Schools’ Role In Adult Education

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31123, 28 July 1966, Page 7

Schools’ Role In Adult Education

Secondary schools throughout the world are likely to play an increasingly-important role in adult education and they ought to because they have the staff, buildings, facilities and most direct contact with local communities, according to Dr. J. R. Kidd, Director of Adult Education in the Ottawa Institute of Education, and president of the U.N.E.S.C.O. International Committee for the Advancement of Adult Education.

In Christchurch as a Commonwealth Prestige Fellow, Dr. Kidd said there was an important role for schools, workers’ educational associations, the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. in hobby and craft classes, secondary school subjects which adults might not have taken earlier and in certain vocational training. They could also continue art, drama, and music classes. University Role Universities, Dr. Kidd said, should be prepared to transfer this kind of work and concentrate on the services they could best provide in adult education: Training staff and doing research for adult education. Providing post-graduate courses. Giving adults higher education in the liberal arts. Educational television. Dr. Kidd said it should be accepted that most people had been so busy getting technical training that they did not have time to become “educated.” A doctor, for instance, might be skilled in his field but want to catch up on what he had missed in liberal arts. If this thesis was accepted, the schools, voluntary associations and universities would all be busy. Dr. Kidd said he nominated the universities for television because they had the resources—the space, materials and exhibits, and best staff. TV Habits North American experience showed that large numbers of people would watch educational sessions before work, many women liked mid-morn-

ing sessions, others would watch educational sessions after 10.30 p.m. and late Saturday and Sunday mornings were also popular. It had been shown that of 25,000 watching, 1000 might sign up for background studies, and about 100 of these might take examinations. Dr. Kidd said the significant feature was that adult education was adjusting to the rhythms of the people. “We used to run night school when people were tired, preoccupied or disinterested. Now we find the best time for women’s classes, for instance, is in the morning. Likewise we find people will enrol for four two-and-half-day week-ends when they could not take a week’s course. In two cases in America, award claims based on a 35-hour week speak of an eight-month year so workers can enter residential collegtjs.” To meet these needs residential colleges of adult education would be the rule within 25 years, Dr. Kidd predicted.