Adult Education: As Social Policy

Colin Griffin

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000532388
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Éducation
• Categoria: Formation pour adultes

First published in 1987, Adult Education: As Social Policy intends to provide an introduction to the social policy analysis of adult education, contributing to the larger literature around lifelong or continuing education. The roots of policy in alternative social welfare models are traced to their ideological sources and to the origins of adult education theory itself. The development of professionalism is also considered in relation to policy analysis and there is a case study of major policy documents to illustrate the analysis. The book will be of interest to students of pedagogy, education, and policy.

PART ONE

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260110-1

Chapter One INTRODUCTION

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260110-2

Neither social policy nor adult education lend themselves to precise definition. Yet there can be little doubt either that adult education is an object of social policy or that the policies of adult education are in some sense social. It is evident from comparative study (Charters, 1981) that governments are intervening more often and more directly in adult education, particularly in a context of development. It is also evident, at least in Britain, that the legislative status of educational provision for adults is variable and often insecure. But long before such provision came about, adult education as a social movement was often intended to achieve what would nowadays be regarded as the proper objectives of social policy in a liberal democratic state: welfare, citizenship, equality of opportunity and so on. Now the voluntary and statutory partnership, as it is familiarly described, is coming increasingly under pressure to pursue social policy objectives reflecting the needs of development or of crisis, and which objectives governments are increasingly likely to impose. The pressures which adult education comes under, of centralisation, funding and direction, are the pressures upon public spending experienced in all the services of the welfare state: its discourse of needs, access and provision, and its voluntaristic traditions reflect very closely the concerns of any social policy analysis of welfare provision. Thus adult education has from its beginnings been addressed to social policy objectives, or at least could be seen in that light, or again may increasingly be required to address social policy priorities. But social policy, like adult education itself, may be analysed in quite different ways: the pursuit of social welfare is only one of them. So any analysis of adult education as a form of social policy depends upon how we analyse social policy itself. The role of education in this process will be of particular concern.

What is Social Policy?

Many textbooks on the subject begin with just this question. T H Marshall, in one of the earliest of them, argued that social policy should be defined by its objectives, which he listed as health care, social security, welfare, housing and community services. In these terms, adult education clearly falls within the scope of social policy, since the aim of community services is 'to contribute to the creation or maintenance of a neighbourhood, both physical and social, fit to satisfy the needs of its inhabitants'. (Marshall, 1965:12). As an objective of community education itself this seems unexceptionable, although Marshall himself did not include education as such as an objective of social policy for reasons which seemed even to him to be rather weak: 'convention does not usually admit (education) into the fold, perhaps because it is too large a subject, or because it raises too many issues peculiar to itself'. Of all these objectives of social policy, Marshall believed welfare to be 'the only true end product'. In so far as policy analysis was concerned with the welfare state then it was reasonable to assume that welfare itself was 'the ultimate objective of all policy'. Indeed, in such a state welfare could be seen as the ultimate objective of the economic system itself. The distinction between social policy and other kinds of policy sometimes seems very clear, as in the case of foreign policy, but sometimes it is by no means clear, as in the case of economic policy. Marshall suggested that the object of social policy was generally thought of in terms of benefits accruing to individuals, whereas economic policy had the 'common weal' as its object. In today's terms, economic policy is seen to be concerned with wealth creation and social policy with wealth distribution. However, the concept of a welfare state raised the question of wealth redistribution (i.e. whether this was intended or not, whether it occurred or not) and redistribution itself can only be conceived as an object of political policy.

