Learning From the Past, Organizing for the Future

Abstract

This article analyses key events in the history of adult and community education in Aotearoa New Zealand. It draws on historical sources to examine the role of grassroots community activism and local and national networking in upholding a broad vision of adult and community-based education, in the face of a hostile policy climate. The authors suggest practical and theoretical lessons from their historical analysis: first, the possibilities for adult education that exist beyond the state and its apparatus; second, the need to recognize the power of the state to support or attempt to strangle adult education by controlling or withdrawing funding; third, the need for broadly based alliances across and beyond education. Drawing on critical adult education theory, the authors suggest a range of political and pedagogical actions that adult educators and their allies might take to advance adult education’s contribution to social change and social justice.