Adult and Community Educators

Andrea Blaylock commented on Group 2 and Group 3 blog.
Angela Henry commented on Group 2 and Group 3 blog.

Contributions to research: Angela Henry (Background/Profile & Contributions), Andrea Blaylock (Perspectives & Impacts), Nichole Mann (Implications)

 Adult Educators

Group 1 (Angela Henry, Nicole Mann, Andrea Blaylock)

EDAC631

Ball State University

Introduction

            Our group was assigned a group project to highlight two adult educators who have contributed to the field of adult education. We chose Booker T. Washington and Charles Prosser. We chose Charles Prosser because he was from Indiana, and were interested in learning his contributions. We chose Booker T. Washington, because, he contributed so much into adult education, we thought it would fascinating to learn more about him.

Booker T. Washington

Background/Profile

Booker T. Washington was born April 5, 1856, and died on November 14, 1915. He was also known as Booker Taliaferro Washington: “The Great Accommodator”.

Booker T. Washington was born in April 1856 on a small farm in Hale's Ford, Virginia. He was given the middle name "Taliaferro," but no last name. His mother, Jane, was a slave and worked as the plantation cook.  Based upon Booker's medium complexion and light gray eyes, historians have assumed that his father, whom he never knew, was a white man, possibly from a neighboring plantation. Booker had an older brother, John, also fathered by a white man. In 1868, 12-year-old Booker T. Washington found a job as a houseboy in the home of the wealthiest couple in Malden, General Lewis Ruffner and his wife Viola. Mrs. Ruffner was known for her high standards and strict manner. Washington, responsible for cleaning the house and other chores, worked hard to please his new employer. Mrs. Ruffner, a former teacher, recognized in Washington a sense of purpose and a commitment to improving himself. She allowed him to attend school for an hour a day.

Determined to continue his education, 16-year-old Washington left the Ruffner household in 1872 to attend Hampton Institute, a school for blacks in Virginia. After a journey of over 300 miles traveled by train, stagecoach, and on foot Washington arrived at Hampton Institute in October 1872.

 Contributions

In February 1879, Washington was invited by General Armstrong to give the spring commencement speech at Hampton Institute that year. His speech was so impressive and so well-received that Armstrong offered him a teaching position at his alma mater. Washington began teaching his popular night classes in the fall of 1879. Within months of his arrival at Hampton, night enrollment tripled.

In May 1881, a new opportunity came to Booker T. Washington through General Armstrong. When asked by a group of educational commissioners from Tuskegee, Alabama for the name of a qualified white man to run their new school for blacks, the general instead suggested Washington for the job. At only 25 years old, Booker T. Washington, a former slave, became the principal of what would become Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

By the 1890s, Washington had become a well-known and popular speaker, although his speeches were considered controversial by some. For instance, he delivered a speech at Fisk University in Nashville in 1890 in which he criticized black ministers as uneducated and morally unfit. His remarks generated a firestorm of criticism from the African American community, but he refused to retract any of his statements.

In 1895, Washington delivered the speech that brought him great fame. Speaking in Atlanta at the Cotton States and International Exposition before a crowd of thousands, Washington addressed the issue of racial relations in the United States. The speech came to be known as "The Atlanta Compromise." Washington expressed his firm belief that blacks and whites should work together to achieve economic prosperity and racial harmony. He urged Southern whites to give black businessmen a chance to succeed at their endeavors.

Washington gained international acclaim during a three-month tour of Europe in 1899. It was his first vacation since he'd founded Tuskegee Institute 18 years earlier. Washington gave speeches to various organizations and socialized with leaders and celebrities, including Queen Victoria and Mark Twain.

Washington published his successful autobiography, Up From Slavery. The popular book found its way into the hands of several philanthropists, resulting in many large donations to Tuskegee Institute. Washington's autobiography remains in print to this day and is considered by many historians to be one of the most inspirational books written by a black American.

Perspective

Booker T. Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was one of many African Americans who contributed to adult education through the development of vocational education.  He was an educator, author, orator, civil rights leader, and advisor to many US presidents. In 1865, Washington gave a speech that called for the progression of blacks in education and entrepreneurship.  He wanted blacks in the south to respect and value the need for industrial education both from a vantage of American and African experience.  He did not believe that freedom from slavery meant freedom from working hard. African American still needed schools that allowed them to be able to work with their hands and have respect for creating something and a sense of satisfaction upon completion of that task.  He believed that the notion of education being a tool for merely teaching blacks read and write English correctly was misleading. (Booker, 2004, para. 2)

Washington studied hard in the subjects of industrial trades such as blacksmithing, carpentry, bricklaying, and agriculture at Hampton University.  While he attended Hampton, he meet Samuel Armstrong, the president of the institution.  Armstrong was a prominent educator who believed that "The instruction of youth in the various common school, academic and collegiate branches, the best methods of teaching them, and the best mode of practical industry in its application to agriculture and the mechanic arts". (Howell, 1997, para.3)  This pragmatic philosophy was adopted by Washington and molded the groundwork for his teaching to include academic classes that were coordinated closely with occupational training.  Washington believed that all training had meaning and purpose that helped solve real problems and could be used to elevate the conditions of the individual students as well as the entire community.

