, and fighting oppression in the name of social justice. On the other side is the field's pragmatic tendency to respond to outside pressures to become more instrumental and vocational in nature. However, we view engaging field history as more than investigating this divide: It provides us opportunities to explore the degree to which adult education can be spacious and filled with possibility as we set goals to meet the instrumental, social, and cultural needs of learners. As well, a turn to history also enables us to think about what adult education might look like in the future:
At issue here is a vision of the future in which history is not accepted simply as a set of prescriptions unproblematically inherited from the past. History can be named and remade by those who refuse to stand by passively in the face of human suffering and oppression. (Giroux & McLaren, 1988, p. 176)
This vision, aimed at extending human possibilities, situates foundational studies as dynamic, open, unsettled, subject to revision, and worth struggling over.
Such a view of history is reflected in the selections in this section that includes pieces from the original writings of three field icons: Eduard Lindeman, Alain Locke, and Paulo Freire. In Chapter 1, Lindeman, framing education as life, positions the field as a potentially liberating space for adult learners as he engages what adult education means. He provocatively suggests that adult education begins where vocational education ends. His work will appeal to reflective practitioners concerned with holistic forms of learning and education that address current economic, social, and cultural turmoil. Throughout his influential book The Meaning of Adult Education, Lindeman (-NIL-) cast true adult education as social education that helps learners thrive as citizens living in community with others. From this perspective, Chapter 1 considers motivations, concepts, and methods that shape the learning process as it focuses on situations that require learners to draw on their experiences as they participate in problem solving.
In Chapter 2, Locke, a social and cultural educator who became the first Black president of the American Association for Adult Education from 1945 to 1946 (Stubblefield & Keane, 1994), contests the historical notion of the Black American as a “problem” and speaks to the transformation of modern Blacks in early 20th century U.S. culture through migration augmenting urbanization and the intensification of race consciousness and solidarity. Locke's work will speak to readers interested in the social history of recovery of Black morale through political participation aimed at attaining civil rights. Importantly for those interested in revising the place of Black citizens in U.S. social history, his work explores the emergence of the Black American amid deterrents to this recovery including racial tensions, injustices, and the rapid spread of policies of segregation.
In another classical contribution to our field of study, Freire in Chapter 3 presents his “banking” concept of education as a springboard to think about the roles and interactions of educators and learners in adult education, where the key goal of social education is justice for all that starts from building critical consciousness of worldly realities and systems. Freire's anti-oppression work has been a major influence on critical pedagogy and critical adult education in North America. What reflective practitioners can gain from this piece is a set of themes to guide the development of a democratic social practice of adult education. These themes include education as the practice of freedom, education as transformation through praxis, and education as a proactive space for problem solving. These themes are central to Freire's goal for adult education: to help educators and learners build partnerships through critically reflective dialogue and action to create a better world.
In Chapter 4, Grace explores the emergence of U.S. academic adult education during the quarter century following World War II when knowledge production was deeply influenced by an array of economic and cultural transitions. This article is informative to those exploring how adult education has to readjust to cope with the fallout from the ongoing economic crisis that hit with full force in the fall of 2008. While the present is different, the article and the current crisis both raise the same basic question for adult educators: What knowledge has most worth? Grace considers how adult educators answered this question pragmatically after World War II so they might increase the presence and value of adult education in mainstream education and culture. This article, exploring such constructs as liberal adult education, provides food for thought for those concerned with the decline of social education and its emphases on democracy, freedom, and social justice in a more instrumentalized lifelong learning world.
In a social historical analysis in Chapter 5, Glowacki-Dudka and Helvie-Mason locate adult education at the margins of the university and society. Their work speaks to readers concerned with assaults on academic adult education. Glowacki-Dudka and Helvie-Mason reflect on purposes and goals of adult education tied to the dichotomy of adult education as social education and as a professionalized practice. For readers concerned that adult education is a weather vane responding to social, cultural, and economic change forces, their analysis leads to a hopeful conclusion: While adult education is a marginalized enterprise, it can be energized by the field's natural tendencies toward collectivity, flexibility, and diversity.
Johnson-Bailey's Chapter 6 parallels themes in Locke's analysis. She explores the steady and committed participation of African Americans in adult education, surveying available research on the sociopolitical and cultural aspects of this educational movement. In particular, she focuses on African-American involvement in the Harlem Renaissance (1920–1945). Themes emerging from her study include education for assimilation (linked to addressing the Black “problem”); education for cultural survival (associated with Black efforts to build self-esteem and cultural importance in the context of nation); and education for resistance (focused on minority rights and addressing injustices). For educators and learners who may think adult education is neutral, Johnson-Bailey's article challenges them to interrogate the field's political nature and the ways that modern practice has been exclusionary.
