Marie Prevost - History of Adult Education

Name	Commented On
Marie Prevost	Carlos Guerrero
Marie Prevost	Molly McGuire

   

Informal Adult Education in the 1960’s 

Marie Prevost 

Ball State University 

February 18, 2018  

 INTRODUCTION 

The 1960’s began with John F. Kennedy as president, and the United States on the verge of major social change. Throughout the next decade, changes to laws, precedence, and social opinion would sweep the nation. The country had finally recovered from the pain brought on by the Great Depression and World War 2, and adults were starting to carve their own places out in society. The impact of the 1960s on informal education for adults can still be felt today. The 1960s were the time for legislation, movements, and figure heads to come to the forefront to make change. 

HIGHLIGHTS 

The Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) (1964) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 4th of 1964. The EOA was established to improve human and financial resources and to combat poverty. This act was designed to expand educational opportunities, increase safety nets for poor, unemployed, and underemployed people, and, most importantly the EOA had a goal of eliminating poverty. (Economic Opportunity Act, 1964) President Johnson had declared war on poverty in his State of the Union address in January 1964. According to Martha Bailey and Nicolas Duquette, authors of How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding the Office of Economic Opportunity (2014), noted that this speech marked the beginning of a 5 year push by Congress to transform healthcare, housing, and most importantly, the educational opportunities offered in American schools. The EOA is important to the development of informal, adult education due to the opportunities it created. Specifically, the EOA urban development programs, employment and training programs, and tripled federal expenditures on education (Bailey & Duquette, 2014). According to Bailey and Duquette (2014, money set aside for these programs were sent to states to allow for anti-poverty programs within each district to best decide what the people needed. This would allow for one district to focus on employment and training programs while the district next door focused more on urban development. On great example of the EOA supporting adult education is the movement of funds to supporting basic adult education - or the process of teaching adults how to read and write (Economic Opportunity Act, 1964). These funds went to adults whose inability to read and write English prevented them from gaining employment - and is still being monitored today by UNESCO through the Global Reports on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) (UNESCO, 2016). By 1973, unemployment had dropped to 11 percent from 19 percent in 1964 (Bailey & Duquette, 2014) and, although EOA was disbanded from being a federal program to something left up to the states, the economic impact is still being felt today. 

The Higher Education Act of 1965, according to the Council of Opportunity in Education (COE) and National TRIO Clearinghouse (NTC) (2003) was signed into law with the purpose of expanding educational resources for universities and providing financial aid to students in secondary and higher education. This is another law that was backed by President Johnson, who spoke on the subject of higher education during an educational message in January of 1965 (COE & NTC, 2003). This act effects informal adult education specifically due to its expansion of libraries and library resources (COE & NTC, 2003). Libraries provide access to books, computers, and librarian assistants that poor communities would otherwise not have access to. This promotes self-driven learning and allows people, and adults specifically, to drive their education in the direction they choose. As well, according to COE and NTC (2003), the Higher Education Act of 1965 also expanded funds to initiatives such as poverty and community development. The development of community allowed for funding to go to programs that educated adults and combated poverty. The Higher Education Act is still enacted today, and is reauthorized every 4 to 6 years by Congress (COE & NTC, 2003). 

Finally, the Adult Education Act 1966 was “hailed as a landmark piece of legislation” according to Amy Rose in her article Ends or Means: An Overview of the History of the Adult Education Act (1991). The act, which was an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (Rose, 1991), was administered by the Office of Education to ensure success of basic adult education in the United States. It was created to provide adults who need to learn basic skills so they can function in society. Important aspects of this public law that contributed directly to informal adult education is that funding from this act, in part, went towards providing English as a Second Language programs to communities that need it. This helped immigrants to the United States learn English (Rose, 1991). Specifically, the act focused on adults who could not speak or write English, much like the Higher Education Act of 1965, as to promote an increase in employment. Subsequent reauthorizations of this Act would promote citizenship programs that helped immigrants learn English and gain citizenship so they could better assimilate into the job market (Rose, 1991). The overall goal of this bill was to improve the economic conditions of disadvantaged populations, and they did this best by increasing informal education opportunities. This act would ultimately be passed into posterity after Congress passed the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, but may of the opportunities first laid out by the Adult Education Act of 1966 are still contributing to the improvement of education today. 

INFLUENTIAL FACTORS 

The key influential factors when it comes to the aforementioned Congressional Acts would be President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Kennedy, although assassinated in 1963, generated many of the ideas that President Johnson would later use to promote the Acts. President Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union, which occurred just a few months after the death of President Kennedy, utilized Kennedy’s want to eliminate poverty in the United States as a initiation point to make the educational changes that occurred in the 1960s (Bailey & Duquette, 2014). The ultimate focus was on improving the lives of disadvantaged communities through educational opportunities. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson utilized speeches such as the State of the Union to push Congress to pass laws allowing for more funding to go to communities, community leaders, and Universities to allow for more community based programs to teach English and job-readiness skills. With the branches of government stirring up changes within communities, leaders within those communities took it as an opportunity to push for changes of their own. To be specific, Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. utilized the national focus on marginalized populations to push for civil rights for black populations through the Civil Rights Movement. 

