ADULT EDUCATION

1949
  • International Conference on Adult Education, Elsinore, Denmark
  • Rural Education Seminar, Mysore, India

1950
Training course on adult education, Mondsee, Austria

1950-1965
UNESCO Youth Institute, Gauting, Germany

1952-1953
International Workers’ Education Centre, La Brévière, France

1953
International Conference on the Place and the Role of Music in the Education of Young People and Adults, Brussels

STIMULATE AND ORGANIZE CO-OPERATION
BETWEEN PARTNERS

The purpose of adult education is to satisfy all the various needs and aspirations of the adult. (1)

If UNESCO has always accorded absolute priority to the fight against illiteracy, it has also gone beyond this first level in its efforts to sustain the development of multiple and diversified forms of adult education, considering that ‘the access of adults to education, in the context of lifelong education, is a fundamental aspect of the right to education and facilitates the exercise of the right to participate in political, cultural, artistic and scientific life’. (2)

Along with the other international organizations mandated to take action in the field of adult education, foremost amongst them ILO, but also WHO and FAO, UNESCO attaches the utmost importance to setting in place structures to enhance international dialogue and exchange, and to promote their development at national level, as well as to drawing up a conceptual and normative framework within which to foster conditions propitious first to the expansion, and then to the institutionalization, of adult education. To define objectives and guiding principles in this field, UNESCO turned to the special international conferences which have been organized approximately every twelve years since 1949 (3) the work of which has frequently been echoed by the sessions of the International Conference on Education and the General Conference, in particular with the adoption by the latter in 1976 of the Recommendation on the development of adult education. The theme of the fifth International Conference on Adult Education (Hamburg, 1997) is ‘Adult Learning: a key for the 21st century’.

In a way UNESCO’s programme in its entirety either directly or indirectly takes adult education into account with activities related to international understanding and a culture of peace, the development of science (scientific literacy), social sciences (family planning), culture (the educational role of museums, and of music, development of public libraries), communication and computer technology (development of communication technologies and networks) as well as all programmes involving the exchange of individuals. The field is limitless, both in the variety of its tangible forms, and in the prospects for development it can offer to societies experiencing increasingly rapid change.

THE 1950s, POPULAR CULTURE AND VOLUNTARY AID

It was in 1949, at Elsinore in Denmark that UNESCO convened the first International Conference on Adult Education, (4) in order to find out how adult education could help to repair the damage inflicted on education systems by the Second World War, and to reconcile East with West. The Conference recommended ‘to aid and foster movements which aim at creating a common culture to end the opposition between the so-called masses and the so-called elite’. At international level, adult education must promote the ideals of democracy and peace and strive for understanding between peoples, not simply between governments. The Conference recognized the primordial importance of private initiatives in adult education as the only way to represent diversity of interests. (5)

The Director-General therefore established an international co-ordinating mechanism in the form of a consultative committee responsible for advising the Secretariat on adult education matters. (6) The action of the Organization consisted in providing support, often under the Participation Programme, to the work and endeavours of specialized NGOs, especially for the organization of training programmes and study tours, (7) or meetings of specialists. (8) For workers’ education, between 1952 and 1953, UNESCO ran an International Centre at La Brévière (France), where training courses for trade union leaders were available on topics such as trade union and civic education, and social and international education. From then on, the Organization invested in the development of modern methods and techniques, especially audiovisual media, in the service of adult education, (9) a sphere which would continue to arouse interest in the ensuing decades, eventually giving rise in 1994 to the ‘Learning Without Frontiers’ transdisciplinary programme. Finally, through its monographs and its publications, UNESCO took on a pioneering role in information exchange in this domain at international level. (10)

1949
Elsinore: Conference on Adult Education

Elsinore: Conference on Adult Education Next June 16th, approximately 150 educational workers from many nations will gather in the Great Knight’s Hall of the ancient ‘Hamlet’s Castle’ of Krongsborg at Elsinore, Denmark, for the opening of the first international post-war conference on adult education.