Any reflection on the foundations of adult education ought to include a focus on ethical issues and practices. In Chapter 7, Gordon and Sork consider arguments for and against the development of codes of ethics across professional practices. They compare views of Canadian and U.S. adult educational practitioners regarding the scope and functions of codes of ethics. They survey practitioner encounters with ethical issues and dilemmas, listing frequently cited issues like confidentiality and learner-adult educator relationships. Gordon and Sork's research will have import for reflective practitioners grappling with codes of ethics, attitudes toward them, and their implications for the field of study and practice.
As the selections in this section demonstrate, traditional adult education has been marked by a commitment to education for social purposes. The social history of the field reminds us of a long-standing critical concern with issues of democracy, freedom, social justice, and ethics. Sometimes these issues have been sidelined in instrumental moves to professionalize modern practice. We hope that readers consider the selections in this section to be an appetizer for further engagement with the foundations of adult education.
For Reflection and Discussion
1. Inspired by the theme living and learning for a viable future: the power of adult learning, the UNESCO-sponsored Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI) was held in Bélem do Pará, Brazil, December 1–4, 2009. CONFINTEA VI noted that a significant portion of adult learning and education is deeply rooted in everyday life, local contexts, and grassroots initiatives focused on addressing social, cultural, and environmental challenges (UIL, 2010). Provide some examples of such contemporary adult education from your own knowledge and experience. How does adult education today compare to ways it was constructed in the historical articles in this section?
2. While CONFINTEA VI positioned diversity as a necessity in adult learning and education, does it exacerbate field fragmentation? Are there ways to value diversity and still describe the field as strong, coherent, and organized?
3. How might we address the long-standing divide positioning adult education for social and cultural purposes against adult education as a professionalized practice tied to economic interests? Do social and economic interests have to be in opposition?
4. How might learning from the history of education for Black adults in the United States inform and revitalize more dynamic and inclusive contemporary forms of adult education focused on social justice?
5. How important is it for the field of adult education to have a code of ethics? With the enormous diversity of programs and constituencies that exist, is it even possible or realistic to have a code of ethics?
References
Giroux, H. A. (1996). Is there a place for cultural studies in colleges of education? In H. A. Giroux, C. Lankshear, P. McLaren, & M. Peters (Eds.), Counternarratives: Cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces (pp. 41–58). New York: Routledge.
Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1988). Teacher education and the politics of democratic reform. In H. A. Giroux (Ed.), Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning (pp. 158–176). New York: Bergin & Garvey.
Lindeman, E. C. (1926/1961). The meaning of adult education. Montreal: Harvest House.
Stubblefield, H. W., & Keane, P. (1994). Adult education in the American experience. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL). (2010). CONFINTEA VI–Sixth international conference on adult education: Final report. Hamburg, Germany: Author.
Chapter 1
For Those Who Need to Be Learners
Eduard C. Lindeman
“We need, then, to reintegrate, to synthesize, to bind up together the different forces and influences in our national life. We need a greater courage: seriousness, a greater courage in self-knowledge, a greater unity, and changes in the machinery of our education which leave our religious and political life in their existing incoherence, or even add to it, will not serve our purpose.”
—A. E. ZlMMERN
“The principle we wish to establish is that the important thing in this connection is an increased demand on the part of all kinds of people for educational facilities, which may roughly be termed non-vocational, since they are concerned really with restoring balance to a man who has, of necessity, developed to a great extent one or other of his characteristics for the purposes of his livelihood or for the satisfaction of his reasonable desires.”
—ALBERT MANSBRIDGE
Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time. Education within the vicious circle becomes not a joyous enterprise but rather something to be endured because it leads to a satisfying end. But there can be no genuine joy in the end if means are irritating, painful. Generally therefore those who have “completed” a standardized regimen of education promptly turn their faces in the opposite direction. Humor, but more of pathos lurks in the caricature of the college graduate standing in cap and gown, diploma in hand shouting: “Educated, b'gosh!” Henceforth, while devoting himself to life he will think of education as a necessary annoyance for succeeding youths. For him, this life for which he has suffered the affliction of learning will come to be a series of dull, uninteresting, degrading capitulations to the stereotyped pattern of his “set.” Within a single decade he will be out of touch with the world of intelligence, or what is worse, he will still be using the intellectual coins of his college days; he will find difficulty in reading serious books; he will have become inured to the jargon of his particular profession and will affect derision for all “highbrows”; he will, in short, have become a typical adult who holds the bag of education—the game of learning having long since slipped by him.
