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Walters, Shirley (Ed.). (1997).
Globalization, Adult Education and Training: Impacts and Issues.
London: Zed Books
278 pages
$59.95 ISBN 1-85649-511-6 (Cloth)
$25.00 ISBN 1 85649 512 4 (Paper)
Reviewed by Emily R. Dexter
Harvard Graduate School of
Education
May 9, 1999
Globalization, Adult Education and Training: Impacts and
Issues, edited by Shirley Walters, is a volume of 25
articles, most of which originated in papers presented at an
international conference on adult education held in Cape Town,
South Africa, in 1995. It is a mixture of theoretical
discussions about the globalizing economy, civil society, adult
education, and learning; and practical descriptions, from a
dozen international sites, of adult education and training
programs, policies, and classes. The dominant argument of the
book is that the field of adult education and training should
not primarily serve industry needs for skilled workers but
instead should support the development of democratic civil
societies, serve workers in their quest for autonomy and
workplace control, and be a site of resistance to exploitation
and oppression. Its authors are adult educators, academics,
activists, and policy-makers based in 11 different countries—
Australia, Britain, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Kenya, Malaysia,
Northern Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States.
Overall, this book is extremely interesting, though not as
comprehensive as the title implies. All of the articles address
important issues, all are thoughtfully argued, some
passionately. Some of the articles are fascinating. The number
of articles and authorial perspectives and the amount of
information make the book hard work to read straight through,
but an introduction by Walters and five others authors provides
a useful overview of the book’s many themes. It does not
include a wide array of political perspectives—there are no
articles, for example, by free-market economists. But it makes
a strong moral argument for placing human rights in the center
of adult education theory and practice. It will be useful to
those involved in the international adult learning and economic
development fields, though readers may want to turn to more
comprehensive, book-length discussions of issues presented in
this volume.
Globalization, throughout the book, refers primarily to
changes occurring in the world economy as trade barriers are
reduced, as capital becomes more mobile, and as multinational
companies become larger and more powerful. In an opening
chapter, Ove Korsgaard asserts that the world economy is
changing qualitatively from an international economy based on
relationships between discrete national economies and toward a
global economy in which multinational, global capital dominates
nation-states. As an adult education theorist and practitioner,
Korsgaard fears that the decreased power of nation-states will
also mean the decline of civil society—the public space in
democracies where citizens create their society. Civil
societies, historically, have been supported by adult education,
which equips adults with the skills and knowledge to participate
in public life; and adults become educated through civic
participation—cultural, political, social. If adult education
comes to mean only workplace training, it no longer will be able
to support non-market civic and societal goals. Korsgard offers
the hope that globalization will also mean the spread of
democratic ideals. He sees networks of NGOs and community
groups focused on global concerns about the environment, human
rights, women’s rights, and indigenous cultures, as evidence
that globalization is also proceeding "from below", a process
that will could lead to a "global civil society."
Subsequent chapters in the book look at globalization
primarily from one locale, from the perspective of one group of
people, or describe specific policies, programs, and classes.
The civil society theme is prominent in two chapters that argue
that civil society has declined in Canada and Britain since
those governments adopted neo-conservative, free-market policies
in the 1980s. Michael Welton offers a rhapsodic description of
civil society as the "life-world" of intimate and non-intimate
relationships. He elegiacally describes pre-1980s Canadian
civil society as a network of social justice groups—labor,
women’s groups, farm movement groups—that worked to create a
collectivist, welfare-oriented government. Welton feels that
civil society was diminished when Brian Mulroney’s government
drastically reduced Canadian welfare provisions. Keith
Jackson’s chapter compares Britain’s 1973 adult education White
Paper with the 1992 White Paper. The 1973 document emphasized
ways that adult education could improve the quality of civic
life through a diverse focus on the arts, sports, family life,
and intellectual pursuits; Margaret Thatcher’s government,
however, reduced the participation of labor unions and municipal
councils in adult education policy development, and the 1992
document focused narrowly on the vocational skills of young
adults. Welton sees hope, in Canada, in a new and diverse
generation of politically-active groups. Jackson sees the
European Union as offering Britain a more democratic perspective
on adult education and training.
