Stakeholders working in the Adult Learning and Education (ALE) sector in South Africa have hailed the Adult Learning Forum (ALF), describing it as a great platform to push the ALE agenda.
The director of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training (CIPSET) who works alongside DVV International, Ivor Baatjes, highlighted the significance of ALF as one of the oldest organisations dedicated to building adult education in the country. Given the important role of the ALF, he encouraged the ALF to grow and to continue to act as a critical agent in the ongoing advances that adult education still needs to make.
Speaking during the commemoration of International Literacy Day (ILD), Baatjes suggested that ILD is also an important moment for adult educators to reflect on the role of adult education in South Africa.
“We have come from a long history of struggle for adult education,” he said, recalling the words of Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, activist and former Deputy Minister of Education, of how deeply implicated adult education was in the social-economic and political development of South Africa.
Adult education was viewed as an important vehicle in the struggle for the transformation of South African society. This struggle, amongst others, had to be advanced through the dedication and commitment of adult educators in civil society organisations of which the trade unions, community-based organisations and social movements were key.
“We must acknowledge the role of these adult education formations in supporting government in bringing the first adult education policies and programmes into existence. Although formal adult education systems in South Africa is very young — 26 years — we have seen many developments within adult education organisations. A rise and fall in formations. The ALF has been one of those who have managed to survive through the changing times in the field,” said Baatjes.
Baatjes encouraged the ALF to use this Adult Learners Week which was part of ILD to reflect on the words of Father Mkhatshwa. “How do we reinvent adult education as a vehicle of social transformation? What is the vision that we have for our society and how can adult education help take us there?” he posed the questions to the audience.
He said these questions are important in the context of an actual decline in adult education. Civil society provision of adult education has been in decline since 2000. Non-Governmental Organisations were prominent players prior to this. Over the last 20 years the decline can also be seen in provision and delivery by business and industry. More recent data from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), as the main provider of adult education is showing a decline. Numbers of state centres are down, the number of learners is down and so are the numbers of adult educators who work in state centres.
Even the numbers of those studying towards adult education qualifications at universities are showing a decline. Yet, DHET have committed itself to strengthen its role in adult education. This was an outcome of the national Community Education and Training (CET) Summit held in April 2022.
The stakeholders echoed one another that there are several reasons why adult education requires even more attention now, and therefore an increased role for adult education associations such as ALF.
The stakeholders said there are several issues that ALF should keep in mind in examining its vision and recalibrating its mission in adult education. The triad of poverty, inequality and unemployment remains central in debates about Post-School Education and Training (PSET). Inequality has risen globally and nationally. Adult education must be oriented to speak to these issues, but also knowing that education alone cannot resolve them. Education can only contribute to addressing them. Too many youth and adults are outside the formal labour market. At the same time, the informal economy accommodates increasing numbers of people for whom non-formal education offers more immediate benefits.
It is in this context that other organisations have become more responsive to the needs of youth and adults. In the absence of detailed research, there are many people participating in adult learning in informal spaces than in community learning centres — and with limited state support. There is a growing number of autonomous groups emerging in communities — grassroots organising — that seem to respond to the more immediate needs and interests of communities. Therefore, there is an emergence of new and alternative ways of adult education in the country. Some examples of organisations involved with such learning include organisations that form part of ALF.
Baatjes spent time highlighting the following as key areas that the ALF should consider as part of reflecting on the past and present and build educated hope for the future. He spoke in detail about the following:
1. CONFINTEA VII: The event brought into existence the Marrakech Framework for Action (MFA). The MFA offers a good moment for the ALF to recalibrate its orientation to a rights-based, social justice and transdisciplinary approach to adult education in South Africa. He encouraged the ALF to engage with the MFA.
2. ECOLOGICAL CRISIS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: The ‘ecological crisis and climate change’ remains the most pressing theme in the current era. This theme features prominently in debates and praxes of the just transition. Adult educators should build critical consciousness about the just transition and participate in building praxes that support the transformation of society.