"I soon learned that there was a great difference between studying about things and studying the things themselves, between book instruction and the illumination of practical experience." –Booker T. Washington (Working With the Hands) (Booker, 2004, para. 5)

Impact

Booker T. Washington most valuable and well-known contribution to adult education was the establishment and development of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now Tuskegee University, for the education of African-Americans.  It served as a laboratory school for Washington's philosophy of education. While at Tuskegee, he started to recognize the deteriorating conditions of agriculture in his community.  Farmers needed assistance that was different than other industries. So, he developed two forms of education at Tuskegee that still exist and thrive today.  These two concepts where adult and extension education.  Through the development of programs specifically designed to help local farmers increase their production of food and extended adult on-campus programs, farmers were able to be more self-sufficient and productive contributors of society.

Washington was a Civil Rights leader and advocate, so it is no surprise that his efforts at helping the needs of the African Americans get into the white power structure and society were scrutinized by other black leaders.  Despite all, Washington understood that he needed to focus his efforts on the development of practical skills of African American men and women.  This was his most lasting legacy and contribution in the growth and development of vocational and technical education in the nation. Washington pioneered the way for other Historically Black College and Universities to be established to include adult and vocational education for African Americans.

Video link: Booker T. Washington

Charles A. Prosser

Background/Profile

An important figure in the vocational education movement, Charles Allen Prosser is particularly known as the architect of the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act and as the figurehead of the 1945 campaign for life adjustment education.

Prosser, born as a steelworker's son in New Albany, Indiana, received B.A. (1897) and M.A. (1906) degrees from DePauw University, the LL.B. (1899) from the University of Louisville, and a Ph.D. (1915) from Teachers College, Columbia University. He worked as superintendent in the post office, practiced as lawyer in Missouri, served as teacher, principal, and superintendent in Indiana, went to New York for doctoral studies, became, under David S. Snedden, assistant commissioner of education in Massachusetts (1910–1912), and acted as executive secretary of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education (1912–1915). From 1915 to 1945, the rest of his professional life, he served as director of the William H. Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis, interrupted only by a short but crucial period as the first executive director of the Federal Board for Vocational Education (1917–1919).

Perspective

Like many educators during the 20th century, Prosser criticized the high school curriculum with an emphasis on scholarship and college preparation.  He believed that students need a vocational education and maintained that learning, to be effective, had to be specific and directed to immediate end.  Thus, Prosser campaigned for separate secondary schools which–apart from the traditional high school–offered as many specific vocational courses or groups of courses as there were occupations. (Charles, 2015, para. 4)   His ultimate perspective was centered on the belief that schools should help students "to get a job, to hold it, and to advance to a better one."   In order for these separate secondary schools to be successful, Prosser developed sixteen basic theorems for successfully and effectively operating a vocational education program.

Contributions

Prosser wrote the influential Report of the National Commission on Aid to Vocational Education (1914), and many of the ideas and proposals he expressed there were included into the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917–federal laws that he shepherded through Congress. At Dunwoody, the school for workers he directed, Prosser made sure that the students carried out their exercises and projects under conditions as much like those of real work in industry as possible. Since he was convinced that specific industrial methods changed rapidly in the face of changing science and technology, he institutionalized in his school short-term courses for retraining and updating skills and knowledge.

In the "Prosser Resolution" of 1945 he once again accused the secondary schools of failing to prepare the great majority of children to take their place in adult society. He claimed that 20 percent of the high school population was receiving an appropriate college-entrance education and another 20 percent was being well served by vocational programs, but that the remaining 60 percent desperately needed "life adjustment education"–they needed practical training that included personality, etiquette, health, home, and family living. In essence, the resolution revived Prosser's old idea that the principal function of schooling should be the adjustment of individuals to the social and occupational circumstances in which they live. In the long run, most of Prosser's initiatives did not prevail; nevertheless, more than any other single person, he was responsible for the fact that vocational education in the United States became the most successful curricular innovation of the twentieth century.