While Welton and Jackson include labor as an important
sector of civil society, several authors in the book focus
specifically on organized labor and workplace training. Judith
Marshall describes how Canadian unions have created solidarity
relationships with unions in Chile, Mexico, and South Africa,
including North-South worker education programs. Workers in all
sites receive an education in economic globalization and its
effects on Northern and Southern workers, including women and
people of color, and are educated about "fight back" strategies
and collective bargaining. A chapter by Jonathan and Ruth
Winterton describes and compares worker-initiated and industry-
initiated workplace enskilling programs, some of which
reorganize worksites for greater collaboration and empowerment
while also teaching workers more diverse skills. While
Marshall’s chapter highlights the power of transnational labor
networks, the Withertons describe how worker-management
relations manifest in training programs and workplace structures
that expand or constrict human potential.
Another set of chapters focus particularly on poor women,
and describe the gendered effect of globalization. Several
authors note that some countries are creating free-trade zones
to attract global capital and are shifting domestic economic
policies to favor export-oriented industries. Many of the new
low-skill, low-wage jobs are filled primarily by women. In
addition, when countries reduce their social service spending
the hardships fall more heavily on women. Theresa Quiroz Martin
describes the lives of women in Chile who must work in the
lowest-paid, sometimes hazardous new industries and who are
coping with the state withdrawal of social services by forming,
with grassroots support from NGOs, their own cooperatives. Chan
Lean Heng describes the emotional and sexual harassment
experienced by the new generation of women factory workers in
Malaysia. Though better paid than office work, factory work in
Malaysian society is associated with promiscuity and academic
failure. Ellen Gumede discusses the social position of rural
South African women marginalized in their families and
communities and left out of economic development plans. Daniel
Moshenberg, through a postmodern discourse analysis of newspaper
articles, draws parallels between the abrupt firing of Latino
women hotel workers in Arlington, Virginia and the forceful
eviction of a Black tenant farming family is South Africa. Linzi
Manicom and Shirley Walters offer a thoughtful summary
discussion about the status of women in a globalizing economy
and the goals of popular (grassroots) feminist education. For
these feminist educators, adult education for poor women must
address their restricted mobility and oppressed status as women,
and should help them develop not only economic skills, but also
voice: self-esteem, confidence, and political leadership skills.
Moshenberg more radically asserts that all adult education
programs should start with those most oppressed and silenced
people in every society—the women—and should respond not to
"marginalization," a somewhat mild word, but to "structured
cultures" of violence.
Another perspective found in this volume is that of
indigenous peoples. Lillian Holt, Michael F. Christie, and
Norman Fry describe an adult education program called Tauondi
created by and for Aboriginal people of Australia. This and
other Aboriginal institutions were created as a "bulwark"
against the dominance of Western values and knowledge. The
goals of Tauondi are to reinforce Aboriginal values, to teach
about Aboriginal culture and history (including the white
invasion), and to teach Aborigines how to cope with racism and
assimilation. In particular, these authors refer to Aboriginal
spirituality, which involves wholeness, wisdom, humor, emotion,
cooperation, and dignity. They also suggest that Aboriginal
education can help free non-Aboriginal Australians from
Eurocentricity, leading to an "acceptable cultural identity for
all" (p. 194).
The book also includes a focus on unschooled workers who
develop their own strategies for surviving with minimal
literacy, without the help of educators or NGOs. In the only
ethnographic chapter in the book, Mignonne Breier describes how
literacy functions in the everyday lives of South African taxi
drivers, laundry workers, farmers, and factory workers, and
their "ingenious" strategies for securing economic autonomy and
asserting control within their work environments. Her chapter
is one of the few in the book that describes unschooled adults
not in terms of their disadvantage, but in terms of their
creative agency. While also describing the larger structure of
South African society, she warns adult educators away from a
patronizing savior stance. She also notes that many literacy
programs do not address the real literacy needs of workers and
that many unschooled people have no use for the school literacy
taught in such programs.
Other chapters in the book describe adult education as
nested within larger economic development programs. Pauline
Murphy describes the European Unions’ Initiative for Peace and
Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, which funds numerous
community-based adult education and training courses. She
describes a multi-site educational program designed to prepare
women for work in information technology fields. Like other
feminist education programs, the one Murphy describes combines
technical and managerial skill training with a women-specific
focus on confidence, leadership skills, and self-esteem.