3. THE FOOD CRISIS: South Africa is currently experiencing a growing food crisis and escalating food prices. This crisis in communities was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Adult educators should be encouraged to join debates and campaigns related to food justice and ensure that a variety of food sovereignty projects are built into their work. CETCs are important sites that could provide educational responses in support of food gardens and related initiatives toward building long-term solutions to food and hunger.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY HEALTH: Communities across the country experience poor public health. The need for proper community health systems is imperative and adult educators should support building a variety of education programmes in support of community health. The connections between community food systems and community health systems are obvious but should not be taken for granted.
5. THE ENERGY AND WATER CRISIS: South Africa is experiencing an ongoing energy and water crisis. Similarly, to the themes above, adult educators need to build an understanding of how communities are experiencing energy and water and how best to deal with them. Once again, as adult educators we should strengthen our role and collaborate with adult educators in these adjacent areas to build effective educational responses.
6. BUILDING SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMIES: Adult educators need to investigate how they could play a more prominent role in building social and solidarity economies – alternative economies as systems through which communities look after all their members. It is evident that the current neoliberal economic framework does not work for most of our citizens. Adult educators should join their colleagues working in other sub-sectors, such as workers education, in building alternatives. Engagements with community food systems, health, cooperatives, community associations are important especially during this time of great transition.
7. PEACE AND DEMOCRACY: South Africa is experiencing several forms of violence. Xenophobia and gender-based violence are constantly featured in the media. We need to understand the relationship between structural and symbolic violence and to build educational programmes that address both. Adult educators should consider their role in building peaceful and democratic communities.
8. BUILDING AFRICAN NETWORKS: DVVI in partnership with adult education groups on the African continent launched the MOJA Adult Education Platform in early 2021. MOJA was established as a mechanism to building and sharing knowledge and experience about adult education on the continent. Adult educators are urged to use this platform to contribute to building collective power of adult education on the continent. MOJA is a cyber-meeting space for adult educators to connect and to use to advance adult learning and education.
9. BUILDING HOPE AND POSSIBILITY: Many communities across the country experience deep historic social and economic problems. There is much critique about the failure of the state in addressing a wide variety of community needs, yet there are also many autonomous socially useful work prevalent in our communities. These autonomous spaces are the “pockets of hope” that require engagements. There are several examples of how adult educators are already involved in building hope and possibility. We need to learn from them because they are prefigurative of the kind of communities’ people are trying to build.
DVV International and ALF have been working in South Africa for 24 years and 21 years respectively. DVV International Country Director for South Africa, Farrell Hunter, described the meeting as helpful, while sharing the history of ALE in South Africa.
Hunter said: “And, 21years is quite a long time to have remained committed to the advancement of adult education in South Africa. That is what ALF has been, a committed DVV International partner.
“During the first years of democracy, we anticipated that an adult education system would be developed in ways that would provide quality and relevant youth and adult education at local community level. Drawing on the history of community and popular education practices during apartheid. Many of us spent many years engaging the system with high hopes, and soon much disappointment as we witnessed the sector being sold short of the possibilities to only provide adult education at the official level of the system.”
Hunter urged ALF and all stakeholders in adult education need to consider ways in which to approach and fulfil our role in adult education now and in the future. “I think we ought to consider how we “do” our education that critically engages with society, locally and beyond” he said.
Policy Documents that frame adult education list the many challenges that South Africa face as a society. These include poverty, unemployment, and Gender Based Violence.
“Our alternative education approaches need to help to develop how we exist in society, a society that is losing its humanity and turning in on itself and the planet. This is not because people are inherently bad, but the conditions created direct people to strive for what they can get for themselves and less about common good. African culture of caring and community, some called it Ubuntu, cooperative way, is being lost,” said Hunter.
