Nichole Mann-Social Responsibility as a Theme in Adult and Community Education in the 1940s

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The 1940s was an interesting and complicated period of time worldwide, and the field of adult and community education experienced major shifts during this time. With World War II dominating the cultural, political, and social climate of almost every nation, a real growth in adult education as a field was primed to begin. While the focus of this overview will be on the United States, worldwide changes occurred in areas that were of interest in adult and community education at that time. Social justice was being more intensely examined within education overall, and the economy was taking a primary role in how we approached educational policy. Civil rights and social justice staples like sit ins, women’s rights activities, and anti-war protests, most commonly attributed to the 60s and 70s, were in full swing in the 1940s, spurred by the inability to ignore the level of need that people were experiencing in the wake of the Great Depression, through World War II, and leading into the Cold War. An interest in social justice and civic responsibility on the part of both educators and adult students was one of the major themes that I saw over and over again as I reviewed the climate of adult education in the 1940s.

In the 1930s, religious organizations’ attempts to address the needs of their members emerged as a driver for religious based adult education. As the Great Depression transitioned into World War II, the Catholic Worker Movement was developing in New York, becoming a space for adult learning, especially for women, as described by Parrish and Taylor (2007). The needs of the poor and unemployed fed a culture of education within the Catholic Church that encouraged women who were previously funneled into religious pursuits to instead channel energy into social needs. (225) The Protestant Social Gospel Movement addressed similar concerns, but addressed them through more political avenues rather than through on-the-street, education based efforts. The Catholic Worker newspaper had a circulation of over 180,000 by 1940, and by that time had begun to take on a social function as well as providing a product, assisting with feeding, clothing, and advocating for members of the community. (226) In their development of an oral history of women and learning in the Catholic Workers Movement, Parrish and Taylor note that work, education, and travel were some of the reasons that women traveled to New York to work on The Catholic Worker, and gained useful and practical life experience and skills in the process. (231) While the Catholic Worker Movement provided a more informal, on the job style of education, this movement is one example of how the service learning format was valuable to the development of adult education in the social climate of the 1940s.

The Carnegie Foundation was already playing a significant role in the future of adult education by the 1940s, and Eduard Lindeman, a member of the Carnegie Corporation’s advisory board on adult education, was a key player in developing and spreading the view that adult education was part of the social contract, necessary for a democratic society to thrive through active participation and educated discussion. Other leaders in education during this time, such as Dorothy Hewitt, Lucy Wilcox Adams, Myles Horton, and John Studebaker, echoed the idea that civic education was part of adult education and necessary for an informed citizenry. (Imel 2012) The University of Virginia Extension Division described 28 projects driven by adult education programs and designed to provide education within the community in a statewide study of civic engagement between 1941 and 1946. (10) Both formal and informal community education played an important role in how education was perceived and the nature of educational programs, shifting not just the type of education that adults received, but the goals of that education.

The University of Washington Department of Professional and Continuing Education has also examined how their programs were impacted by the political and social climate of the 1940s. The changes to the economy, with a shift to a manufacturing based economy and a focus on the role of adult education after World War II, the social and economic climate was very much in favor of an examination of how adult education fit into the future of the United States. Adult education was more than a side project; people were seeking out opportunities to pursue education and better prepare for the postwar era. According to the University of Washington, “Adult Education was prominent among the University’s postwar educational objectives, in anticipation that veterans—especially married veterans—would want to continue their education while working full time.” (3) During the 1943-44 academic year, the University addressed those and other interests of adult learners by creating the Division of Adult Education, complete with a Department of Correspondence Study and Extension Classes-a precursor to today’s online programs for working adults. By 1948, adult education programs at the University of Washington had been migrated to the Center for Adult Education, a distinct facility designed to service the needs of adult learners. Multiple divisions were developed to merge the needs of adult learners with the benefits of the college environment. Speakers, courses, and programs centered around areas of public interest such as earthquakes (a lecture series on the topic became popular to the point that they didn’t have space for all of the people who signed up after a major earthquake), the situation in Europe and the subsequent Cold War, and the needs of returning veterans. (University of Washington) The world around them was a source of endless interest to adult learners, and the way they learned had changed drastically, leading universities to take steps to accommodate adult learners in new and innovative ways.