It is hardly surprising that much recent policy analysis has been concerned with what might be described as the politics of the welfare state. Since Marshall wrote his early textbook, analysts have sought in various ways to re-integrate their discipline into those of economics and politics. In effect, the discipline of social policy and administration, as it often described, has amounted to the study of the welfare state and its workings, particularly since the time of the so-called ’rediscovery of poverty' which threw doubt upon the supposedly redistributive achievements of the welfare state (Abel-Smith and Townsend, 1965). Major focuses upon health, housing, social security, unemployment benefit, and so on, have converged upon the concept of poverty rather to the exclusion of Marshall's 'community services' among which education and adult education most obviously fall. The dominance of the poverty focus in relation to welfare state studies reflects the most obvious of practical concerns, and yet, as later analysts have tended to acknowledge, the function of the education system with regard to the distribution and redistribution of life-chances must also be seen as crucial to any understanding of a wider concept of welfare such as that which Marshall advocated. Thus the changing significance of poverty has been kept under review (Townsend, 1970, 1979) as has the idea of welfare itself: the origins of the welfare state appear now to be much more economically and politically contentious than was once widely believed (Thane, 1982:288-301). Social policy analysis can therefore contribute much to our understanding of the current crisis of the welfare state, in which education and adult education are deeply implicated, not least because it recalls us to the facts that concepts of welfare, redistribution and even citizenship itself were more often than not ill-defined and controversial. Richard Titmuss, another influential writer on social policy, was also concerned with its objective as a social welfare system. Like Marshall, he tended not to include education very much within its scope, but in defining it he did set out some alternative models of social policy which have since been influential (e.g. Pinker, 1971). Titmuss suggests that the concept of policy makes sense only when it is believed that change in some form or other can be effected. But he is clear that there is no necessary link in the spectrum of values between a concept of social welfare on the one hand and a redistributive policy on the other: 'A redistributive social policy can redistribute command over material and non-material resources from the poor to the rich; from one ethnic group to another ethnic group; from working life to old age within income groups and social classes.' (Titmuss, 1974:26). We must not invest the term 'social policy' with 'a halo of altruism' or with elevated and idealistic principles of justice and equality. In guarding against unwarranted value implications we must remember, says Titmuss, that 'what is welfare for some groups may be 'illfare' for others'. He sees most definitions of social policy as containing three objectives set out in a context of values: first is the beneficent provision of welfare for citizens; second is the inclusion of economic benefits, such as minimum wages or standards of income; thirdly, the objectives of most definitions of social policy involve 'some measure of progressive redistribution in command-over-resources from rich to poor'. Marshall's definition can be seen, for example, to fall within the scope of Titmuss's three objectives. But Titmuss goes a little further in setting out three contrasting models of social policy. Model A he calls the Residual Welfare Model. This represents the view that individual needs are best met by means of the family and the marketplace, and that the welfare state should, as far as possible, not exist at all. It is the model adopted by the Conservative governments of Mrs Thatcher in Britain and sanctified by the economic theories of Hayek and Friedman. Model B is called the Industrial Achievement-Performance Model, and it sees social welfare institutions as 'adjuncts' of the economy: 'social needs should be met on the basis of merit, work performance and productivity'. This is a view of welfare policy designed to serve the needs of individuals instrumentally as these are related to the maintenance of the economic order: a view of social policy under capitalism which will be looked at in more detail later. Model C Titmuss calls the Institutional Redistributive Model: this one 'sees social welfare as a major integrated institution in society, providing universalist services outside the market on the principle of need'. (Titmuss, 1974:31). These models can certainly be seen to express the alternative policy options relevant to today's debates, and obviously so in the case of education. As an example of 'reprivatisation' Titmuss himself crites (Titmuss, 1974:39-40) an example from the field of elementary education in the United States where schooling was 'contracted out' to a private company. What the models illustrate above all, however, is that 'there is no escape from value choices in welfare systems'. All social policies justify either intervention or non-intervention in the lives of individuals, and they can be advocated or resisted from several different points of view or value.