Mildred Minty describes the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan for
Newfoundland, the poorest of the Canadian provinces, hard hit by
the collapse of the fishing industry. This plan is designed to
empower citizens by giving them a voice in the design of their
own region’s strategies for creating new industries and
providing education and training to the workforce. In a more
depressing vein, Maurice Amutabi describes the current dearth,
in Kenya, of any cohesive adult education campaign. By his
account, adult literacy was the priority of the Kenyan
government in the 1960s and 1970s, but the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, as part of their structural
readjustment policies, pressured Kenya to de-fund adult
education. Introduced in the 1980s, the structural readjustment
policies required governments to reduce social services spending
and to direct educational funding toward primary and secondary
schooling.
In addition to the papers from different countries in the
world, there are a number of papers that describe education
programs in South Africa, where the conference was held. The
post-apartheid state, faced with poverty, racial inequality, and
an undeveloped infrastructure, initiated a Reconstruction and
Development Programme (RDP). The program was designed to
combine economic development with the promotion of democracy and
civil society. Rosemary Lugg describes one aspect of the RDP—a
proposed National Qualifications Framework (NQF) – an
integrated system for credentialling a diverse array of skills
and achievements—vocational, academic, economic, political,
artistic, and social. Credentials would be gained through
training and educational programs, or in Recognition of Prior
Learning (RPL) through an RPL assessment process. The goal of
the NQF/RPL program is to create a more inclusive definition of
skill, to break down divisions between academic and vocational
skills, and to grant credentials to the many South Africans
denied access to formal education or training programs. Elana
Michelson, in a more theoretical chapter, discusses the radical
and conservative elements of the RPL movements in South Africa,
as well as in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Two
more articles from South Africa focus on adult educators
themselves. Jeanne Gamble and Shirley Walters describe the
qualifications of the adult education trainers who would
facilitate the development of the diverse skills included in a
National Qualifications Framework. Tammy Shefer, Joe Samuels
and Tony Sardien describe an anti-bias training program designed
to help adult educators address issues of race, class, and
gender when working with the diverse South African adult
population. Articles by Mizana Matiwana and Minnie Venter-
Hildebrand and Charlene Houston describe South African
development programs from a community-level perspective.
Matiwana describes the implementation of a community-based
primary health campaign, and Venter-Hildebrand and Houston
describe the implementation of community-based training and
employment programs. Both highlight barriers to community-level
development: literacy barriers, lack of adequate funding, lack
of community leaders, and political discord within communities
targeted for development.
Finally, the volume includes several philosophical chapters
that discuss the nature of adult and life-long learning. Berndt
Gustavsson champions a critical approach to learning, a process
by which learners reflect on what they already know, what is
self-evident, what is traditional, in order to imagine something
radically different. A chapter by Gustavsson and Ali Osman
applies this principle to the question of how to educate people
in a multicultural society, where they must reflect critically
on their own position and the position and perspective of other
people in their society. Staffan Larsson focuses on standpoint—
the non-neutrality of any perspective. He notes that, in an era
of mass media, learners are barraged with information but have
few opportunities to develop a moral standpoint from which to
make judgements or choices. In the final chapter, Ove Korsgaard
reviews the history of European education and schooling. He
predicts that because of the proliferation of information
technology, future schools will not focus on transmitting
knowledge but instead on teaching students to manipulate symbols
so they will be able to acquire and create knowledge throughout
their lifetimes.
This volume of 25 articles, then, opens with the political
philosophies of civil society, travels through numerous regions,
histories, perspectives, and adult education sites, and ends
with a psychological focus on the transformative process called
learning and its relationship to the social science field of
education and the institution called school. It combines
thoughtful discussions about educational goals with descriptions
of curricula and classroom practices and activities. Many of
the articles include the quoted voices of adult learners. The
articles raise fascinating issues about knowledge, identity,
skills, work, and life-span development in a world that is
appearing to shrink with urbanization and industrialization, but
also to expand (and explode) with the proliferation of media and
information. It poses a challenge to the field of adult
education: how can educators serve to make public and legitimate
a more diverse array of discourses while also helping learners
develop the psychic strength, the oral and literate discourse
skills, and the economic skills, to participate more fully in
public life. Standpoint, though, is critical. There are many
discriminatory and hateful discourses that need to be opposed.
