Another door closes

I read this interview, Continuous Learning as a Right and a Necessity, with Li Andersson, the leader of the Left Alliance and Minister of Education in Finland, with sadness as well as pleasure. 

I have worked with numerous adult education programmes supported by the EU. This article refers to the European Agenda for Adult Learning, the most recent of several pan-European initiatives. Given the state of adult education in the UK, it's obvious that they can't compete with hard cash and ideology. However, European networks provided support and offered models for adult education's subsequent reinvention. A lifeline is being closed off. Britain pioneered adult education; it's now a backwater of retreat and regression.

There are two splendid quotes in the piece.

"... the alternative of employment should not be unemployment but education."

That's education in its broadest sense, not skills training alone. 

And it's conclusion is spot on:

“In major turning points such as now, participating in adult education can bring content and safety to everyday life amidst uncertainty. The education system should always offer an opportunity for learning, and there should be no closed doors.”

When I worked at Hull, our aim was to embed the University deep in the community - working in outreach centres, with voluntary groups, and in the prisons. Gradually, the doors swung the other way towards generational exclusion and narrow instrumentalism. Only a few leaks in the door seals persisted in providing opportunities for something wider, something much more radical.

And now we have closed the biggest door of all, the one to our European partners and the networks they provided. It's a national tragedy - and shame.