The work of Marshall and Titmuss has been developed and broadened in the light both of the evolution of social work professionalism and also of alternative theoretical perspectives on social policy which have emerged to challenge the liberal progressivism of earlier writers such as Titmuss. A more recent introduction to the subject (Hill, 1980) acknowledges the arbitrariness of defining social policy by including some policy areas and excluding others. Some areas, it is true, are universally included: social security, the personal social services and health. Housing and employment policies are less clear-cut as social policies, being obviously much more implicated in economic policy as such. When it comes to education policy, as Michael Hill says, this is much less often included: 'The very fact that it is difficult to find reasons either for including it or excluding it tells us something about the peculiarly arbitrary process involved in categorizing policies as 'social'. Clearly the field of education is one in which there is a considerable amount of public expenditure upon services that contribute to public welfare. But is the hallmark of social policy expenditure its contribution to public welfare, and what does this really mean?' (Hill, 1980:2). Thus although the inclusion of education as social policy remains a 'comparatively arbitrary decision by the author', attention is here directed to the problems of defining social policy as the pursuit of public welfare in the way implied by Marshall. The connection between social policy and public welfare is much more problematic, for, as Titmuss stressed, social policy is capable of being conceptualised in a variety of modes expressing a range of alternative values. And welfare itself, as we shall see, has been subjected to a much more thoroughgoing ideological analysis since Marshall's book was first published. In fact, the implementation of social policy must be analysed as a complex process involving mixed motives and some sizeable gaps often between intentions, implementation and consequences. Many policy outcomes may be unintentional: policies only rarely represent any kind of new beginnings; almost always they constitute marginal adjustments to the body of existing legislation and practice. Hill suggests that consequently three implications follow for the definition of social policy: first, policies are not 'social' only by virtue of having public welfare as their objective; second, policies not conventionally identified as 'social' may make just as great, or greater, contributions to welfare; third, social policies must be seen to be inter-linked with other public policies in a single whole. Hill goes on (Hill, 1980:5-8) to explore the boundaries of social policy by looking at the social policy effects of foreign and defence policy and economic policy. It is, of course, evident that all social policies reflect decisions about expenditure which will be affected by the kinds of priorities which governments adopt or which may be forced upon them by external events. It is never the case in reality that there is no alternative, but neither could it be the case that alternatives chosen are without cost for the alternatives rejected. As Titmuss said, welfare for some may turn out to be 'illfare' for others, perhaps in unexpected and unintended ways. In neglecting the complexity of issues and implementation in the area of social policy, Hill suggests that the study of it in Britain has been 'strong on criticism and value judgement but weak on analysis'. What he has to say on education policies particularly bears this out (Hill, 1980:180-202). In this area the balance of forces between central and local government, and between professionals and politicians, is extremely complex. Perhaps the degree of complexity is greater here than in any other social policy area: 'Education is perhaps the sector of social policy that people feel they understand best; they try hard to influence it but find many of the key problems elude their grasp.' (Hill, 1980:201). In other words, the relations between education and other social and economic policies are extremely difficult to capture in terms merely of criticism and value-judgement.

Adult Education as Social Policy

After a brief review of the scope of social policy analysis, it is possible to begin to consider it as an approach to adult education. Some superficial relationships will need later to be looked at in depth in order to evaluate the usefulness of this approach, but at the outset social policy analysis would seem to be a valid way of thinking about adult education. Much adult education theory, like that of schooling, derives from the academic 'disciplines of education': psychology, philosophy, sociology, history, organisation theory and so on. The social policy approach is definitely interdisciplinary (Hill, 1980:11). It is not directly concerned with conceptual clarity, nor with how adults learn, nor how they are best taught, nor how adult teaching and learning is organised, although all of these things may directly or indirectly reflect public policy decisions on the part of national and local government, professional bodies, voluntary associations and so on. There are, in fact, many ways in which policy analysis could be fruitfully related to a body of adult education theory reflecting traditional 'educational disciplines' approaches. Policy decisions are informed by a whole range of philosophical, moral, psychological and ideological positions. Indeed, evaluating the effectiveness of policies and provision seems to be a major task for adult education: the recent report of a research project into curriculum development in the education of adults described an extremely low incidence of evaluation (FEU, 1984:37-45). The contribution of policy analysis is to regard evaluation as a function of policy itself. If, as we are exhorted, we avoid criticism and value judgements and concentrate upon analysis, then the absence of adequate evaluation can be traced to its sources in a policy process which does not count adequate evaluation amongst its objectives, rather than in the failings of a system of provision. Whether or not this is actually the case could only be verified in individual instances, of course. But it remains true that in adult education as in the study of social policy there has been more by way of criticism and value judgements than of analysis.