Impact

Dr. Charles A. Prosser had a huge influence on the vocational education movement, in particular he was the architect of the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act. The Smith-Hughes Act provided funding for secondary schools to offer vocational programs. Prosser impact of vocational education set into motion a movement for academic that still exist today. His basic philosophies and social views on vocational education stresses the importance of meeting our country’s labor needs. Even though Prosser’s approach to education was favorable amongst the vocational education community, there were many who criticized his views as being class-based and catering to certain segments of society. Nevertheless, his determination and passion to see every student with a vocational education paved the way for many of the career and technical programs we have today.

Implications

Charles Prosser and Booker T. Washington are both educators whose teachings have maintained relevance over time in the field of adult and community education. Their ideas and influence are felt in multiple areas with continuing implications for the direction of the field of adult education. From each educator, we received both practical and ideological frameworks that influence how we view and execute adult and community educational programs today.

One major piece of Prosser’s legacy to the field of adult and community education was his impact on vocational education legislation. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, originally targeted to expand secondary school programs for students who were not proceeding toward postsecondary degrees, has had a long term impact on legislation related to adult and community education. Prosser, in his role as the executive secretary of National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, was a major lobbyist for the Smith-Hughes Act and was a major voice in its development by legislators Hoke Smith and Dudley Hughes. The Vocational Education Act of 1963 added more freedom for the states to allocate funds to vocational programs as needed. These changes, along with the original legislation, provided the basis for the current Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006. This legislation provides funding specific to special populations that are both statistically likely to utilize vocational education programs based on factors such as disability status, English proficiency, or economic status. (Carl D. Perkins Act of 2006, sec. 3) With the Smith-Hughes Act repealed in 1997, the Carl D. Perkins Act is the most direct descendent of Prosser’s work to provide funding for career and technical education. (Smith-Hughes Act, enotes.com)

When working to pass the Smith-Hughes Act, Prosser described vocational education as the “preparation to be intelligent producers of the goods of life,” with the goal of general education being to become “intelligent consumers.” (Hillison, 7) The Carl D. Perkins act in all incarnations was focused on just this premise. By targeting the needs of special populations and seeking out ways to maximize the ability of the states to support students most at risk, Prosser’s interests for the future of adult education, with more students able to become both intelligent producers consumers is closer to being realized. Perkins funds are typically directed toward educational programs that feed economic development, training workers to meet the technological and critical thinking needs of the changing workplace. As we experience economic shifts away from a manufacturing economy, more fields fall under the umbrella of career and technical education. Prosser kicked off a legislative interest in creating jobs through education and a respect for career based education as a viable path to economic recovery. As we continue toward developing adult education programs specifically targeted at career training, the legacy of the Smith-Hughes Act and Prosser’s involvement in it will continue to be part of how policies related to those programs are legislated and funded.

Prosser also influenced the future of adult education with his sixteen theorems on vocational education, which, along with his involvement with the Smith-Hughes Act, played a major role in his reputation as the father of vocational education. Attempts to update Prosser’s theorems have largely been deemed unnecessary, with the original theorems holding up as a philosophical basis for vocational education policy. (Prosser’s sixteen theorems) Most of Prosser’s theorems fall into three basic themes: 1) Vocational students should learn in a way that is fundamentally similar to what they will be doing in the workforce; 2) Each student and community is unique, and educational programs should allow for those differences; and 3) Educational programs must be well supported to be worth executing. These themes have important implications for how we structure adult and community education today. They express that that adult education programs do not work when put into one size molds, but are most effective when the program provides students with an educational structure that respects them, adapts to their needs, and is relevant to the skills that are needed in their communities using the tools available in their communities. Through Prosser’s legislative legacy in the Carl D. Perkins Act, we have looked toward what it will take to meet economic and social needs within vocational education as determined by the states. Both human resources, such as advising staff and field experienced instructors, and material resources, such as equipment fundamentally similar to that available in the local workforce, are increasingly considered essential to the success of career and technical programs. Even almost 100 years later, Prosser’s description of what is needed for a successful career and technical program is relevant to policy and curriculum development is in line with the fundamentals of many formal adult education and training programs. The sixteen theorems are generally considered a sound structure for vocational education, which means that we can expect that students and educators alike will be familiar with how Prosser’s philosophical framework relates to their programs. Many, especially students, will not know Prosser’s work directly, but when a program does not incorporate the themes his theorems imply, it will feel like something is missing. Prosser’s theorems are the structural supports of career education, which makes them inseparable from the field of adult education as a whole in today’s economic and educational reality.