From places as far apart as Norway and Australia, Iceland and New Zealand they will meet for ten days to talk over their problems and to lay the foundations of a permanent international adult education movement, one of whose aims will be to develop a better understanding between peoples.

There are still many countries where the term ‘adult education’ is used to describe the fight against illiteracy. But, for practical purposes, the teaching of literacy is now generally considered as a special field and UNESCO, for example, has given it the name of ‘fundamental’ education’.

In the countries which have largely solved their illiteracy problems, adult education, in its broadest sense, means helping individuals to be equal to the responsibilities which the growth of democracy has brought to ordinary men and women. In other words, adult education today seeks to develop a spirit of understanding and appreciation of other people’s cultures and customs, by improving the individual’s general education and arousing interest in current world questions.

This is why UNESCO, as part of its adult education programme, is seeking to bridge the ten-year gap caused by the war, by calling on adult education workers and leaders from every country in the world – whether a member of UNESCO or not – to meet and exchange their experiences and ideas. In this way, it hopes to re-establish international contacts among adult education workers and to find out what new forms this branch of education might take to meet the demands of both today and tomorrow.

Among the questions to be studied at the UNESCO conference in Denmark are the extent to which traditional adult education methods can be improved by the use of new materials and techniques such as film, radio and the press, records, posters and graphs, discussion groups, the dramatization of current events, and the study of foreign languages.

The UNESCO Courier, April 1949.

Jaime Torres Bodet Jaime Torres Bodet
(Mexico)
Director-General of UNESCO from 1948 to 1952
When you are discussing adult education, you are in fact discussing no less a matter than the future of our civilization. Do we want to educate people for obedience? Do we want to educate them for responsibility? [...] Do we claim to relieve man’s isolation by accustoming him to blind submission to the will of the herd? Or do we wish to bring him to take a conscious part in a culture which, while having regard for his personality, will inspire in him a sincere desire to be one with all his fellows?

Adult Education and the Future of our Civilization. Education for Responsibility, Opening speech, Elsinore Conference, 1949

Henri Janne
Sociologist, Belgian Minister of Education and Culture from 1963 to 1965
The organization of adult education, its objectives, methods, atmosphere, functional requirements, will demand radical changes in the present formal education system (including the university), traditional school structures being gradually transformed to their image.

Adult Education, a Factor in the Global Change of Education, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 1965

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FOOTNOTES:

(1) Report of the Elsinore Conference.

(2) Extract from the Recommendation on the development of adult education adopted by the nineteenth session of the General Conference of UNESCO in 1976.

(3) The way in which participation in these conferences has developed reflects both the increase in numbers of UNESCO Member States, and the growing interest of the international community in adult education: 79 participants at Elsinore (1949) 841 in Paris (1985).

(4) Adult education developed above all in Western Europe and in Scandinavia, representatives of these countries making up over two-thirds of participants. Neither the former USSR, nor any Eastern European countries, were present at Elsinore. There was little question of literacy which was only of secondary interest for these countries which already had efficient primary education systems.

(5) The Conference, marked by recent memories of totalitarian regimes, showed signs of apprehension vis-à-vis governments. Adult education activities at that time were, in most Member States, catered for by non-governmental organizations or by volunteers.

(6) This Committee, with representatives from the main non-governmental organizations concerned with adult education changed names several times: Consultative Committee for Adult Education (1950-1960); International Committee for the Development of Adult Education (1960-1966); International Consultative Committee for Out-of-school Education (1967-1973).

(7) Study tours for leaders of European workers’ organizations had considerable impact at a time when freedom of movement was limited, even in Europe. UNESCO provided grants and facilitated the obtention of visas.

(8) Rural Education Seminar (Mysore, India, 1949); Training courses on adult education (Mondsee, Austria, 1950), on adult education in rural areas (Hillerod, Denmark, 1954), on economics teaching in 150 Popular Federal Universities (Bled, Yugoslavia, 1956), on universities and adult education (Bignor, United Kingdom), on educational activities of womens’ organizations (Twickenham, UK, 1959), etc.

(9)

(10) See International Directory of Adult Education, UNESCO, 1952.