            The big question in any review of history is what to do with it. The climate of adult education in the 1940s is as relevant today as it ever was, because there is a precedent for social justice as a driver for education. Ultimately, adult students are functioning within their context, and we’ve seen several similarities in context over the past decade. With unemployment at record highs, we saw programs such as TAA (Trade Adjustment Act) driving students toward continuing educational pursuits that may have been abandoned or never examined in the more stable economic climate of the 1980s and 90s. People who were children when campaigns like Rock the Vote were introduced are becoming adult learners, but are also becoming instructors and administrators. Just like in the programs developed in the 1940s, there is a component of civic responsibility and role of an educated electorate that is very present in the minds of educational policy drivers. Likewise, we are seeing veterans who have been overseas for significant periods of time in numbers again, but they are a different type of veteran than colleges began preparing for in the 1940s. We are seeing veterans who were in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom going back to college. Between the wars in Iraq an in Afghanistan, veterans who joined in peacetime may have now spent significant portions of their lives in combat zones. We are also seeing military spouses, and sooner than we would think, we’ll be servicing significant numbers of adults who were brought up in households where both parents were active duty military. The 1940s provides some of the framework that we’ll need to draw from to meet the needs of veterans and their families who are obtaining formal education as nontraditional students. We are also seeing an increase in community programs for veterans with formal and informal adult education components as more young people leave military service and seek to re-acclimate to civilian life. While veterans’ services is not the only area where the 1940s gives us useful material to draw from, it’s certainly one that is relevant to the current social context.

            A comprehensive history of education for an entire decade is a daunting task, but a good place to start is to identify the priorities of adult educators during that time. For the period between 1935 and 1950, service to others was one of the most important, if not the most important, areas of attention of adult education programs. Students from all walks of like didn’t just want to learn for their own sake, but also for the sake of the greater good of those around them. People were willing to travel great distances, like the women involved with Catholic Workers Movement, and take effort above and beyond what was considered normal at the time, like the soldiers who enrolled in correspondence courses, to obtain an education and do something good with it. The needs of the people around them made adult learners hungry to solve the issues they saw in the world. Educators responded to that, and people like Eduard Lindeman used their positions within educational think tanks, universities, and community organizations to cultivate ideas that they had been developing since the 1920s into full fledged educational advances. As we undergo a shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, begin the process of extracting from a major military operation, and recover from the recession, he similarities between our cultural climate and that of the 1940s suggests that now is the time for us to reexamine some of the things that changed education during that decade and see how we can use the same philosophies to serve the needs of adult learners.

	Main Ideas
Social Background	Post-Great Depression World War II Social justice/civic responsibility as a focus Unemployment and poverty at high levels
Highlights	The Catholic Worker Movement Civic engagement projects Adult ed programs targeted at veterans Correspondence learning
Influential Factors	Carnegie Foundation Eduard Lindeman Dorothy Hewitt Lucy Wilcox Adams Myles Horton John Studebaker
Implications	Civic responsibility integrated into education Veterans programming

References

Imel, S. (2012). Civic Engagement in the United States: Roots and Branches. New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education, (135), 5-13.

Parrish, M. M., & Taylor, E. W. (2007). Seeking Authenticity: Women and Learning in the Catholic Worker Movement. Adult Education Quarterly: A Journal Of Research And Theory, 57(3), 221-247.

University of Washington Department of Professional and Continuing Education. World War II Transforms and Expands Adult Education: New Industries, Jobs and Students Reflect Changing Needs-The Fourth Decade: 1940-1950

Retrieved 2/6/2015 from http://www.pce.uw.edu/uploadedFiles/Centennial/1940-1950-uwpce-our-history.pdf