2 Social class has strongly influenced the development of

social policies about adult education. Present policy dis-

courses are a result of weakening working-class interests.

Social Class and Adult Education

Policy
Kjell Rubenson

Historically, the development of adult education has been closely linked with
the aspirations of the working class. In the early 1900s, adult education
served as intellectual weaponry in the struggle for political rights and
improved working conditions. In the 1960s adult education started to
become a concern for the state. This interest was to a large extent driven by
the first wave of human capital theory and a growing awareness of the injus-
tices of a hierarchical school system that had diminished the life chances of
many adults. At the policy table, labor unions tried to influence government
policies to become more responsive to working-class interests and aspira-
tions. By 2004 a concern for human resources development and the foster-
ing of individual learning, all in a spirit of lifelong learning, have broadly
replaced these aspirations. As adult educators, we have to ask: Why are there
drastic cuts in public funding of adult literacy and Adult Basic Education
programs? How can policymakers in North America, as in many other parts
of the world, repeatedly talk about the necessity of developing the skills and
competences that individuals need in order to be productive citizens in the
knowledge economy and then quickly turn around and decide that unem-
ployed workers need only a short training course? And why have we put our
trust in market forces for producing the education that we need to handle
the challenges that rapid social and economic changes have set?
A fundamental assumption in this chapter is that the changes we have
been observing in adult education policies are a consequence of a reduced
capacity in organizing political opposition to the influence of the capitalist
class. As Korpi (1983) points out, the difference in power resources in a
society between major collectives or classes, particularly capital and orga-

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no. 106, Summer 2005 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 15
 16 CLASS CONCERNS

nized labor, regulates the distribution of life chances, social consciousness,

and conflicts on the labor market. According to Korpi, the more developed
the organizing capacity of the labor movement, the more developed the wel-
fare state will become.
In this chapter I will address how the present policy discourse on
adult education is a result of weakening working-class interests. The dis-
cussion will start with a brief review of the debate on the breakdown of
class politics. Following this, the chapter turns to broader trends in poli-
cies of adult education.

The Breakdown of Class Politics

In their 1991 article, Clark and Lipset suggested that changes in social rela-
tions of the economy, political parties, and family had resulted in a decline
of the importance of social class. They point to a diminishing of class mem-
bers voting as a bloc and the changes in party platforms. The former is cen-
tral because elections traditionally have been the platform of the democratic
class struggle (Niuwberta, 2004). Niuwberta’s analysis reveals that a decline
of the manual labor force has driven a substantial decline in class voting in
the postwar period in almost all democratic countries.
Lipset (2004) notes the changes in the party platforms of the European
left parties, which have increasingly become socially and ideologically plu-
ralistic. In order to secure enough votes to become the ruling party, they
have chosen to appeal more to the expanding middle stratum and not con-
centrate exclusively on the left’s traditional base, industrial workers and the
poor. Following in the footsteps of New Labour in the United Kingdom, so-
called Third Way social democrats have been stressing free-market policies
and smaller government while promoting welfare policies that encourage
independence. Instead of nurturing the traditional link between unions and
the political party, the New Left has tried to distance itself from this alliance.
Pakulski (2004) makes a crucial point when he notes that accepting a
decline of the influences of class does not in any way imply the end of cap-
italism, the disappearance of social stratification, a reduction of social
inequality, the abating of social conflicts, or finally, the “end of social” or
declining relevance of political sociology (p. 139). Instead, he maintains
that the weakening of working-class organizations, particularly large trade
unions that have been the core organizations striving for class identifica-
tion, consciousness, solidarity, and political behavior among workers, will
result in an increase in inequalities. Replacing the traditional class-based
politics is, according to Pakulski and others, a rise of new politics that
involve new value preferences; new issues and concerns; new political cul-
ture with more direct involvement; new institutional forms, including the
new social movements; and new social bases. What drives this shift is a
— postmaterialist worldview that prioritizes quality of life, self-fulfillment,
— and civil liberties. Pakulski notes that politics tends to become specialized
—
 SOCIAL CLASS AND ADULT EDUCATION POLICY 17

