Adult Education: A Journey with Those Who Make the Roads
A long and winding road leading to…
Ted Fleming has been an adult educator for over forty years. In addition, he is a consistent contributor to the theoretical foundations of the new era of adult education, the study of how adults learn on the one hand, and critical pedagogy on the other hand, looking at what adult educators do in various learning environments. That is, Ted Fleming theorises the practice of adult education and he practices the theory in the classroom, in conferences and in his writings. Currently, Ted is Adjunct Associate Professor of Adult Education at Teachers College.
In the 1970s, Ted was asking the questions which opened up a new vista.
I was looking for a way of studying at post-graduate level. I knew I had questions about higher education. I was asking, what is education? And what is teaching? And how would you go about it? And what was at stake? And did I want to do it? I had lots of questions.
These are the fundamental questions that have to be asked in order to interrogate the role of education in society. Interestingly, in July 2021 BBC Radio hosted a series on education, called RETHINK. The aim of the series was to raise elementary questions about the purpose of education, the social impact of education, the effectiveness of exams, the division of knowledge into subjects and the role of technology. In short, existential questions about education as a social institution.
Yet, In the early 1970s, these were the kind of questions that Ted Fleming was asking himself and wondering how to explore the possible answers. At the time, he was teaching sociology in a Regional Technical College, now called either Institutes of Technology or Technological Universities. And he was also teaching mathematics to second level students. This was a time when education in Ireland was getting a major shake-up. The Investment in Education (1965) report was the first OECD report for Ireland and in 1967, free second level education was introduced and, soon after, a higher education grant system was introduced for people who achieved four honours in their Leaving Certificate. As such, within a short time, education was gradually opened up to the many more young people in Ireland. But the fundamental questions remained, and Ted wanted to explore them in greater depth.
I had a friend who was studying sociology in London School of Economics. And I was fascinated. I knew I didn’t want to study sociology itself. I was looking to study sociology AND education. And I found that adult education was the kind of subject that allowed you to move into a range of disciplines.
Ted brought these questions to Fr Liam Carey who was already Head of Adult Education in Maynooth and involved in adult education, with the establishment of the Dublin Institute of Adult Education, (See previous interview with Berni Brady, and her experience in the Dublin Institute). ‘This was around 1974.’ The previous year, the Department of Education published the Murphy Report (1973) on adult education in Ireland. This report kick-started a series of changes in the field, though not as much as was recommended. Nevertheless, for Ted, it was a milestone.
‘So things were opening up, things were expansive, policy-wise.’ Liam Carey agreed with Ted that it was an opportune time to study the discipline of adult education. Liam suggested that Ted try a number of places with a reputation for the academic study of adult education, including The University of Toronto, through OISE, and Teachers College, Columbia University. ‘I applied to both of these, in 1976.’ These two universities had long scholarship in adult education. Ultimately, Ted opted for Columbia, to study with Jack Mezirow, who had already established a reputation for a different kind of adult education, one that focused on personal and social transformation, rather than more traditional liberal arts, andragogy and professional development.
I’m sure you can hear the resonances of all sorts of issues, Ted said, from the luck of the draw, to the people who were influential.
WB Yeats is supposed to have said that education in not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
‘The people who influenced me were Liam Carey, Jack Mezirow, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene.’
And this was a very impressive line-up to light that fire.
Jack Mezirow was developing his theory of perspective transformation, in research on women returning to education as adults (Mezirow, 1978). He proposed that adult education is primarily about developing critical consciousness through critical reflection, the analysis of assumptions and interrogation of values. The job of adult educators is to facilitate transformative learning, (Mezirow, 1991), rather than filling a pail, to echo Yeats.
Ted also worked with Paulo Freire. Freire’s work on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970)[1] is still essential for the education and practice of adult educators in their work with adult learners, but not only adult students. Freire’s critique of education and its role in conforming to the status quo, is a live issue during this pandemic, with education reduced to teaching alone, rather than social interaction, learning, discussion, dialogue and democracy. Further the focus on traditional exams diverts attention away from the unfairness of the examinations system as it deepens inequality rather than developing critically reflective citizens.
Ted was inspired by Maxine Greene, too – his ‘favourite teacher’. She argued that the objective of educators is to enable others to learn how to learn. And Greene was committed to the arts, especially literature, as a key route to ‘wide-awakeness’ as she called it (Greene, 1978). Another phrase that has resonance today, with both the awaking moments, like #Waking the Feminists in Ireland (RTÉ, 2018) to the anti-woke backlash in politics, in many media and other agencies, as well as individuals to speak out against ‘taking the knee’, the anti-racist indicator of solidarity, especially with Black Lives Matter. (The Guardian Newspaper, 2021). Maxine Greene was about opening people’s eyes through literature and the arts.
I learned what adult education was. I learned to be an adult educator. Transformative learning, critical consciousness, the existential way of dealing with literature.
The 1970s Ireland saw an upsurge deep social change, from liberation movements to the decline in traditional religious adherence and church power. Adult education had been based on the social and economic doctrine of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum, coined in 1891, but in a new emerging Ireland was reframed in the light of the liberation movements in both the USA and Europe. The social justice model asserted workers’ rights, fair wages, and solidarity, but with a particular focus on human dignity. And the Murphy Report of 1973 showed that a significant proportion of the Irish people had been failed by mainstream education with basic educational deficits, especially with regards to reading and writing. This led to the establishment of The Dublin Institute of Adult Education and National Adult Literacy Association in 1980 (Ward, Ayton, 2019).
