A convivial history of political adult education

What is this episode about?

When we look at the history of political education, adult political education usually takes a back seat - at best, it only comes into view after 1945. But why is that? The history of political education is often told either as the history of institutions and professions or as the history of concepts and ideas. Institutional and professional history means that the focus of this history is on the question of which structures or institutions were established in this area of education, when and how, or which legal requirements were adopted, when, or how/when/where which training for this area of education came about - and then, whether you like it or not, the school is somehow always at the center of it. But that is only one side of the story. A narrative of the history of ideas or concepts, on the other hand, is, at least in our field, aimed at reconstructing didactic concepts and ideas, but these were also quite directly focused on schools for a long time.

Paul Ciupke makes it clear - in a really good text from 2016 - that the history of political adult education can only really come to the fore through a social or cultural-historical approach. If we approach the question of how adult political education has developed or what preceded it from this perspective, then we can actually leave aside systematic training courses and established institutions for the time being and focus our attention on more informal places of public learning - such as salons, reading societies, youth castles or debating residential communities. We can talk about educational processes that were integrated into social struggles, about spontaneous actions, etc. Not only here in Dresden, we can report on life-reform experiments in which entire settlements were built around event or educational centers. This is exactly what we want to do in this lecture. We will follow Ciupke and take a look at how political adult education developed up to 1945 - and there is quite a lot to discover.

Before we get started:
The episode, like most evening school episodes, is about 30 minutes long and is based quite wensly on a text by Paul Ciupke - which we also strongly recommend for in-depth reading.

The central question is:
What can actually still be learned from the early forms of political adult education for today? Which questions existed back then and which ones can we confidently leave behind?

Who am I listening to?
The author and speaker in this episode is Prof. Dr. Anja Besand, Director of the John Dewey Research Centre and Chair of Didactics of Civic Education at the TUD Dresden University of Technology. You can find out more about her here.

We hope you enjoy it and look forward to your feedback.

Literature for further reading:

Paul Ciupke (2016): Views on the history of political adult education from the Enlightenment to the end of the Second World War, in: (Hufer, Klaus-Peter/Lange, Dirk (eds.) Handbuch politische Erwachsenbildung, Schwalbach, pp. 23-32

Uta Motschmann SOCIAL LIFE IN BERLIN AROUND 1800 online at: http://www.berliner-klassik.de/forschung/geselliges-leben-in-berlin-um-1800

Self-assessment tasks

For users of the evening school, we provide self-assessment tasks for each lecture. These tasks can be used to reconsider the contribution, to deepen your thoughts or - if you want to obtain a certificate of further education - to prepare for the course exam.

Question 1: What can be learned from the history of political adult education with regard to today's debates?

Question 2: What about sociability? We included this as a motif in our piece on the history of political adult education. What significance does conviviality have for today's political education programs? What educational programs can you think of and how could this aspect be further developed in the future?

Question 3: There are two blind spots in our history of political adult education. These are political education (if you want to call it that) under National Socialism and in the GDR. Can you fill these gaps and why would it be important to take a closer look at them?

Question 4: What surprised you in this episode of Evening School and why?

The self-assessment tasks are to be understood as opportunities for reflection and do not generally test knowledge. They are always strongly related to the corresponding lecture and therefore differ significantly.