Stakeholders working in the Adult Learning and Education (ALE) sector in South Africa have hailed the Adult Learning Forum (ALF), describing it as a great platform to push the ALE agenda.
The director of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training (CIPSET) who works alongside DVV International, Ivor Baatjes, highlighted the significance of ALF as one of the oldest organisations dedicated to building adult education in the country. Given the important role of the ALF, he encouraged the ALF to grow and to continue to act as a critical agent in the ongoing advances that adult education still needs to make.
Speaking during the commemoration of International Literacy Day (ILD), Baatjes suggested that ILD is also an important moment for adult educators to reflect on the role of adult education in South Africa.
“We have come from a long history of struggle for adult education,” he said, recalling the words of Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, activist and former Deputy Minister of Education, of how deeply implicated adult education was in the social-economic and political development of South Africa.
Adult education was viewed as an important vehicle in the struggle for the transformation of South African society. This struggle, amongst others, had to be advanced through the dedication and commitment of adult educators in civil society organisations of which the trade unions, community-based organisations and social movements were key.
“We must acknowledge the role of these adult education formations in supporting government in bringing the first adult education policies and programmes into existence. Although formal adult education systems in South Africa is very young — 26 years — we have seen many developments within adult education organisations. A rise and fall in formations. The ALF has been one of those who have managed to survive through the changing times in the field,” said Baatjes.
Baatjes encouraged the ALF to use this Adult Learners Week which was part of ILD to reflect on the words of Father Mkhatshwa. “How do we reinvent adult education as a vehicle of social transformation? What is the vision that we have for our society and how can adult education help take us there?” he posed the questions to the audience.
He said these questions are important in the context of an actual decline in adult education. Civil society provision of adult education has been in decline since 2000. Non-Governmental Organisations were prominent players prior to this. Over the last 20 years the decline can also be seen in provision and delivery by business and industry. More recent data from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), as the main provider of adult education is showing a decline. Numbers of state centres are down, the number of learners is down and so are the numbers of adult educators who work in state centres.
Even the numbers of those studying towards adult education qualifications at universities are showing a decline. Yet, DHET have committed itself to strengthen its role in adult education. This was an outcome of the national Community Education and Training (CET) Summit held in April 2022.
The stakeholders echoed one another that there are several reasons why adult education requires even more attention now, and therefore an increased role for adult education associations such as ALF.
The stakeholders said there are several issues that ALF should keep in mind in examining its vision and recalibrating its mission in adult education. The triad of poverty, inequality and unemployment remains central in debates about Post-School Education and Training (PSET). Inequality has risen globally and nationally. Adult education must be oriented to speak to these issues, but also knowing that education alone cannot resolve them. Education can only contribute to addressing them. Too many youth and adults are outside the formal labour market. At the same time, the informal economy accommodates increasing numbers of people for whom non-formal education offers more immediate benefits.
It is in this context that other organisations have become more responsive to the needs of youth and adults. In the absence of detailed research, there are many people participating in adult learning in informal spaces than in community learning centres — and with limited state support. There is a growing number of autonomous groups emerging in communities — grassroots organising — that seem to respond to the more immediate needs and interests of communities. Therefore, there is an emergence of new and alternative ways of adult education in the country. Some examples of organisations involved with such learning include organisations that form part of ALF.
Baatjes spent time highlighting the following as key areas that the ALF should consider as part of reflecting on the past and present and build educated hope for the future. He spoke in detail about the following:
1. CONFINTEA VII: The event brought into existence the Marrakech Framework for Action (MFA). The MFA offers a good moment for the ALF to recalibrate its orientation to a rights-based, social justice and transdisciplinary approach to adult education in South Africa. He encouraged the ALF to engage with the MFA.
2. ECOLOGICAL CRISIS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: The ‘ecological crisis and climate change’ remains the most pressing theme in the current era. This theme features prominently in debates and praxes of the just transition. Adult educators should build critical consciousness about the just transition and participate in building praxes that support the transformation of society.
3. THE FOOD CRISIS: South Africa is currently experiencing a growing food crisis and escalating food prices. This crisis in communities was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Adult educators should be encouraged to join debates and campaigns related to food justice and ensure that a variety of food sovereignty projects are built into their work. CETCs are important sites that could provide educational responses in support of food gardens and related initiatives toward building long-term solutions to food and hunger.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY HEALTH: Communities across the country experience poor public health. The need for proper community health systems is imperative and adult educators should support building a variety of education programmes in support of community health. The connections between community food systems and community health systems are obvious but should not be taken for granted.
5. THE ENERGY AND WATER CRISIS: South Africa is experiencing an ongoing energy and water crisis. Similarly, to the themes above, adult educators need to build an understanding of how communities are experiencing energy and water and how best to deal with them. Once again, as adult educators we should strengthen our role and collaborate with adult educators in these adjacent areas to build effective educational responses.
6. BUILDING SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMIES: Adult educators need to investigate how they could play a more prominent role in building social and solidarity economies – alternative economies as systems through which communities look after all their members. It is evident that the current neoliberal economic framework does not work for most of our citizens. Adult educators should join their colleagues working in other sub-sectors, such as workers education, in building alternatives. Engagements with community food systems, health, cooperatives, community associations are important especially during this time of great transition.
7. PEACE AND DEMOCRACY: South Africa is experiencing several forms of violence. Xenophobia and gender-based violence are constantly featured in the media. We need to understand the relationship between structural and symbolic violence and to build educational programmes that address both. Adult educators should consider their role in building peaceful and democratic communities.
8. BUILDING AFRICAN NETWORKS: DVVI in partnership with adult education groups on the African continent launched the MOJA Adult Education Platform in early 2021. MOJA was established as a mechanism to building and sharing knowledge and experience about adult education on the continent. Adult educators are urged to use this platform to contribute to building collective power of adult education on the continent. MOJA is a cyber-meeting space for adult educators to connect and to use to advance adult learning and education.
9. BUILDING HOPE AND POSSIBILITY: Many communities across the country experience deep historic social and economic problems. There is much critique about the failure of the state in addressing a wide variety of community needs, yet there are also many autonomous socially useful work prevalent in our communities. These autonomous spaces are the “pockets of hope” that require engagements. There are several examples of how adult educators are already involved in building hope and possibility. We need to learn from them because they are prefigurative of the kind of communities’ people are trying to build.
DVV International and ALF have been working in Malawi for 24 years and 21 years respectively. DVV International Country Director for South Africa, Farrell Hunter, described the meeting as helpful, while sharing the history of ALE in South Africa.
Hunter said: “And, 21years is quite a long time to have remained committed to the advancement of adult education in South Africa. That is what ALF has been, a committed DVV International partner.
“During the first years of democracy, we anticipated that an adult education system would be developed in ways that would provide quality and relevant youth and adult education at local community level. Drawing on the history of community and popular education practices during apartheid. Many of us spent many years engaging the system with high hopes, and soon much disappointment as we witnessed the sector being sold short of the possibilities to only provide adult education at the official level of the system.”
Hunter urged ALF and all stakeholders in adult education need to consider ways in which to approach and fulfil our role in adult education now and in the future. “I think we ought to consider how we “do” our education that critically engages with society, locally and beyond” he said.
Policy Documents that frame adult education list the many challenges that South Africa face as a society. These include poverty, unemployment, and Gender Based Violence.
“Our alternative education approaches need to help to develop how we exist in society, a society that is losing its humanity and turning in on itself and the planet. This is not because people are inherently bad, but the conditions created direct people to strive for what they can get for themselves and less about common good. African culture of caring and community, some called it Ubuntu, cooperative way, is being lost,” said Hunter.
Follow this link to watch part of the event: fb.watch/fJjgP4l2-3/
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