Thesis for Ed.D. at University of Toronto, 1994.
CHAPTER 1 - RESEARCH STANCE
D'Arcy Martin
This study is Canadian.207 It reflects more of Ontario than of the Atlantic region, more of the private sector than the public sector, more of English Canada than of Quebec, but the information and perspective are shaped here.
This may seem simple, but in the context of writing on adult education, it needs to be stated. While the "passionate educators" who started the adult education movement in Canada were nationalist, the American influence on adult education research has been considerable. In the context of writing on popular education, it also needs to be stated. Much of the literature in this area is either directly or indirectly derivative of Third World experiences. And in the context of writing on the working class, it also needs to be stated. The influence of British writing on working class culture and history is so powerful now in English Canada that it takes a conscious effort to work from our own experience out. While I try to remain open to these and other constructive contributions to this study from outside Canada, I will emphasize Canadian experience and literature.208
While sifting carefully the intellectual resources from elsewhere, some imports can be discarded outright. For many Canadians their imagery of unions comes from the United States. In particular the link to corruption and violence, associated with the Teamsters and the Seafarers International Union, has been imported.209 In a comparative perspective, it is of interest to consider how the Canadian case can be illuminated by experience elsewhere, and what the Canadian case has to offer to those in other countries engaged in union education.
In the United States, land grant colleges provided educational service to farmers, which were extended into labour education by unions struggling for access and recognition. Today in the U.S., there are many labour studies programs in universities, where unions participate actively and cooperate with full-time academic staff in every phase of the project. In ventures like the To Educate the People Consortium, academics have initiated a humanities-based curriculum for unionized workers, in collaboration with their unions.210 Academics have also administered, co-taught and even directly led the more limited "tool courses" where the skills of front-line union representation are developed.211 The fruit of this process is the Labor Studies Journal, a regular forum for worker educators based in the colleges and universities to discuss their experiences of teaching unionists.212
In Britain, a similar forum is the Industrial Tutor213 at Northern College. Based on the work of the Workers' Educational Association and Ruskin College,214 there is a tradition of liberal arts education for unionists, and of academic involvement in basic union education.215
In Canada, unions have refused to "contract out" the education of their members to post-secondary institutions. They regard education as an integral part of their representation and service of members. In Canada, all internal courses are subject to the accountability and discipline of other union functions like grievance processing and collective bargaining. Union education defends its complete autonomy from the formal education system. When unionists seek to develop their level of general education, or to enhance their vocational skills, their unions try wherever possible to provide or control such programs directly, or at least to regulate the process.216
The stance of Canadian union educators is comparable to that of radical educators in Britain during the nineteenth century.217 Personally, however, the major influences on my thinking have been more Latin American than American or European. Whether through my learning from Rick Arnold, by travel in the area, or in dealings with Latin American exiles and visitors to Canada, I continue to draw on the well of social and educational wisdom which Latin America represents.218
This link is particularly important for remaining aware of the inequalities of educational resources on a global scale. As Ettore Gelpi of UNESCO has observed:
"Individual states and the international community are now faced with the responsibility of finding new forms of balance to remedy the growing disparities existing in education, aggravated by the concentration of information processing facilities (95 per cent of computers are found in the industrial countries, 3 per cent in Latin America, 1.6 per cent in Asia and less than 0.5 per cent in Africa) and by living conditions (47 per cent of the world population, represented by the developing countries most lacking in economic resources, have access to only 5 per cent of total world production)."219
The emphasis on disparities should not minimize the extraordinary contribution made by Third World countries to the adult education field. Both in philosophical and practical areas, the popular education experiences of the Third World are a key reference point for this study.
Through the International Council for Adult Education, I have had exposure to European, African and Asian approaches to workers' education, and these have enriched my thinking.220 Through the Canadian Labour Congress, I had a brief study tour in Europe and a teaching assignment in Belize, both related directly to trade union education.221 Through the Doris Marshall Institute, I have had access to popular education experience in Southern Africa, France, Hong Kong and Malaysia.222
But in the end I live and work in southern Ontario, where I was born and raised. My audience in this study is primarily Canadian. In my work and in my writing, I am proposing an educational practice that will strengthen the "popular civil society" in Canada.223 In my view, this object has the labour movement as a central factor. Indeed, I suggest that the organizational core of the popular civil society is the labour movement.