and issue-centered in its response to a population that is increasingly being

differentiated by educational attainment and skills, gender, generation, eth-
nicity, and sexual preferences.
Similarly, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) observe that an apparent
contradiction surrounds the reality of classes in advanced societies.
Although structures of social inequality display a surprising stability, soci-
ety in general no longer perceives or politically handles questions of
inequality as questions of class. We can find the explanation in Beck’s analy-
sis (1992) of the individualization process that has accompanied the evolu-
tion of the risk society during the last three decades. Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim (2002) draw attention to how the German welfare state
brought people a relatively high standard of living and social welfare that
freed them from traditional class and resulted in the dissolution of lifeworlds
associated with class- and status-group subcultures. The expansion of edu-
cation is central in this process because education makes possible a certain
degree of self discovery and reflection. According to the authors, as the com-
mon risk of becoming unemployed increasingly stretches across groups
defined by income or education, it has become less and less possible to
relate the development of forms of solidarity in society to the historical
model of the proletarian productive worker. Consequently, trade unionist
and political modes of action now compete with individually centered legal
and medical or psychotherapeutic remedies and compensations. Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim stress that this value system of individualization is embed-
ded in a new ethics that is based on the principle of duty to oneself. Unlike
many social commentators, they maintain that this development is not an
expression of egoism and narcissism. Instead, it is about a new focus on self-
enlightenment and self-liberation as an active process for individuals to
accomplish in their own lives, including the search for new social ties in
family, workplace, and politics. With the individualization processes gain-
ing in strength, the authors believe that the traditional class society will
become insignificant beside an individualized society of employees. When
trying to address social problems, people no longer will organize along a
class model but seek temporary coalitions with different groups and camps,
depending on the particular issue at stake.

Global Trends
The global trends that this chapter describes reflect to a large degree the situ-
ation in North America. The discussion will focus on how to understand these
changes in the context of global capitalism driving a neoliberal agenda that
emphasizes individual economic responsibility rather than reliance on state
welfare and the broad developments toward a second phase of modernity in
which society is increasingly characterized by individualization processes.
As the industrialized world struggles to adjust to mounting economic
and social pressures, adult education has shed its marginal position and
 18 CLASS CONCERNS

evolved as a central policy issue. Lifelong learning is a key element of the

economic and social strategy that the European Council adopted for the first
decade of the new century (European Union [EU], 2000). Lifelong learning
has also penetrated the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-
opment (OECD), which in its first forty years more or less neglected adult
education. It was therefore a notable event when, at the end of 1998, the
OECD Educational Committee launched its thematic review of adult learn-
ing (OECD, 2003).
Two major interrelated developments are shaping the current debate on
adult education policy: (1) an erosion of the social contract and (2) a
changed relationship between education and the economy. In the late 1970s,
the political consensus that had guided government spending on welfare-
state programs began to shift (Richards, 2000). The global policy agenda
was grounded on a neoliberal ideology with an emphasis on shrinking the
Keynesian welfare state and freeing the market. The privatization trend that
cut across most OECD countries during this period required the transfer of
costs and responsibility from public or state control to private control. The
neoliberals maintain that not only does the nation-state lack the power to
resist global economic forces but also that it better serves its citizens’ well-
being if the country opens up to international market forces (Johnson,
McBride, and Smith, 1994).
In this climate the utopian ideas on lifelong education that the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pre-
sented in the early 1970s did not meet with the approval of neoliberal gov-
ernments. Following the 1972 Fauré report, Learning to Be, UNESCO’s
Institute for Education concentrated its policy and research effort on lifelong
education. The concept was one of personal development, with the empha-
sis on people making themselves rather than being made. An important issue
in the analysis was how a system of lifelong learning could reduce rather
than increase educational gaps in society. In some aspects the discussions
appear as almost a preamble to today’s preoccupation with individualization.
The expectation is that through self-evaluation, self-awareness, and self-
directed learning, humans will work toward achieving the central goals of
democracy, humanism, and the total development of self. However, Fauré’s
report also presented in utopian terms an awareness of structural issues and
a deep-rooted search for the necessary democratic conditions. The report
repeatedly stressed that a crucial weakness in societal structures is an absence
of political will, not only toward the democratization of education but also
toward the democratization of society.
Consequently, the existing social relations of production were seen to
provide a major obstacle to the true realization of lifelong learning; indeed,
lifelong learning will become a new arena for social struggle because it will
require a classless society (Vinokur, 1976). The 1970s discussion on lifelong
— education and lifelong learning became a strange mixture of global abstrac-
— tions, utopian aspirations, and narrow practical questions and remained at
—
 SOCIAL CLASS AND ADULT EDUCATION POLICY 19