Obviously, extension of the quantity of educational facilities cannot break the circle. Once the belief was current that if only education were free to all, intelligence would become the proper tool for managing the affairs of the world. We have gone even further and have made certain levels of education compulsory. But the result has been disappointing; we have succeeded merely in formalizing, mechanizing, educational processes. The spirit and meaning of education cannot be enhanced by addition, by the easy method of giving the same dose to more individuals. If learning is to be revivified, quickened so as to become once more an adventure, we shall have need of new concepts, new motives, new methods; we shall need to experiment with the qualitative aspects of education.
A fresh hope is astir. From many quarters comes the call to a new kind of education with its initial assumption affirming that education is life—not a mere preparation for an unknown kind of future living. Consequently all static concepts of education which relegate the learning process to the period of youth are abandoned. The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings. This new venture is called adult education—not because it is confined to adults but because adulthood, maturity, defines its limits. The concept is inclusive. The fact that manual workers of Great Britain and farmers of Denmark have conducted the initial experiments which now inspire us does not imply that adult education is designed solely for these classes. No one, probably, needs adult education so much as the college graduate for it is he who makes the most doubtful assumptions concerning the function of learning.
Secondly, education conceived as a process coterminous with life revolves about non-vocational ideals. In this world of specialists everyone will of necessity learn to do his work, and if education of any variety can assist in this and in the further end of helping the worker to see the meaning of his labor, it will be education of high order. But adult education more accurately defined begins where vocational education leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning into the whole of life. Workers, those who perform essential services, will naturally discover more values in continuing education than will those for whom all knowledge is merely decorative or conversational. The possibilities of enriching the activities of labor itself grow less for all workers who manipulate automatic machines. If the good life, the life interfused with meaning and with joy, is to come to these, opportunities for expressing more of the total personality than is called forth by machines will be needed. Their lives will be quickened into creative activities in proportion as they learn to make fruitful use of leisure.
Thirdly, the approach to adult education will be via the route of situations, not subjects. Our academic system has grown in reverse order: subjects and teachers constitute the starting-point; students are secondary. In conventional education the student is required to adjust himself to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the student's needs and interests. Every adult person finds himself in specific situations with respect to his work, his recreation, his family-life, his community-life, et cetera—situations which call for adjustments. Adult education begins at this point. Subject-matter is brought into the situation, is put to work, when needed. Texts and teachers play a new and secondary role in this type of education; they must give way to the primary importance of the learner. (Indeed, as we shall see later, the teacher of adults becomes also a learner.) The situation-approach to education means that the learning process is at the outset given a setting of reality. Intelligence performs its function in relation to actualities, not abstractions.
In the fourth place, the resource of highest value in adult education is the learner's experience. If education is life, then life is also education. Too much of learning consists of vicarious substitution of someone else's experience and knowledge. Psychology is teaching us, however, that we learn what we do, and that therefore all genuine education will keep doing and thinking together. Life becomes rational, meaningful, as we learn to be intelligent about the things we do and the things that happen to us. If we lived sensibly, we should all discover that the attractions of experience increase as we grow older. Correspondingly, we should find cumulative joys in searching out the reasonable meaning of the events in which we play parts. In teaching children it may be necessary to anticipate objective experience by uses of imagination but adult experience is already there waiting to be appropriated. Experience is the adult learner's living textbook.
Authoritative teaching, examinations which preclude original thinking, rigid pedagogical formula—all of these have no place in adult education. “Friends educating each other,” says Yeaxlee, and perhaps Walt Whitman saw accurately with his fervent democratic vision what the new educational experiment implied when he wrote: “Learn from the simple—teach the wise.” Small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their experience before resorting to texts and secondary facts; who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also searchers after wisdom and not oracles: this constitutes the setting for adult education, the modern quest for life's meaning.
But where does one search for life's meaning? If adult education is not to fall into the pitfalls which have vulgarized public education, caution must be exercised in striving for answers to this query. For example, once the assumption is made that human nature is uniform, common and static—that all human beings will find meaning in identical goals, ends or aims—the standardizing process begins: teachers are trained according to orthodox and regulated methods; they teach prescribed subjects to large classes of children who must all pass the same examination; in short, if we accept the standard of uniformity, it follows that we expect, e.g., mathematics, to mean as much to one student as to another. Teaching methods which proceed from this assumption must necessarily become autocratic; if we assume that all values and meanings apply equally to all persons, we may then justify ourselves in using a forcing-method of teaching. On the other hand, if we take for granted that human nature is varied, changing and fluid, we will know that life's meanings are conditioned by the individual. We will then entertain a new respect for personality.