Value judgements, if by which is meant the abstract discussion of the aims of education, are properly left to philosophers. But values in a wider sense, especially in the sense that they give expression to the interests of individuals and groups, are, as we have seen, intrinsic to the policy process. Policy analysis focuses particularly upon the intentions, outcomes and objectives of policies, and is concerned with the values they express in an empirically investigable way. This is not to say that ideologies behind policies are without their philosophical significance. In this connection the whole idea of welfare seems surprisingly unexamined from an adult education point of view, particularly in view of its long-standing association with ideas of citizenship and redistributive justice, and a common discourse of deserts and needs. A considerable social-philosophical literature has gathered around concepts of welfare which also finds reflection in the traditions and practices of adult education: individual and collective benefits, statutory and voluntary organisations, universal and selective provision, and so on. In comparison with other forms of social provision, adult education has lacked an analytic social philosophy which addressed the kind of identifying characteristics of policy which Titmuss enunciated: in what sense is welfare its objective? does it function to redistribute or reinforce individuals' life chances? is it differentially valued by different groups of people? is it related to economic benefits? does it shift command-over-resources to the poor?

The kind of models of social policy which writers such as Titmuss, Townsend and Pinker have outlined are very suggestive for the analysis of adult education policy at a time when provision reflects a wider range of policy orientations than ever before: market forces obtaining in the case of recreative education, servicing the economy in the case of continuing education, redistributive justice in the case of special needs provision. The more adult education expands to meet every conceivable human need, the more arbitrary seems the decision to exclude it from conventional lists of what counts as social policy. In some aspects, such as women's education, adult education seems further advanced than some forms of provision included in the conventional lists of the social policy textbooks. Its objectives are not so much incremental as concerned with a total shift in the balance of power between men and women in society. So here may be an example of adult education having objectives not concerned only with the welfare of individuals but with the distribution of power between groups in society: in this sense adult education could be conceived in very clear-cut social policy terms. On the other hand, the need for policy analysis is reinforced by the somewhat tenuous connection between intention, implementation and consequences.

Perhaps one of the most important benefits of adopting a social policy analysis model (of any kind) to adult education is the emphasis this approach would place on the need to relate policies one to another. In some instances this need is beginning to be met (e.g. Watts, 1983) but the tendency to isolate adult education as a subject of study persists, reinforced possibly by the advance of professional specialisation. Policy analysis models, on the other hand, are more likely to be constructed on the assumption that objectives are always mutually related: adult education could scarcely be conceived as a form of social policy separate from policies relating to employment, education, or welfare itself. At the most general level all social policies are determined by economic and political factors of the social structure, ultimately by such apparently remote sources as the international division of labour and the changing nature of the state and the forms of its intervention. Such an analysis was recently outlined by Angus Stewart in the context of contemporary Britain. He explored what he described as 'three major areas of social determination which have a general, if variable, effect upon the life-chances of different classes and groups'. (Stewart, 1983:10-40). Contradictions within the world economy, that is, between its national and transnational forms, constitute the ultimate determinant of people's life-chances and indicate the parameters of economic and social policy. And against such a background, policies aimed at benefiting one group are quite likely to disadvantage another: Titmuss's welfares and 'illfares' analysis again. The first of Stewart's three national determinants of policy which affects people's life-chances is the division of British capital, a division between its national and international dimensions which has brought about the long-standing weakness of the economy. The second determinant is to be looked for in the role of the state in dealing with economic recession and decline: its alternative strategies of corporatism and coercion. The first of these strategies amounts to the attempt to incorporate the 'class-based organisations of labour' into the administrative apparatus of the state in a national economic planning approach. The second invokes legal constraints and the threat of unemployment, both characteristics of the approach called monetarism. The third overall determinant is that which Stewart calls the crisis of parliamentary representation. By this he means the diminution of the role of parliament in the legislative process, the loss of parliamentary control over economic management and social administration, together with loss of control of taxation and expenditure to the Cabinet, and a 'fundamental imbalance' between backbench MPs and the government.

The ultimate determinants of social policy in any field, Stewart is saying, are the state of the economy, the role of the state, and the political process itself. It is not to be supposed that workers in adult education should constantly refer to these determinants in reflecting upon their practices, any more than workers in any other area of social provision. The analysis of policy at this level, however, does serve as a corrective to excessive criticism and value judgement: in particular it challenges simplistic assumptions about 'po...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Editor's Note
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Bibliography
• Index