‘The first three PhDs in Ireland were clergy, including Fr Liam Carey. You have to unpack that carefully to see how the Church was so far ahead of the posse.’ Yet adult education had a life of its own, apparently, quite apart from the desire of the Church. Again, as a result of the Murphy Report, Adult Education Organisers were appointed by The Vocational Education Committee, in 1979, (Ward, Ayton, 2019). These appointments were the clear acknowledgement that mainstream education was failing a lot of citizens and adult education was perceived as an appropriate policy response.
In another arena, The People’s College, a workers’ education college established in 1948, appointed Sheila Conroy as organiser in 1970. She had a vision for adult education that shifted The People’s College into a new era. In particular, she allied the college with broader (secular) social and cultural spheres, such as The Commission on the Status of Women, The Commission on Adult Education, prison education, health education and RTE, (The People’s College, 2021).
In RTÉ, Meadhbh Conway-Piskorska was appointed to oversee the provision of educational programmes, an essential element of the RTÉ mission. She again was far-seeing in terms of the purpose of education and, according to her obituary, she introduced new methods of teaching through the series Telefís Scoile (Meath Chronical, 2013). Radio and television become an essential pathway to opening up education to wider categories of learners with amazing programmes such as Women Today, presented by the late Marion Finucane with a model closer to women’s studies, rather than the cooking, sewing and cleaning pages that was more typical in the newspapers and magazines at that time. And an amazing Monday evening programme, Monday at 9, which was like the Open University for new ways of thinking. For example, the programme looked at the future of work, socially responsible progress, the role of engineering, organisational and human development. And the programme also explored the shift that was essential to those new ways of thinking. Ted provided a series of lectures on paradigms, that is, patterns of concepts and ways of thinking, and paradigm shifts, the interruptions to the set patterns through critical interrogation, based on the work of Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn, 1968). A key paradigm shift was underway in Ireland at that time.
Adult education was moving into the secular world. For Liam Carey, it was still about the religious agenda, but for me, it was over. It was over. In 1980, it was over in my head.
Ted embodied that paradigm shift, within the context of paradigm-shifters like Sheila Conroy with her vision for workers education in The People’s College and Meadhbh Conway-Piskorska, with her vision for education in the media, in her work in RTÉ, as well as many others who were at the forefront of adult education for transformation, critical consciousness and the integration of theory and practice, like the Centre for Adult and Community Education in Maynooth, where Ted worked since 1980. However, this is only one chapter in this story, and hopefully, the rest will follow. But meanwhile, Ted has a treasure trove of articles and books, which can be accessed through the website at tedfleming.net.
Ted Fleming made a road by bringing new perspectives into the way adult education and critical pedagogy were seen, practiced and theorised. It was a long and winding road. And it is still a road that ultimately leads to a fundamental shift in education as a social institution.
[1] This is the earlier version of Pedagogy (for those who know about the earliest awareness of Freire). In line with earlier comments note that it was published by Seabury Press in New York the main catholic publishers in US.
References
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08gt1ry/episodes/player (assessed 20th July 21)
Fleming, T., (2021) https://tedfleming.net/ (assessed 20th July 2021)
Freire, P., (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Seabury press, New York.
Greene, Maxine, (2021) https://maxinegreene.org/about/maxine-greene, (accessed 20th July 2021)
Greene, M., (1978) Landscapes of Learning, Teachers College, Columbia University Press, New York.
Kuhn, T., (1968, 1970, 1996, 2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Meath Chronical, (2013) Maeve Conway-Piskorska: Obituary, The Meath Chronical, Navan, https://www.meathchronicle.ie/2013/01/09/obituaries-12-01-2013/ Accessed 20th July 2021)
Mezirow, J., (1991) Fostering Critical reflection in adulthood, Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco.
Mezirow, J., (1978) Education for perspective transformation: Women’s re-entry programs in community colleges, Teachers College Columbia University, New York.
Murphy, C., (1973) Adult Education in Ireland: A report of a Committee appointed by the Minister for Education. Stationery Office, Dublin.
RTÉ Brainstorm (2018) How Waking the Feminists set an equality agenda for Irish theatre by Moynihan, R., https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2018/1122/1012586-how-waking-the-feminists-set-an-equality-agenda-for-irish-theatre/ (assessed 20th July 2021)
The Guardian Newspaper, (2021) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/16/tories-war-on-woke-boris-johnson-race-right (accessed 20th July 2021)
The People’s College, Adult Education Association, (2021) Sheila Conroy, https://www.peoplescollege.ie/history/sheilaconroy.html (accessed 20th July 2021)
Ward, F., and Ayton, P., (2019) A Short History of the Adult Literacy Service and the Foundation of the Adult Literacy Organisers Association, ALOA, Dublin. http://www.aloa.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/A-Short-History-of-the-Adult-Literacy-Service-and-ALOA-4.pdf (accessed 20th July 2021)
