EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD SOCIETY - Support

1 Winston Churchill, quoted inNIACE, The Future for LifelongLearning: A National Strategy,National Institute of AdultContinuing Education, 2009, p.2.2 Iris Murdoch, Existentialists andMystics, Chatto & Windus, 1950,p.342.3 For this chapter I assume that‘lifelong learning’ refers to abroader way in which learningis conceptualised across the lifecourse; my focus is specificallyon the provision of educationfor adults.4 See for example Joe Cox, ‘Onthe “big society” vs the “goodsociety” – a case in point’,Compass Online, 28 February2011, www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=12260.5 See Toby Helm, ‘Small isbeautiful: the father of DavidCameron’s big society’, Observer,27 March 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/27/small-beautiful-david-cameronbig-society.6 Quoted by A.C. Grayling inDavid Utting, Contemporary SocialEvils, Policy Press, 2009, p.122.8. What kind of societyvalues adult education?Tom SperlingerThere is, perhaps, no branch of our vast educationalsystem which should attract… the aid andencouragement of the state [more] than adulteducation.Winston Churchill 1Goodness appears to be both rare and hard topicture.Iris Murdoch 2What kind of societies do (and do not)value adult education?My purpose in this chapter is to think aboutthe role of adult education in the Good Societyand also about how it might help us define ournotions of the ‘good’ in this context. 3 There hasbeen some debate recently about the differencebetween Compass’s idea of the Good Society andthe Conservative idea of the Big Society. 4 Oneway in which to reflect on differences betweenthem might be by understanding the supportingor opposing terms in each case. For example, theopposite of the ‘big’ society is presumably the‘small’ society, one that is relatively self-enclosedor exclusive. A rhetorical sense of inclusion has,in fact, been one of the Big Society’s more attractiveelements. Yet this big–small dichotomy isof limited use, since the Big Society is oftenabout supporting relatively small-scale, local andself-organised projects; the reported influence ofSchumacher’s Small is Beautiful on it underlinesthat ‘small’ is just as operative a word in thisconception of how society works. 5 In fact, theopposing term to the Big Society seems to be notthe ‘small society’ but the ‘big state’, as is underlinedby one of David Cameron’s most effectivelines of recent years: ‘There is such a thing associety, it’s just not the same as the state.’ 6 The BigSociety is as much, if not more, of an attempt tore-conceptualise the role and size of the state as ofsociety. It is also thus a vision of society in whichthe state has a predefined (and limited) role.The Good Society, in contrast, can presumablybe opposed by a notion of the ‘bad’ or dysfunctionalsociety and one might imagine a spectrumof less good societies, with a sense of progressiontowards the ‘good’ as either a set of concretepossibilities or utopian aspirations. One mightargue that the Good Society is itself inherentlypragmatic, since it could also be compared tothe perfect society. In contrast, ‘good’ implies apermanent relationship to ‘bad’ or less good; asense of continual action to achieve whatever‘goodness’ is possible. It is also crucial here thatthe Good Society does not, within the term itself,specify a relationship to the state – and thusneither places the state outside such a society nordefines in advance its role within it.In turning to the question in my title, I want tothink similarly about opposing terms, to imaginethe kind of society that would not value adulteducation. Here too it is worth noting that onesuch society might be a perfect society or one thathad achieved a level of perfection in the educationof its children. Adult education would not beneeded if education as a child could completelyprepare a person for life. There would needto be a relatively unforgiving form of equalityin this provision, with each citizen offered a‘perfect’ form of education as a child and littleor no opportunity for a second chance if theyfailed to use it. This model would also imply thateducation is designed to prepare one for experience(rather than respond to it) or that one of thequalities that might be learnt as a child would beto be a ‘lifelong learner’ on one’s own. The othernotable aspect of this imagined society is that itwould presumably be relatively or entirely static.If the society succeeded in preparing children forlife, this implies that there would not be radicalchanges in the nature of the society in theirlifetime or in its composition (since outsiderswould require education at a later stage).This is not the only sort of society one canimagine that would not value adult education.Another example might be a society in whichindividuals did not live long, making the ideaof adult education almost redundant. Otherexamples would include societies with particularconceptions of a working life or of each citizen’srelationship to the body of knowledge the societyholds. For example, a society with a relativelylimited range of employments or professions –40 | www.compassonline.org.uk