Since the individual personality is not before us we are driven to generalization. In what areas do most people appear to find life's meaning? We have only one pragmatic guide: meaning must reside in the things for which people strive, the goals which they set for themselves, their wants, needs, desires and wishes. Even here our criterion is applicable only to those whose lives are already dedicated to aspirations and ambitions which belong to the higher levels of human achievement. The adult able to break the habits of slovenly mentality and willing to devote himself seriously to study when study no longer holds forth the lure of pecuniary gain is, one must admit, a personality in whom many negative aims and desires have already been eliminated. Under examination, and viewed from the standpoint of adult education, such personalities seem to want among other things, intelligence, power, self-expression, freedom, creativity, appreciation, enjoyment, fellowship. Or, stated in terms of the Greek ideal, they are searchers after the good life. They want to count for something; they want their experiences to be vivid and meaningful; they want their talents to be utilized; they want to know beauty and joy; and they want all of these realizations of their total personalities to be shared in communities of fellowship. Briefly they want to improve themselves; this is their realistic and primary aim. But they want also to change the social order so that vital personalities will be creating a new environment in which their aspirations may be properly expressed.
Chapter 2
The Negro in America
Alain Locke
Introduction
One-tenth of the population of “these United States” is black, brown or yellow, of Negro descent and remotely of African derivation, and, according to the relative rates of population growth, this racial ratio promises to remain nearly constant indefinitely. To visualize this ratio, it has been aptly suggested that we think of the Negro as “America's tenth man.” But the Negro's true significance only becomes evident when to this numerical importance we add that which he has always had as a national issue and which he still has as a present-day minority problem. As the “bone of contention” in the slavery controversy, the “ward of democracy” throughout the Reconstruction, and the “problem” of interracial adjustment in the contemporary social order, the Negro has been by some irony of fate throughout American history the human crux of our practical problems of political and social democracy.
The importance of being a problem, however, is a handicapping, not a stimulating, importance, and the black minority would gladly be relieved of it. Yet not until social justice and consistent democracy are worked out in America will the Negro as America's most chronic social problem cease to have an unnatural and disproportionate prominence. This summary and outline reading course are designed to help the reader interested in the problem of the Negro minority achieve historical perspective, social insight and progressive understanding with respect to it, and, equally important, to lead him to some acquaintance with the human elements and achievements of the people behind the problem.
If ever the story of the American Negro can be divorced from the controversial plane of the race problem—and some day it will—the story will then be told and appreciated as one of the impressive epics of human history. For, in the final analysis, it is a great folk-epic. In order that the reader may have panoramic perspective, let us review the main stages of this racial epic in its tragic, but momentous and inspiring three-hundred-year course through the decades of American history. We review it not solely to gratify historical curiosity or to evoke sentimental interest, but because the one safe intellectual approach to a social problem is through a sound historical perspective. Since this, too, is a most effective cure for prejudice and social misunderstanding, the wide-scale cultivation of such an approach seems obviously one of the outstanding practical hopes of the Negro and one of the great progressive needs of democracy.
To comprehend the Negro in America one must trace his path for seven or eight human generations through a long inferno of slavery and a yet unfinished social purgatory of testing struggle and development. The black man's Odyssey began with the terrific toll of a wholesale transplanting from Africa, rapidly succeeded by burdensome, yet transforming, tasks. The Negro endured titanic toil, the complete transformation of his ways of life, and the stress of an unplanned, begrudged, but quite redeeming, assimilation of the white man's civilization and religion. Patience, adaptability, loyalty and smiling humility gave him the subtle victory of survival against great odds; and the first act of slavery climaxed with the welding of patriarchal ties between master and slave.
But the tragic second act was already pushing the first off the historical scene. Slavery deepens and spreads; the black victim must descend to its abysses in the Lower South, nurturing almost hopelessly, but for religion, the underground hope of freedom. And then, as the vexing question of human property begins to divide the political and legal councils of the nation, the fugitive slave sets fire to the tinder of abolitionism and moral reaction, and suddenly out of the first great crisis comes the Civil War and slave emancipation.