Many people when they think of the Civil Rights Movement thing of Dr. King Jr. and Rosa Parks’ bus boycott that occurred after Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat. While this was a major contribution to the effort, the movement was so much more than just this form of protest. King, Parks, and many other organizers used education and community rallying to push for change. One specific education opportunity was the Civil Rights Movement leaders teaching adults how to protest. Prior to protesting, groups would meet to go over how people would respond to various situations, role-playing the scenarios out. For example, according to Time Magazine’s Sascha Cohen in their article Why the Woolworth’s Sit-Ins Worked (2015)  prior to the Woolworth lunch counter protests of the 1960s, groups met and practiced how to respond to abuse from patrons that did not agree with their motives. By July of 1960 Woolworth’s had desegregated their stores, and many more stores and restaurants followed them in their decision. This type of informal education allowed for a lot more than learning how to handle the results of protests - it promoted community-based learning, put education into the hands of the students, and taught adults how to handle difficult situations. Not everything in life is a lunch counter protest, but running into people that are in disagreement is, and these trainings taught important lessons to disadvantaged groups. As well, the Woolworth’s protests were so popular, according to Cohen (2014), the quickly spread to various other disadvantaged groups that worked to desegregate pools, beaches, movie theaters, and other social gathering points. The protests brought communities together and pushed community-based education to the forefront. 

With these protests came influential acts including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both ideas initiated by President Kennedy and promoted and signed into law by President Johnson (Janken, n.d.). The work of leaders like Dr. King Jr. and Rosa Parks pushed the government to desegregate the country and allow for black people to vote, without the threat of literacy tests or extreme voter ID requirements. The push by citizens to educate populations, through Woolworth’s trainings or through other venues, put major social change into work, creating equal opportunities for citizens where they once were not to be found. 

  

IMPLICATIONS 

The main focus of much of the 1960s was to push more opportunities into disadvantaged communities. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Reverend King Jr, and other Civil Rights Movement figure heads (including Rosa Parks) utilized the national focus to change the narrative to decreasing poverty, educating communities, and ultimately pushing for betterment within disadvantaged communities. Through social pushes such as Woolworth’s protest trainings and Congressional Acts that allowed for funds to be distributed towards educational opportunities in disadvantaged communities, leaders in the 1960s worked diligently towards creating equal opportunities for all citizens. Today, society still benefits from all of the work leaders did in the 1960s. Black Lives Matter, Women’s March on Washington, #ItsTime, and other protests have popped up in the United States in the last decade and all feature similar ideas to what was initiated in the 1960s - including community based education, pushing money towards disadvantaged populations, and focusing on bringing equality to the most disadvantaged populations. The work accomplished in the 1960s gave voice to disadvantaged people and those voices are still speaking loudly today. 

Table 1. Summary of the History of Adult/Community Education 

Areas Summary
Social background	People of power in communities using their voices to promote education and equality in disadvantaged populations
Highlights	Economic Opportunity Act of 1964  Higher Education Act of 1965  Adult Education Act of 1966
Influential factors	President Kennedy and President Johnson  Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Woolworth’s counter protests  Civil Rights Act of 1964  Voting Right Act of 1965
Implications	Black Lives Matter, #ItsTime, and Women’s March on Washington Protests  Elevating the disadvantaged populations to promote equality for all

  

Reference 

Bailey, M. J., & Duquette, N. J. (2014). How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding at the Office of Economic Opportunity. The Journal of Economic History, 74(2), 351–388. 

Council for Opportunity in Education & National TRIO Clearinghouse (2003) The Early History of the Higher Education Act of 1965, (pdf), A Trio History Fact Sheet, Retrieved: http://www.pellinstitute.org/downloads/trio_clearinghouse-The_Early_History_of_the_HEA_of_1965.pdf  

Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Pub L. 88-452, 78 Stat, 508; Retrieved: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg508.pdf  

Higher Education Act of 1965, Pub L. 89-392, As Amended Through Public Law 113–67, (Enacted December 26, 2013), Retrieved: http://legcounsel.house.gov/Comps/HEA65_CMD.pdf  

Janken, Kenneth R., (n.d.) “The Civil Rights Movement: 1919-1960s.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. Retrieved: 

<http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm> 

Rose, A.D., (1991), Ends or means: An overview of the history of adult education act, The National Education Information Network, Retrieved:  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.627.914&rep=rep1&type=pdf  

UNESCO (2016). 3rd global report on adult learning and education: the impact of adult learning and education on health and well-being, employment and the labour market, and social, civic and community life (PDF). Paris, UNESCO. pp. 19, 23–24. ISBN 978-92-820-1213-0.