This is an online event

The relation between modern adult education and politics has been a key research focus over the past four decades. This lecture discusses major topics such as: the institutionalisation of modern adult education as political history; the role of the democratic state in the development of adult learning and education; the relation between adult education and democracy; the impact of modern ideologies on the roles of adult education; the influence of major theories of liberation/emancipation, humanistic approaches, and the like on adult education; political education and training as ways of promoting more participation in democratic societies; choice and access to and through adult education; and the impact of the ‘reductionism’ of late/post-modern adult education in the past forty-years.

This lecture, accordingly, explores the emergence and development of liberal democracies and the progressive role of adult education as a way of promoting successful participation in labour, social affairs, and culture. Moreover, it points out the importance of major adult education movements and their representatives of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, illustrating how they tried to shape modern politics and societies to fight back exclusion and xenophobia on the one hand, and illiteracy and low education standards on the other.

The key question to be explored involves a paradox: knowledge is power. If this is true, what role, if any, does education still play in the efforts of active, critically thinking citizens to build societies characterised by democratic political participation?  Or is this notion obsolete, and the role of education nowadays is primarily to serve production and consumption by helping to bring huma n resources in line with the needs of a globalised economy?    

This lecture will be provided by Dr. Balázs Németh, Associate Professor in Adult Learning and Education

Balázs Németh is a researcher on European adult and lifelong learning policy development and comparative adult education. He is an associate professor and Head of Institute of Adult Learning and Education at the University of Pécs. He is also a founding member and current president of the Hungarian Universities Lifelong Learning Network (MELLearN) and represents the University of Pécs in the European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN) and in the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA). Further research topics of his are: Adult Education and Politics; Comparative Adult Educ ation; History of Modern European Adult Education from 1850 to 1950. Learning City-Region and Learning Community Innovations in Central-Eastern Europe and in Hungary.

Students attending this lecture will be able to:

• recognise some key aspects and themes in the context of adult education and politics;
• understand the political in adult education;
• relate the institutional development of adult education to power and control;
• Compare the European Lifelong Learning Track to power relations in the context of participation and performance, citizenship and employability;
• understand some critical approaches to adult learning in religious, emancipatory, humanistic, pragmatic dimensions;
• reason upon the rise and fall of adult learning policies of the EU.

Fourth Session within the ESRALE course of Lectures on the 8th January 2016 at 14:00 (CET).

(The actual Classroom will be open shortly before the sessions starts)

You can either join with "Guest Access" ; or create an account. An account has the advantage, that your name can be shown and not only "guest".

If there are any questions, get in touch with Mario Ganz at the TU Kaiserslautern: [email protected]

ESRALE: www.esrale.org