Role Of W.E.A. In Adult Education Emphasised

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30215, 21 August 1963, Page 6

Role Of W.E.A. In Adult Education Emphasised

After 50 years’ experience, the Workers’ Educational Association had learned its value to those aware of the inadequacies of a purely formal education, the president of the association (Mr A. A. Dingwall) said in his annual address.

“We can no longer hold the view that education for adults is optional and that what a person learns in his formal education is enough for the rest of his Life,” he said. “Without further education, the well-educated youth of today will be an obsolete man tomorrow. More knowledge has been discovered during the lifetime of the present adult population than was known at the time of its birth,” Mr Dingwall said. “This fact applies not only to the social sciences, but is even more marked in regard to skills. In the field of technology, change is very rapid, and adults are required to adapt to new methods of work, and sometimes to new vocations. “Our society cannot continue to make its educational investment in youth alone, and treat adult education as a marginal activity. The W.E.A. and all who are interested in education must help to make society aware that it has of necessity a stake in the continued education of adults,” he said. “I am not asking that we should expect Government to provide all the means or control adult education. Adult education is peculiarly suitable to the diverse approach In the first place it is a voluntary effort on the part of the participating student, an adu’t does not react favourably to too much formality in educa tion; the diversity of experience which the adult in the community has fathered de tnands that he be .ot only presented with facts and in formation, he must also be free to analyse them critically and interpret them. Without the development of the capacity for critical analysis, education is neither attractive nor beneficial to ths adult, who does not want a continuation of the formal processes of accepting what he

has been given without question.

“The adult usually discovers, a few years after formal education has finished, that some of his educational interests were never catered for or developed during the formal period. He may desire to pursue more energetically some aspect or gift for which there was only a limited amount of time available in his youth. “It is interesting to discover that people, who in their school days had little or no interest in languages or painting, find in adult life a new satisfaction and response to living that they could not visualise in their youth,” Mr Dingwall said.