We need your opinion

Ps year marks the 50th
Anniversary of the founding of the
Canadian Association for Adult
Education in 1935. Towards the end of
the year, CAAE’s Board of Directors
intends to issue a national declaration
on adult education as a statement of
values, a beacon to guide the Associa-
tion in our future work. A similar
statement issued in 1943 offered
guidance to the Association in its work
during the early post-war decades.

During the past year, a special

committee, based in British Columbia,
has drafted an initial version of this
declaration for the Board’s considera-
tion. We now wish to circulate this
draft widely and to invite comment
from our members, friends and
associates throughout the Canadian
community and beyond.

We ask all who are concerned with
the role of adult learning in human
development to consider this draft
declaration, to share it with Friends
and colleagues, and to copy and publish

itso that we may receive extensive
feedback. Comments on the substance
and ideas of the draft declaration,
omissions and improvements, are
particularly solicited.
Please send comments to:
Anne Ironside, President
Canadian Association for Adult
Education
29 Prince Arthur Avenue
Toronto MSR 1B2

by September 30, 1985.

 

led by learning adults.

 

A Draft National Declaration on Adult Education

Fifty years ago, the Canadian Association for Adult Education declared that the
adult education movement is based on the belief that quite ordinary men and women
have, within themselves and their communities, the spiritual and intellectual resources
adequate to the solution of their own problems.

This declaration is even more timely today. Throughout the world, gaps widen
between advantaged and disadvantaged, educated and under-educated, rich and poor. The
rapid pace of change, chronic unemployment, and social unrest threaten. Social justice and
human liberation — indeed survival — are far from assured.

Adult education can enable people. It can lead to more active citizenship, personal
growth, and social betterment. It'can help people confront the future, as well as the
present. It can help ensure that new attitudes and approaches are learned, so that the
benefits of technological advance are shared by all, in an environmentally sound way. It
can assist participation by those affected in economic, as well as political, decisions.

Canadians can shape their own political and economic destiny. They can influence,
and not merely be influenced by, decisions affecting their own lives.

To realize this vision, adult education must become a Canadian social priority.
Public adult education programs must receive adequate public support, but voluntary and
private initiatives must also be valued because, for many Canadians, they are the spark
and incentive for continuous learning. Informal learning in the community setting
requires and deserves the support of institutions and governments.

Canada can become a society in which all citizens may learn, as workers, parents,
students, consumers, community members. Canada can become a society where all
citizens have access to information, where all have opportunities to live what they learn,
where citizens alternate between the worlds of work, education and leisure. Canada can
become a society where full social participation by women, native peoples, new
Canadians, the disabled, the poor, and the unemployed, is guaranteed.

Adult education has become a worldwide movement for personal and social
transformation. The Canadian Association for Adult Education continues as a partner in
this movement, to create a humane, just, and democratic society — a learning society

 

 

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR ADULT EDUCATION

Corbett House, 29 Prince Arthur Ave., Torente, Ontario MSR 1B2