In this book Neil Hopkins examines the learning of citizenship in courses for adults and asks how democratic are, or should be, the governance structures behind such courses. To these ends ‘further education’ is taken to be the apprenticeship and apprenticeship-like elements of post-secondary coursework outside of full-time undergraduate education (including, for example, hair and beauty, business and technical courses); and ‘adult education’ is taken to be the lifelong learning and self-help traditions of adult life skills and evening classes (provided through, for example, local authorities and University of the Third Age).
The book draws on political philosophy, comparison with German and French vocational provision, history of education, and a working knowledge of the contemporary English system. The political philosophy provides a parallel critique of purely liberalist bases for conceptualising citizenship, education and economy. It includes an initial rendering of debates about the extent to which liberal accounts of ‘citizenship’ manage difference, and whether such management should involve resolution of difference or some state of systemic openness. Hopkins has practical ideas about how to include citizenship in further education courses in the face of a narrow, instrumental and employability-focused curriculum, but analysis is the main intention.
Subsequent chapters present three rather separate arguments. First, ‘the craftsman’ is a starting-point for Hopkins’ deliberations about the possibility of citizenship in the apprenticeship tradition of further education. The citizenship of craftsmen would once have lain in their embedded-ness in community need, rather than in individualism. There is some discussion to be had about the translation of this to contemporary skills in contemporary communities. But there remains something in the idea that ‘skills [in contrast to competencies] do not exist without the communities that value and verify them’ (p. 67), so that the purveyor of such skills cannot ignore those communities. For example, most contemporary professions and trades demand the development of skills of interpersonal communication. Those skills provide educational opportunities for the exploration of citizenship because they are central to the negotiation of difference in community (and Hopkins refers to various cases, such as cultural awareness in the provision of catering). Such possible understandings of, and openings for, citizenship in further education draw on a wider view that students in the apprenticeship tradition are negotiating political and social citizenship directly in their career choices and practices. Hopkins therefore questions the merit of bolt-on enrichment approaches to citizenship education in this sector. Instead he argues for a citizenship rooted in the idea of ‘occupation as practice’. Indeed, the separation of citizenship and economy is arbitrary and he explores how this has come about in the English vocational scene in a comparative chapter covering Germany and France.
The second overall argument is that adult education has emancipatory roots in its self-help tradition, from the Plebs League, through women’s studies, University of the Third age, working-class self-help organisations, and life skills-based adult education. The relationships between learner, provider, and established hegemonies, in this sector, position the learner as a critically active stakeholder/citizen from the outset. However the citizenship educator is therefore presented with the problem that the learner must be approached on the learner’s terms. He notes for example that a student in a conversational Spanish class might reject the prospect of engaging in a citizenship education project. And yet that relationship between teacher and learner is at some level a condition of the strength of the learner’s stake—of her active citizenship.
These two central and quite different arguments—about further education and adult education throw a querying light upon each other. Why should the apprentice hairdresser and the adult learner in an evening class be so differently construed in relation to citizenship education: the hairdressing student to learn to realise her citizenship in the practice of her vocation; the evening class participant already expressing and maintaining her concept of citizenship by directing her learning as she sees fit? Hopkins does not address this matter directly. However his final major argument about the institutional structure of further education draws on the political philosophy underpinning his analysis of adult education.
The book’s third major argument is the most trenchant and amounts to a proposal to invoke deliberative democracy in further education college governance. The self-governance conferred upon colleges by the further and higher education Act in 1992 involves boards of governors that have little democratic accountability, albeit that the appointed members are often from a range of interests. Such autonomy and deliberation, Hopkins argues, are insufficient if education is to be understood as a public good. More local democratic input is necessary. Governing boards should be subject to representative election across a wider range of stakeholder groups than at present, amounting to an electoral college. And the concept of deliberative democracy should include that those affected can participate in the deliberation in ways that extend beyond voting for governors.
There is much else in this book that would interest its audience of teachers and educators in the field, including passing analyses of relevant policy positions, and passing ideas for exploring citizenship in particular courses. But its significant achievement is that all these are in service to offering a theoretical framework in which the general question of citizenship education in further and adult education can be explored.
University of Edinburgh
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© 2014, Hamish Ross
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2014.938437