the level of vague ideas; a different paradigm that reflected the new politi-
cal economy later replaced that discussion.
In an era of what Thurow (1996) calls global capitalism, characterized
by increased economic competition and rapid advances in information tech-
nology affecting the structure of the labor market as well as individual jobs,
the policy debate on lifelong learning centered almost exclusively around
an economistic worldview. The EU’s white paper on education and training
(1996, p. 1) typifies the situation when it states: “The basis of the white
paper is the concerns of every European citizen, young or adult, who faces
the problem of adjusting to new conditions of finding a job and changes in
the nature of work. No social category, no trade is spared this problem.”
To better understand the educational discourse that both the OECD
and the EU promoted and replicated in North America and Australia, it is
essential to note that the new agenda on lifelong learning was driven not
only by an economistic position but also by a neoliberal framework that had
replaced the Keynesian creed.
Adult education and training, like education in general, was to become
responsive to labor-market needs (OECD, 1989). This was part of an active
labor-market policy aimed at getting the growing number of unemployed
people off welfare and into the labor market. As Crouch, Feingold, and Saco
(1999) point out, encouraging education seems to have been a way for
many political parties to evade certain welfare commitments while offering
governments opportunities for constructive and positive action. Increas-
ingly, government policies linked welfare and social assistance programs to
individuals’ willingness to work and their readiness to undertake some form
of labor-market training program to enhance their employment prospects.
Skills training programs should focus on getting clients job ready, and wel-
fare policy should promote short welfare-to-work programs. This training
would be quite distinct from the training for highly skilled jobs, because
skilled jobs and unskilled jobs exist in quite separate labor markets.
With economic relevance becoming the key concept driving govern-
ment policies on adult education and training, business interests became
primary. The business sector had the lead role in defining what competen-
cies and skills the public adult system should produce. The state actively
intervened with the purpose of promoting closer ties between adult educa-
tion providers and business and industry. Working-class interests had little
influence in a policy climate of general suspicion of the state and a belief in
the greater efficiency of free-market forces.
Toward the end of the 1990s, policymakers had come to the insight that
although the new economy holds the promise of increased productivity and
an improved standard of living, it also introduces a new set of transitions
and adjustment challenges for society, industry, and individuals. Unmet,
these challenges could increase the permanent exclusion or marginalization
of segments of the population and exacerbate socioeconomic divisions. The
new understanding in policy circles came to affect the discourse on lifelong
 20 CLASS CONCERNS

learning and resulted in a softening of the economistic perspective. The EU

memorandum (2000) signals that a shift had started to take place. The doc-
ument, reflecting on decisions from the 2000 Lisbon European Council,
departs from the assumption that contemporary social and economic change
are interrelated and stresses two equally important aims for lifelong learn-
ing: promoting active citizenship and promoting employability. The docu-
ment states that the “EU must set an example for the world and show that
it is possible both to achieve dynamic economic growth and to strengthen
social cohesion. Lifelong learning is an essential policy for the development
of citizenship, social cohesion and employment” (p. 4).
Recognizing market failures and growing concerns about large groups
not participating fully in social and economic life, the third generation is a
shift in balance between the three institutional arrangements. The market
still has a central role, but the responsibilities of the individual and the state
are also visible. The language is one of shared responsibilities. However, a
closer reading of the text and the understanding that seems to dominate the
present policy debate might lead one to be more skeptical of what looks to
be a major shift in the public discourse on lifelong learning. Despite the
repeated reference to the involvement of all three institutional arrangements,
what stands out in recent policy documents is the stress on individuals’
responsibility for their own learning—something that the documents under-
score time after time. Recognizing that EU member states are responsible
for their education and training systems, the 2000 document—as well as
later ones—points out that these systems are dependent on the input and
commitment of a wide range of actors from all walks of social and economic
life. However, with special emphasis on the individual, the EU paper (p. 4)
states, “and not the least upon the efforts of individuals themselves, who, in
the last instance, are responsible for pursuing their own learning.”
Thus, a fundamental assumption in the present discourse on lifelong
learning is that lifelong learning is an individual project. Individuals become
responsible for making adequate provision to create and preserve their own
human capital. Investment in learning and its financing then becomes pri-
marily an individual responsibility (Marginson, 1997). The stress on the
individual responsibility closely mirrors New Labour’s so-called Third Way
program, which has come to have a profound influence on the policy plat-
form of European social democratic parties. The Third Way, although advo-
cating an understanding of the good society and promoting a balance
between state, market, and civil society, reflects the hegemonic influence of
neoliberal thinking on left-leaning governments (Ryner, 2002). Reflecting
its underlying philosophical ethos, Giddens (2000, p. 165) states, “the pre-
cept ‘no rights without responsibilities’ applies to all individuals and groups.
. . . Government must maintain a regulatory role in many contexts, but as
far as possible it should become a facilitator, providing resources for citizens
— to assume responsibility for the consequences of what they do.” The height-
— ened emphasis on the individual’s responsibility for his or her own learning
—
 SOCIAL CLASS AND ADULT EDUCATION POLICY 21

