江森的回應

各位,
轉寄的是江森的耐心回應,請參考。

另外,他有可能三月會先行來台,再去中國,四月初返台一個半月,所以三月我們可能先安排大家先見個面,如何?他期待和各位再深談每次的問題。

本週日北上聲援野草莓+樂生。

Kind regards,Yu-Hsuan Lee 宇軒

From: richard.johnson61@btinternet.comTo: blue95_7399@msn.comSubject: Workshop responses.Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:01:36 +0000

Dear Lee,
Here are some responses, for the moment.

1/ Reader. The piece was originally written for and published in a teachers magazine called Radical Education in 1976. I think part of the motive was to offer a way of thinking about education different from the academic model and also from the 'useful knowledge' model. This was a time of excitement among teachers about methods and curriculum. But later, more developed versions were also for social and educational historians and sociologists. The paper was given as a presentation at the History Workshop which was a gathering of historians held annually at Ruskin College Oxford, an adult education collage. The paper was taken up primarily by adult educators I think and did influence the revival of community education in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the things I would like to do in my main lecture in Tainan is to develop the idea of Really Useful Knowledge for today. Who would benefit from RUK (or its equivalents today) - all of us I guess, but adult learners especially.

2/Class and Time. Yes, there is a criticism of The Making of the English Working Class in the paper which I have brought out more in other versions - which I will bring with me.
I don't think that the movements with which EPT dealt were fully proletarian in their social basis (except perhaps on the land and some factory districts) - though there were some proletarians in this sense. Typically, like the French revolutionaries, these were skilled workers ('artisans') who had a bit of control over their tools and labour and time, but were now threatened by capitalist development. I agree with Barrington Moore that it is not necessarily proletarians who are the most radical groups - see the peasantry in China and the 'little people' in the European and American revolutions. Having a bit of control over your labour and time and perhaps land is of course crucial in the case of adult learning. Literacy rates actually declined in Britain in the factory districts in the classic period of the industrial revolution (1780s-1820s) . My more general argument is that control of time and labour is critical for a good society where everyone can benefit from education. In Britain today there is actually a reversal in this respect with very long hours of work and low wages for many. To go back to class- yes, EPT was right that the classes of industrial capitalism are developing, but they are 'in the making rather than made.
Other periods: Well, all historical periods are of interest, though I guess I was then most interested in periods of popular politics, or attempts at counter-hegemony or popular creativity.These also tend to be the periods when adult education of the 'Really Useful Knowledge" type are strong. I am interested in the conditions that make this possible, one of which is a degree of political excitement or hope for a better world. 1848- 1880s in Britain is a period where hegemonic processes are relatively successful and there is a consolidation of newer forms of class rule, though it is also an important one for the development of state education for working-class children especially after 1870.

3. Historians questions: Yes, I have taught the mid C19 in Britain - I used to teach a social history course with the dates 1815-1870 and a specialist course on social policy over the same period including education - too. At the CCCS we madeva special study of 1880s- 1945.
Yes, I am very interested in the different formal features of ways of learning, including the role of media. Sorry if there are errors! Yes, this you are right was a 'historian's' essay primarily (I had only just joined CCCS when I wrote it! and it was based on research I did in the early to mid 1970s while I was still in a Department of Social and Economic History).

4 The Danish questions are very interesting. One important aspect of education in Britain is that nation-building played a less important role in national education than almost anywhere else in the world, certainly less than in the rest of Europe. This helps to explain the weakness of state education in Britain, especially England - even today with marketisation etc. The concern with 'subjectivities' is a a later one of mine too. In the early 1970s I had not yet read Foucault or anyway related him to the education work. I suppose however people are 'made' as subjects in a wide range of processes and discourses, including labour of all kinds (domestic and waged). In a broad sense they all have an educational aspect - though not necessarily good for human development.

5. The dilemma. This is how they expressed it at the time- we want education, for ourselves and our children, but we don't like what the churches etc are offering us, which is only about training for labour and subordination. So, says a minority, let's provide it ourselves. But it becomes a double dilemma because providing it ourselves becomes more difficult with fuller proletarianisation.

6. Forms, informality, networks etc. Again the possibility of more informal learning - play for children, discovery methods, projects, Ph.Ds!! - depends on the social conditions especially the relation of time/income/labour. Also state of public policies of course and the quality and independence of media etc etc. Maybe there IS nostalgia in the essay, though it has to be read in the context of the resurgence of forms of really useful knowledge in the 1970s and early 1980s. There was something of a revolution in curriculum and teaching methods in UK in this period of which early Cultural Studies was a part. Reading and study groups - such as those at CCCS and/or in the Womens Movement - were an important part of this. Nostalgia - this can be a dismissive word. I don't think remembering should be opposed to making a better future. It is a part of it.
There has been some work by British historians on private and family forms of education in the past. Religion is very very important in this context, especially in British history the different forms of dissenting Christianity (not Anglican or Catholic) - Quakers, Unitarians, Baptists, Congregationalists etc. They valued the edcuation of women and were democratic (no ministers or chosen by the congregation).

7. Yes, intellectual in the Gramscian sense of organiser as well as thinker. I cannot really answer briefly all the important questions that follow about how we can think about really useful knowledge today. These should be at the centre of our dialogues about education I think when I come.
Of course some of you will realise I am strongly opposed to some of the main developments in education today - and in some ways 'really useful knowledge' is the name I still give to my own attempted practice in education and what I work for in the future, for everyone of course. Detailing what this means is something I will come ready to attempt in Taiwan!! Yes, I hope you are right that this 1970s work is still relevant to different choices for our institutions.

8.' Artisan' - perhaps today I would be less critical of this term. I see I use it above. But it remains true we need to understand exactly how far people have control of their time and labour and means of production and artisan indicates a very wide range of conditions here. Yes, this is related to old-style apprenticeship too which was very different from the modern forms of 'training'

My own city - Leicester - was in the early C20 a city of skilled workers and small masters in the boot and shoe and hosiery (socks!) and engineering trades. This was also a period when adult education flourished in the city. About 17% of adult workers were in some form of education, much of it non-vocational. My own organisation - the Workers Education Association (non-vocational adult ed. for workers)- had a flourishing branch (founded in 1908) and there were Adult Schools in many communities. I think that some independence in work (or retirement!) is an important condition for adult education, and that includes the worker having time enough to teach or model for the young apprentice worker or artist. I too believe real creativity is threatened today in very many ways.

There are later re-written or reframed versions of 'Really Useful Knowledge' which do address some of the questions above. I don't know if you will be able to get hold of them, but here are the references:

1988. '"Really Useful Knowledge" 179O-185O: Memories of Education in the 198Os' in Tom Lovett (ed.), Radical Approaches to Adult Education: A Reader, Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 3 - 34.
1992 'Radical Traditions? Radical Education and The New Right' in Ali Rattansi and David Reeder (eds.), Radicalism in Education: Essays on the Politics, Theory and History of Educational Reform, Lawrence and Wishart. (Essays in Honour of Professor Brian Simon).
In application to Cultural Studies:
1997 ‘Teaching Without Guarantees: Cultural Studies, Pedagogy and Identity’ in D. Epstein and J. Canaan (eds), A Question of Discipline: Teaching Cultural Studies Westview Press .
For a slightly fuller account of the history of edcuation in the period of RUK and the argument about proletarianisation:
1976. 'Notes on the Schooling of the English Working Class' in Roger Dale, Geoff Esland and Madeleine McDonald (eds)., Schooling and Capitalism, Routledge and Kegan Paul/Open University Press, pp. 44 - 54.

Looking forward to talking. These are such good questions!

Richard