But after the first blind leap of the black masses into the hopeful chaos and opportunities of freedom, Negro life was destined to drag through the Reconstruction and its heavy series of ordeals. First there was the difficult lesson of self-maintenance, clumsily but ploddingly learned; then the still heavier task of education, feverishly and unevenly achieved; then confusion and setback, patiently endured, under the storm of Reconstruction reaction and mob violence; then a slow, dogged retreat from serfdom and partial defeat on the tenant farms to the labor marts of the towns and cities; more patient endurance of the loss of the newly won franchise and the civil rights of full citizenship; and eventually a new mass concentration and survival in the city's black ghettos, under steady odds of economic discrimination and segregation.
Finally, with another war, another crisis and its new opportunities came. This time it was the surge forward into the World War's rapid expansion of life and labor, and a consequent enlargement of life, economic and cultural, in the new centers. But the anticipated rewards of the Negro's patriotic response to the idealism of the “War to Save Democracy” were not measurably realized and, spurred by the bitter disillusionments of post-war indifference, there came that desperate intensification of the Negro's race consciousness and attempt at the recovery of group morale through a racialist program of self-help and self-determination which has been the outstanding development in Negro life during this generation. With this phase came the beginnings of independent economic enterprise, a growing disposition for political action and the recovery of civil rights and political participation; and finally on the horizon a mounting wave of new social and economic realism. It is with this new temper and attitude that the Negro confronts the present crisis, with its crossroads dilemma of either slow progress by patient advance and interracial cooperation or of problematic but tempting quick progress through joining issues with the forces of radical proletarian reform. This is the point at which we contemporary spectators stand, survey and wonder. Certainly the past of the Negro in America has been an epical adventure, pursued against great odds and opposition, but favored, almost providentially at critical times, by saving alliances with the forces of moral and social liberalism, all combining to achieve a gradually ascending scale of achievement and progress.
On the other side, the story is equally dramatic if read in forward-looking perspective. It is the long Odyssey of the white mind, wandering through the mazes of self-made dilemmas, in search of a way out into the consistent practice of democracy.
Out of the Civil War, inevitable consequence of the deepening hold of slavery, emancipation came as a strategic blow at the seceded South; half a national economy had to be overturned and the freed Negro masses became the helpless, burdensome wards of the Federal government. Meshed in with the aftermath of war and slavery came then a conflicting flow and ebb of forces, now favorable, now unfavorable, to the interests of the Negro.
In 1895, however, a leader in black reconstruction caught the approval of the South and the favor of Northern captains of industry by an appeal for advancing the South through improving the industrial and economic condition of the Negro. There followed a great revival of philanthropic interest and aid in the education of the Negro; but along with it a very prevalent and possibly dangerous acceptance of Booker Washington's strategic compromise of bi-racialism: “In all things vital and economic, we can be one as the hand, while in things social we can be separate as the fingers.” There followed a decade and more of common, constructive, enthusiastic effort to truss up the sagging economy of the rural Southern Negro, but the odds of a bad system of land tenant farming, an unscientific type of agriculture, continued exploitation and the inroads of the growing industrialization of the South all combined to cause a steady trek of the Negro population from the land toward the cities. This caused or coincided with another reaction of Southern opinion and a flare of race riots and increased racial tension, bridged only at a desperate moment in 1919 by the adoption of the new machinery of local interracial commissions to allay popular antagonism and bring the better elements of both races together in common counsel and constructive community effort.
To this movement we owe the emergence of the new liberal South. But the large-scale migration of Negroes from the South to Northern centers shortly afterward led to increased friction in these communities, and merely shifted the areas and issues of racial tension. In fact, a problem conventionally regarded as sectional suddenly and unmistakably became national, and a new phase of the race problem began. We still confront a seriously divided white mind, no longer split sectionally, but divided now into nation-wide liberal and reactionary camps. A liberal element in the South, small but influential, has recanted the traditional antagonisms and code of the old régime, and in liberal circles, North and South, an enlightened minority is showing an increased willingness to welcome Negro advance, to join cooperatively with Negro leadership in programs of racial and community improvement, and to extend recognition and reciprocity to the advance-guard elements of Negro life. Over against this, however, is a white mass mind still reactionary and strongly racial; this time largely over labor rivalry and for economic reasons. In fact, segregation policies and labor discrimination have now become the crucial practical issues in the contemporary racial situation. And although this reactionary body of opinion is not as militant as the older traditional opposition, its wide distribution, North and South, is a threatening aspect in the present and near future.
These are but highlights in the history of the shifting attitudes of the white majority mind, as it has grappled and fumbled, relaxed and grown tense again, in reaction to the steadily changing situations of the steadily advancing black minority.
