community centers of adult education in england

Community Centers of Adult Education in EnglandAuthor(s): Basil A. YeaxleeSource: Social Forces, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Sep., 1928), pp. 84-87Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3004550 .

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THE COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD

This department is conducted by THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY CENTER ASSOCIATION, and is edited by LeRoy E. Bowman, 403 Fayerweather Hall, ColumbiaUnivrsity,NewYork City.

COMMUNITY CENTERS OF ADULT EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

BASIL A. YEAXLEE

T HE problem of civic regeneration is always twofold. We must have better cities for people to live in,

and better people to live in our cities. But without wasting time on futile dis- cussions as to which comnes first we may well differ in the relative emphasis we lay upon the two.

For us in England the situation has been a great deal clarified since Gen- eral Booth wrote In Darkest England and the Way Out, and Canon Barnett founded Toynbee Hall. Much that had then to be initiated and carried through by voluntary effort has now become the duty of the state or the local government authorities. Education, housing, employ- ment, pensions, and other public services are established as the business of the comn- munity. On the other hand the develop- ment of trade unions and the cooperative movement has brought about a great im- provement in the material conditions of wage earners. The purely philanthropic activities of social workers are not needed in these days as they were a quarter of a century ago. Moreover, those for whom such efforts were made have become more independent: they do not want things done for them. They wish to be in a position to do things for themselves.

This obviously means that if the mass

of the population are to bear their full share of responsibility for government, national and local, to take their proper part in the organization of industry, to prove a constructive force in politics, and to create for themselves a satisfactory social life and environment, they must have adequate opportunity for the enrichment and discipline both of their individual per- sonalities and of their corporate conscious- ness. The urgent question is how the present generation is to make, in the best sense, a happier and nobler business of living.

Dr. Ernest Barker concluded his in- augural lecture as Professor of Political Science in the University of Cambridge with a strong plea for the study of education. He said:

The theory of education is essentially a part of political theory. It is not so much a part of psy- chology . . . it is rather a matter of social theory-of grasping and comprehending the purposes, the character and the needs of Society and the State, and of discovering the methods by which the young can be best trained to achieve these purposes, to maintain and even imaprove that character, and to satisfy those needs.

What Professor Barker thus sets forth from a theoretical point of view is becoming generally recognized as the true line of practical advance towards the achieve-

84



COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD

ment of a better order of society in all respects. The adult education movement in England is developing rapidly because the twin forces of supply and demand are working vigorously together for its progress. It is an inseparable part of the con- sidered policy adopted by organized labor and by the strongest of the working-class organizations. Curiously enough, though University Extension began just over half a century ago as an attempt to provide for the cultural hunger of the working classes, but for reasons became predomi- nantly a middle-class movement, adult education has lagged considerably among that part of the population during the present generation. A renewal of appe- tite is becoming manifest again now, however. Two other constituencies are likely to prove increasingly important in stimulation demand; the various political parties are encouraging educational effort among their adherents, and on the other hand the Churches are slowly awakening to the necessity that religion must continue to lose ground unless every man is capa- ble to some degree of giving reasons for the faith that is in him. There are also bodies of people nationally organized for special purposes, such as support of the League of Nations principle or advocacy of Copart- nership in Industry, which necessarily stimulate their members to more or less systematic study and discussion, as also to more purposeful reading. One of the most notable tendencies in the life of the country at the present time is the increase of desire for high quality in such recrea- tive pursuits as music and (among groups of the Community Players type, at any rate) drama. Perhaps the most signifi- cant feature of adult education in England just now is its many-sidedness. Never have we had a great number of men and women devoting themselves to serious study for courses lasting for periods which range from three months to three years,

while the number prepared to give up a whole year to a residential course in one of the people's colleges or at a university is growing. Yet at the same time the educative value of informal activities like hobbies, handicrafts, guided foreign travel, and so forth, is receiving recognition. One of the first questions to which we have to address ourselves with far greater energy than heretofore, however, is how to evoke and organize demand among the great multitude of the people.

No less encouraging is the growing readiness, amounting in some cases to almost enthusiasm, among sources of supply to put facilities for adult education at the disposal of all who wish for them. Following the example of Oxford in setting up Joint-Committees for Tutorial classes as they had previously followed that of Cambridge with regard to Uni- versity Extension, the Universities and University Colleges are one by one setting up, as special Government subsidies have enabled Oxford and Cambridge to do, Extra-mural Boards with functions which include the two well-established types of work and contemplate experiments in many new directions. Local Education Authorities are giving more and more assistance to voluntary organizations, and the more enterprising of them are also making direct provision for the needs of adults in certain instances with striking success. The Board of Education itself is now definitely committeed to the fur- therance of adult education as part of its acknowledged responsibilities, and seeks to fulfill its task by means of financial aid and by the valuable work of its Inspectors, as well as through its representative Ad- visory Committee on Adult Education.

EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS

The aim of Educational Settlements is to concentrate these forces in each community where they are established. A



86 SOCIAL FORCES

common meeting place for diverse groups means more than increased amenities for each. It renders possible the formation of a student body which not only plays its part in the democratic government of the Settlement but also develops a corporate life which, as the ancient universities have shown, is a vital part of true education. The leadership of an experi- enced Warden, giving his whole time to the multiform task of teaching, organiz- ing, and acting as friend and advisor to all who come to the Settlement, is an important factor in the success of this work. Obviously also this grouping of student-groups at a common center renders it easier to establish and maintain fruitful relationships with the Local Educa- tion Authority and the appropriate Uni- versity, just as, on the other hand, it facilitates experiments in drama, foreign travel, and other less conventional forms of adult education.

Though Educational Settlements have developed on lines of their own, and have a federating association distinct from that of the Residential and Social Settlements, there is entire sympathy between the two bodies. Neither would claim that it pos- sesses the full solution of the social problem. Nor would either maintain that prograiimes and policies effective forty years ago are adequate to the situation today. Equally, of course, the most pro- gressive types of work now in vogue will almost certainly grow into, or be displaced by, others evolved by the next generation to meet its own needs. Yet in so far as the original venture went to the roots of both the realities and the possibilities of human life we shall always be able to say of it that "The more it changes the more it remains the same." Each real variety of social effort has something distinctive to contribute to the social good, and its particular contribution will continue to be

necessary even though it may take such forms that the continuity is not obvious. There is no reason to suppose that Social Settlements will all turn into Educational Settlements, or that the work they are doing could be accomplished by Educa- tional Settlements. It is clear that the most vigorous of the older type are at- taching increasing importance to the directly educational part of their activities. It would also seem that practically no new Settlements are being started on the old philanthropic lines, and that with certain exceptions the existing Social Settlements are finding it increasingly difficult to secure residents, whereas young people leaving the Universities are showing genuine eagerness to take some part in the de- velopment of adult education.

Generalizations regarding the trend in Social Settlement work, however, are even more hazardous than those about tendencies in the Educational Settlements. For various reasons the educational group (including five residential colleges for adult students) is more compact, and more inclined to beat out a common policy. (while encouraging all fruitful differences of method and setting much store by per- petual experiment) than the social. The point of importance is that neither can get very far without discovering its need of cooperation with the other. But this does not invalidate the conviction that social progress cannot be achieved in the community or the nation, as they exist in these days, unless all efforts to foster it have a,.strong educational element. On our side of the Atlantic we are beginning to realize the value of Dr. John Dewey s philosophy of education, as he unfolds it, for example, in Democracy and Education. But an organization which does no more than merely arrange lectures and classes, excellent and useful as these may be, has not begun upon the real business of fitting



COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD 87

men and women to understand and make full use of themselves and their environment.

Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher is wise in her insistence, at the end of her most stimu- lating book 'Why Stop Learning?" that detailed comparison between Great Britain and the United States with respect to adult educational methods and achievements is

misleading. This holds true of social service generally, and perhaps in particular of settlement work. But though cir- cumstances differ so greatly the ultimate reasons for social and educational work on a community basis do not, nor can the end in view be different, whether the scene be American or German, British or Chinese.

THE SLUM: A PROJECT FOR STUDY

NELS ANDERSON

T HE word "slum" has come into disrepute. Having come into vogue with the wave of humanitarianism

that swept the country in the eighties and nineties, suddenly, with the decline of slumming as a philanthropic pastime, the word became taboo, but the slum remains. In relative terms the slum differs from city to city as in any city it differs from time to time. In the organization and life of any city it is a changing and migrating fact. Yet it always remains the habitat of the socially and economically impotent folks; a retreat for the poverty-ridden and a last resort for the maladjusted. Every city has its worst area; its unkempt houses along the tracks, its shanties on the river bottom, its row of houseboats, or, if it is a metro- politan city, its East Side, its West Side or some other area, of mediocrity. It is not poverty alone that marks the slum, nor is it the antiquated building. It is in ad- dition an area of social disorganization, low morale and high transiency.

The transiency of the slum is one with the transiency of the city. The city is the creature of movement and feeds upon it. People are constantly being sorted and shifted, and segregated spatially according to one or another set of interests,

but chiefly they are distributed to the blocks and streets according to their abili- ties to pay rent. The slum itself is but an aggregate of smaller areas as varied in nature as the types that occupy them. Thus, to mention only a few, we have Chinatown, Greektown, Hobohemia, the rooming house slum, crime and vice areas, Black Belts and other areas of race as well as a medley of family slums. Each tends to have its own social values, its own uni- verse of discourse; in short, culture pat- terns of its own. But it is equally true that the life of the slum, regardless of the nature of the slum, if it is to function at all in the larger life of the entire city, must gear into that larger life or be an embarrass- ment to it.

ORIGIN OF THE SLUM

The slum as we know it is no older than modern industrial society of which it is a part and into which it is anony- mously integrated, though superficially it may seem to be detached in its life from the rest of the city. We may say that while areas of the city become more highly integrated and bound together in their impersonal relations, in their associational relations they become more isolated. The



community centers of adult education in england

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