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