Educators must develop a moral framework for teaching that
focuses on human rights and just societies. They must affirm
some aspects of their students’ lives and worldviews while also
directing them toward a larger human community.
A few issues and arguments are absent from the book. No
author makes a counter-argument that economic globalization is,
on the whole, good for democracy and human rights because the
market challenges parochial restrictions on individual
development or provides the best tool for opposing
dictatorships. In their article on feminist popular education,
Linzi Manicom and Shirley Walters acknowledge the "contradictory
character of the new feminized forms of labor" (p. 73), but do
not explore ways that formal work for women, even in factories,
might liberate women who might otherwise be domestic servants in
their own or other people’s homes. Much ink goes to critiquing
neo-conservative, pro-market government structures, but more
attention could have been paid to the oppressions associated
with totalitarian regimes, fundamentalist movements, restrictive
cultures, or hateful nationalisms, which do not work in complete
consort with market forces.
In addition, no chapters address how popular culture, a
tremendously powerful product and discourse, functions,
globally, as a medium of oppression and liberation.
The book also lacks a full discussion of how adult
education relates to another powerful global movement—the
expansion of childhood schooling. Childhood schooling is in
the background of these articles as adults are described as not
having had access to quality childhood schooling. Chan Lean
Heng implicates the Malaysian secondary school exam system as
responsible for consigning some women—those who do poorly on
exams—to factory work. Ellen Gumede briefly describes how
rural South African women are marginalized further in their own
families when their children acquire school-based knowledge.
But the expansion of childhood schooling is changing cultures,
family life, gender relations, and child development around the
globe; these changes should be addressed more comprehensively by
adult educators.
The book raises some intriguing questions about the
contradictory nature of education itself and its relationship to
knowledge, identity, and society. Many of the adult educators
in this book assert that marginalized or oppressed people have
unique forms of knowledge that are not recognized in the public
or educational discourse—the survival knowledge of the poor or
unschooled, the emotional knowledge of women, the spiritual
knowledge of indigenous people. They call for adult education
that either starts with or reinforces these forms of knowledge.
But what happens to local, personal, or cultural knowledge when
it becomes part of an articulated curriculum, even if it is a
grassroots curriculum? What does it mean for Aboriginal people
to learn Aboriginal values in an organized institution, and to
share those values with a larger community from which they feel
excluded? What does it mean for women to discuss their emotions
in an adult education program? What new identities and new
forms of knowledge emerge from these experiences? If
educational programs include reference to local, personal, and
cultural forms of knowledge, how does education manage to avoid
becoming the most hegemonic system of all, transforming all
experience into something that can be discussed in a classroom
with an authority present? Perhaps this would be a good thing,
but if education is a civic institution, is civic life
completely concurrent with cultural and personal life? Can any
argument be made that standardization leaves personal and
community knowledge systems more intact? If so, what is the
form of that standardization? Some form of public literacy?
What might that literacy be like if it is not what is taught in
schools currently? Mignonne Breiere touches on this issue and
articulates arguments against including everyday knowledge in
school curricula, but then asserts that everyday knowledge is a
necessary starting point and that school literacy is not an
appropriate goal. This is a fundamental question: what is the
best starting point for helping learners become more powerful
and more positive members of their societies and what are the
common skills and forms of knowledge that will make possible
just societies?
Globalization, Adult Education and Training: Impacts and
Issues is a provocative and informative book that will
generate many questions for its readers. It would have
benefited from a conclusion that suggested some priorities out
of the many proposed in the individual chapters. It would also
have benefited from a dialogue between these authors who have so
much knowledge of their field, so many interesting things to
say, and several points of disagreement.
Note: I am grateful to Sarah E. LeVine, who helped me think
through the issues presented in this book.
About the Reviewer
Emily Dexter
Emily Dexter is a doctoral student in the department of Human
Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Her dissertation
research focuses on the relationship between maternal and child
literacy in African-American, Latino, and white U.S. families.
She co-authored, with Sarah E. LeVine and Patricia M. Velasco,
an article on the health-related literacy skills of Mexican
women in Tilzapotla, Mexico, which appeared in the
Comparative Education Review, volume 42, number 2, in
1998.
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