is closely embedded in a changing understanding and articulation of the

very concept of lifelong learning and is a move away from a preoccupation
with education to a focus on learning (Griffin, 1999; Rubenson, 1999).
Within the European Employment Strategy (an EU policy on job cre-
ation that links it closely with lifelong learning), the member states have
defined lifelong learning as “all purposeful learning activity undertaken on
an ongoing basis with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and com-
petence” (EU, 2000, p. 3). But to what extent is it possible to approach pol-
icy on lifelong learning fruitfully from such a broad understanding of the
concept?
The uncertainty of the state’s role is evident in the EU’s progress report
on the follow-up to its 2000 resolution on lifelong learning (EU, 2001).
First, the member states have little or no legislation specifically on lifelong
learning. Instead, it continues to appear mainly as a general principle under-
lying various separate education and training policy reforms. Second, the
EU is vague on how to finance continuing education and training. Third and
most problematic, the EU member states’ policies on lifelong learning hardly
address workplace learning. Their progress report makes many general ref-
erences to the role of social partners but makes little specific mention of
their role in stimulating participation and innovation in lifelong learning. It
does not note the fact that very unequal learning opportunities exist for
skilled and unskilled labor. What the EU policy discussion seems to forget
is that for most of its citizens the opportunities for organized forms of adult
learning have become closely linked to work. Thus, in the EU member
countries as in North America, more than half of the participants in adult
education and training attend an employer-supported activity (OECD,
2000). Consequently, if the state wants to engage seriously with the issue of
lifelong learning for all and ways to equalize opportunities for adult educa-
tion and work, it has to consider “the long arm of the job” (Rubenson, 2003,
p. 26). However, only in trade union documents can one find any direct
mention of individual rights of access to lifelong learning and the sugges-
tion that governments and employers should conceive and guarantee work-
ers’ right of access in terms of time and resources (see, for example,
European Trade Union Confederation, 2001).
Workers do not seem to be part of policymakers’ definitions of target
groups for lifelong learning. Instead, following Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s
individualization thesis (2002) we can notice that present-day policy doc-
uments present and address inequality not as a class question but in terms
of various at-risk groups (migrants, ethnic minorities, refugees, and those
lacking information, communication, and technology skills, to mention the
most commonly identified populations). In this respect most policy docu-
ments bear clear witness of the new politics and post-Fordist production
politics that this chapter discussed earlier.
A closer review of the EU progress report (2001) reveals that the Nordic
countries in particular have structures in place to help those not participat-
 22 CLASS CONCERNS

ing in adult education to overcome psychological and institutional barriers.

