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Editor's Letter - April 2008
“Even adult courses that have nothing to do with environmental education make people more sensitive to environmental issues”
In April 1993, NIACE published Learning for the Future: Adult Learning and the environment, a policy discussion paper intended to stimulate debate about how to develop ‘more and better opportunities for formal and non-formal environmental education for British adults’. The report looked at prevailing levels of activity and identified a series of developments that it considered desirable or necessary in the transition to a more sustainable society.
Fifteen years on, we asked John Field, convenor of the working party that produced the report, and Mark Walton, Head of environmental organisation Every Action Counts, to reflect on how far we have come since and what challenges remain if the objectives set out in the report are to be met.
The opportunities for adult learning are clear but daunting. People need to know and understand a lot more if they are to make the changes to their behaviour required for long-term sustainability. Often, the environmentally sensitive option is not immediately evident, and unmuddying the water here is a significant challenge. But there are, Field believes, ‘good grounds for hope’.
There has been a steady development of interest in specialist environmental organisations, and people are keen to locate their special interest within the wider picture. They want to make a difference and giving them at least some of the resources they need to do so is an important task for adult education. As Field notes, even courses that have nothing to do with environmental education make people more sensitive to environmental issues.
It is in all our interests that adult education has the opportunity to rise to the challenge, but the erosion of spaces in which publicly funded environmental adult learning can be promoted is, Field says, ‘distinctly unhelpful’.
As Mark Walton observes, ‘empowerment’ is a current government buzzword across a range of policy areas. But effective empowerment requires local and affordable access to information and the development of new skills. There is too little recognition, Walton thinks, of the skills needed by individual citizens, and the voluntary and community sector, to enable them to play their roles in delivering sustainable communities.
This neglect is further cemented in the Government’s informal adult learning consultation which, Walton observes, makes no mention of environmental skills. Adult education has always had to fight for a share of resources, John Field writes, and in the case of environmental learning the evidence base is strong, even given ‘existing constraints’. Adult educators can contribute greatly to the development of an environmentally sensitive, participatory citizenry, but the ongoing decimation of publicly supported spaces in which they can do this makes the development of a genuinely sustainable society less and less likely.
As ministers propose to split the Learning and Skills Council into two funding bodies – one for 14-19 year olds and one for adult skills – we have to hope that someone in Government is listening.
Paul Stanistreet Editor, Adults Learning
