Putting Glitter on the Shit: Working in-against-and-Beyond Adult Education in Scotland

TY - CHAP

T1 - Putting Glitter on the Shit

T2 - Working in-against-and-Beyond Adult Education in Scotland

AU - Galloway, Sarah

AU - McEwan, Sarah

AU - Player, John

AU - Reid, Helen

AU - Harris, Michael

AU - Keenan, Derek

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Nalita James, Kevin Orr and Sharon Clancy 2025. All rights reserved.

PY - 2025/3/14

Y1 - 2025/3/14

N2 - The chapter is based on a dialogue, centring the Scottish historical tradition of radical education as practised in the early 20th century. Key ideas and practices from this tradition will act as stimulus to dialogue about the hopes for radical adult learning in contemporary Scotland. The authors source these themes through revisiting their 2020 pamphlet 100 Years of Radical Adult Education in Scotland: Building Hope for the Future. The global pandemic interrupted further dialogue around the issues therein and the authors resume these conversations in the context of post-pandemic crises. They bring to the fore two historical strands. First, the brief but influential Independent Working Class Education movement, associated with trade unionism and political activity, which, in the 1920s, dissipated into the formation of the modern Labour and Communist Parties. A stronger and overlapping influence was that of the temperance movement that was perhaps uniquely bound up with the Scottish Labour movement, which linked the commercial availability of alcohol directly with poverty and war. Associated activity orientated towards adult education for self-improvement, in tandem with social responses to poverty and injustice, perhaps summarized as a tradition sourcing strength and social compassion in response to despair and collective indignity. Here the focus will be the recurring historical themes of adult learning aimed at workplace organisation, and the recovery movement as the contemporary manifestation of temperance. Second, the lead will aim to steer the dialogue, as a praxis of hope.

AB - The chapter is based on a dialogue, centring the Scottish historical tradition of radical education as practised in the early 20th century. Key ideas and practices from this tradition will act as stimulus to dialogue about the hopes for radical adult learning in contemporary Scotland. The authors source these themes through revisiting their 2020 pamphlet 100 Years of Radical Adult Education in Scotland: Building Hope for the Future. The global pandemic interrupted further dialogue around the issues therein and the authors resume these conversations in the context of post-pandemic crises. They bring to the fore two historical strands. First, the brief but influential Independent Working Class Education movement, associated with trade unionism and political activity, which, in the 1920s, dissipated into the formation of the modern Labour and Communist Parties. A stronger and overlapping influence was that of the temperance movement that was perhaps uniquely bound up with the Scottish Labour movement, which linked the commercial availability of alcohol directly with poverty and war. Associated activity orientated towards adult education for self-improvement, in tandem with social responses to poverty and injustice, perhaps summarized as a tradition sourcing strength and social compassion in response to despair and collective indignity. Here the focus will be the recurring historical themes of adult learning aimed at workplace organisation, and the recovery movement as the contemporary manifestation of temperance. Second, the lead will aim to steer the dialogue, as a praxis of hope.

KW - Hope

KW - Hopelessness

KW - Praxis

KW - Radical

KW - Temperance

KW - Workplace

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105010798358

U2 - 10.4337/9781800886667.00029

DO - 10.4337/9781800886667.00029

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:105010798358

SN - 9781800886650

T3 - Elgar Handbooks in Education

SP - 226

EP - 237

BT - Research Handbook on Adult Learning and Education

A2 - James, Nalita

A2 - Orr, Kevin

A2 - Clancy, Sharon

PB - Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

CY - Cheltenham

ER -