            During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of the same educational philosophies that Prosser was presenting to legislators were also being espoused through a different lens by Booker T. Washington. Washington’s experiences as a person born a slave who later reached the heights of his profession by founding the Tuskegee Institute provided a practical base regarding the educational needs of adult learners that would contribute beyond his most well-known scope, the education of post-Civil War African Americans. Washington’s practical viewpoint of education is philosophically in step with Prosser’s theorems, suggesting that the needs of a community are just as relevant to educational policy and planning as the intellectual curiosity of the student population. According to Stocker (2007), “His insistence on the importance of an industrial education did not mean that he felt African Americans were incapable of mastering scholarly subjects. Washington simply believed that there were far more useful or relevant subjects to teach than those his critics were encouraging. According to Washington, ‘One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there an analysis of Greek sentences. The community may or may not at that time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel the need of bricks and houses and wagons.’” (Quoting Washington, 1968) In short, Washington understood that providing general and liberal education is of value, but does not always match up with the needs of the community. A persistent reality that adult education programs are more often designed to serve a functional role for students and the larger community maintains the relevance of Washington’s message that adult education is how a community ensures that it will have enough “bricks and wagons.” In planning and executing adult education programs, the needs of the community are going to be a driving force in curriculum development. It will also be a primary factor in the buy in that a program receives in terms of funding and equipment.

            A big topic of conversation in the field of adult education is how to better serve minority populations, an area that Washington’s ideas have strong implications for addressing. In the United States, 31% of African Americans and 50% of Hispanic Americans start at community colleges. (Affordability and transfer, 2011) As a major provider of career based non-degree certificates and certifications as well as associate degrees for adult learners, policy makers at the community college level should be interested in what Washington’s legacy looks like at their institution. Many of the people covered under Perkins legislation-people with disabilities, single parents, non-native English speakers, displaced homemakers, etc. - face the same types of hurdles that Washington sought to address with his work in the African American community. He expected that an equivalent number of African Americans were capable of academic success, but saw their social position as necessitating a different approach to meet their needs. Most educators are well aware that when a population has basic needs that aren’t being met, it is unlikely that they will show an interest in pursuing higher education credentials that will not result in employment. As a home base for meeting those “right now” needs, adult education can both address the community and personal needs related to employment and academically prepare students to take the next step if they express interest in pursuing further academic attainment. Like Prosser, Washington felt that giving students a chance to learn by doing in an environment similar to the environment they will be working in is ideal. In addition, Washington felt that African Americans benefitted from being part of an integrated community, and that learning a skill was part of taking responsibility for their collective future. (Stocker, 2011) While some of Washington’s ideas aren’t as relevant to the racial climate of education today, his assertion that the first step in an integrated society is the education of its people is a big part of the platform of those addressing African American issues related to education. Administrators and policy makers looking at the needs of racial and ethnic minorities need to take an involved look at what that minority group looks like in their area, and at whether those groups are homogenous or more distributed in terms of economic standing an educational level. Washington was seeing a large number of people coming from a situation of economic, social, and educational inequality, and he recognized that this would impact which approach would best advance his vision for academic success in Tuskegee. Today’s educators need to the same, recognizing the social and political barriers that stand in the way of target populations and addressing how those barriers can be managed to open up the doors to additional educational opportunities for students who may not have had access before.

Table 1. Summary of Adult Educators

	Booker T. Washington	Charles Prosser
Time Period	1856-1915	1871- 1952
Background	Bi-racial, diversity	Promoted vocational education
Profile	Married twice, one daughter and two sons, earned Bachelors at Hampton Institute, and principal at Tuskegee University	Received a BA and MA from DePauw University, LLB from University of Louisville, PHD from Teachers College from Columbia University
Perspectives	Vocational education was essential to the progressive learning for African Americans	Advocate for vocational education for secondary schools
Contributions	Delivered the speech the “The Atlanta Compromise” First leader at Tuskegee Institute, Published biography “Up From Slavery”	Father of Vocational Education, architect of the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act
Impact	Establish the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now Tuskegee University, where African American could get a vocational education with focus on farming and agriculture	Developed 16 basic theorems that set the standards and principles to effective and successful vocational education Smith-Hughes Act 1917
Implications	Tied educational opportunities to community needs Opening educational opportunities to at-risk populations is a critical challenge of adult education	Legislative legacy of the Smith-Hughes Act is the Carl D. Perkins Act, which provides funding to the states for career and technical education 16 Theorems serve as a philosophical foundation for adult education programs

References

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http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109s250enr/pdf/BILLS-109s250enr.pdf.  

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