These include outreach measures for those least likely to participate spon-
taneously in adult education and training as well as financial aid for this
group. Programs in other countries offer much less concrete proposals for
the disadvantaged.
I will argue that we can explain the differences between adult educa-
tion policies in Sweden and most other European countries and those in
Canada and the United States by the differences in welfare-state regimes.
Thus, when we try to understand the formation of adult learning in a time
of economic and social challenges, it is important that the Nordic welfare
state, founded on working-class political power, is still in place, with its
institutional arrangements and traditions. Four elements in the Nordic wel-
fare state have profound effects on adult education.
First, the Nordic welfare-state model has been associated with an active
labor-market policy. Consequently, thinking about human capital has influ-
enced not only the special labor-market training programs but also reforms
in adult education generally (Rubenson, 2003). In accordance with the
Nordic welfare-state model, recent reforms offer quite extensive education
and training to the unemployed (often three years of general programs). The
Nordic adult education strategy is an instrument in what some call a high-
road strategy to economic competitiveness, resulting in a virtuous circle of
high skills, high productivity, and high wages (Wong and McBride, 2003).
The opposite is a low-road strategy, which assumes a bifurcated labor mar-
ket with a high-skill sector containing so-called good jobs and a large sec-
tor of low-pay, low-skill jobs. The latter tends to encourage the state to
promote adult education training programs as part of welfare-to-work
schemes, which offer short-term, low-end programs. Although this issue has
yet to arouse much debate in U.S. adult education literature, Bok (2004),
Schultz (2000), and Soni (2004) all provide stimulating discussions on wel-
fare reforms in the United States (such as the 1998 Workforce Investment
Act) and their implications for lifelong learning.
Second, the Nordic tradition of industrial relations, with its developed
corporatist structure, has fostered a tradition of collaboration between the
state and labor-market organizations. Norwegians Dolvik and Stokke (1998)
argue that contrary to common assumptions, globalization will undermine
national corporatism and that the Norwegian example suggests that rena-
tionalized cooperative practices can be a viable strategy for coping with such
pressures. This has helped develop a comparatively high degree of consen-
sus on issues like productivity, the introduction of new technology, and
training (Qvale and Øverland, 2001). The central involvement of trade
unions in adult education, at all levels of the organization, helps adult edu-
cation become part of a worker’s individual and collective identity.
Third, in contrast to the situation in most other countries, Nordic coun-
— tries have a publicly supported sector of popular adult education that partly
— can balance the strong economistic tendencies in adult education policies.
—
 SOCIAL CLASS AND ADULT EDUCATION POLICY 23

Popular adult education can be a part of the corporate state, lying at the cross-
roads between civil society and the state. The state will subsidize popular
adult education because it wants to support an enterprise that aims to make
it possible for people individually and collectively to influence their position
in life and promote commitment to participate in society’s development.
Fourth, a funding regime is one of the key policy instruments available
for influencing participation in adult education. The Nordic tradition ear-
marks funding for target groups, and this tends to compensate for the
increased costs involved in recruiting the underprivileged. In a time when
government policies in many countries seek to increase efficiency by adopt-
ing a more market-oriented approach and outcomes-based funding, the
Nordic model provides an example of an alternative funding regime that
lessens the likelihood that employers seek those easiest to recruit and more
likely to succeed (see McIntyre, Brown, and Ferrier, 1996).
It is important to note that the drive toward individualization, as out-
lined by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002), has not escaped the Nordic wel-
fare-state regime. Thus, in a fundamental shift from the traditional social
democratic position on adult education, a recent government bill from Swe-
den (2000) stresses that the individual’s needs must be the starting point for
planning social measures. The bill notes that adult education and training
has so far been too concentrated on treating the individual as part of a col-
lective with a common background and common needs. Therefore, the chal-
lenge for state-supported education and training is to cater to every
individual’s wishes, needs, and requirements. Although the language of the
Swedish reform bill strongly resembles the global ideas, note that the dis-
course is different from the neoliberal one in that the state is clearly a player.
The state allocates resources for outreach activities, counseling, availability
of courses, and financial support as the base of a state-supported infra-
structure for lifelong learning.

Concluding Note
The brief review of adult education policy tends to support Clark and
Lipset’s (1991, 2004) thesis that broader social and economic changes have
diminished the influence of class politics on adult education policy. How-
ever, all surveys on participation in adult education and training clearly
reveal that this has in no way diminished the great inequities in who enrolls.
The OECD’s international literacy survey (2000) manifests that people who
are already well educated and have high-skill jobs are the citizens of the
knowledge society. However, the document also suggests that working-class
interests still have a profound impact on adult education and training poli-
cies, particularly in the Nordic countries, and that the nation-state still is
central in determining access to learning opportunities.
The lack of a working-class interest in the political project on lifelong
learning is paradoxical in view of the well-documented centrality of work
 24 CLASS CONCERNS

in the everyday living of lifelong learning. I would therefore argue that,

contrary to some of the critics of present developments in adult education
policy (see, for example, Banal, 2000; Gustavsson, 2002), the main threat
to the utopian project of adult education may not be that an economic
rationale so strongly drives public policy on adult education but that the
political project on adult learning has lost its link to economic democrati-
zation. Instead, a progressive political project on lifelong learning must
reestablish this connection. This will demand that working-class forces can
break the present trend, which, in the words of Beck and Beck-Gernsheim
(2002), is making the class society insignificant besides an individualized
society of employees.

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KJELL RUBENSON is professor of educational studies and director of the Centre

for Research in Higher Education and Training at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia.