Learning landscapes in Europe: Historical perspectives on organised adult learning 1500-1914

Abstract

This paper explores the history of ‘socially organised adult learning’ in Europe. All too often, the historiography of adult learning is compromised by hagiographies of well-remembered
organisational innovations that mark the standard national histories of ‘adult education’ in different European countries. As is the case with the history of ‘education’, as the ‘history of schools’, the history of ‘adult education’ is likewise largely narrated from the perspective of those social institutions that refer to themselves, and are recognised by others, as constituting national traditions of ‘adult education’. From the perspective of a critical history of socially organised adult learning, dominant contemporary discourse on ‘adult education’ reduces historical analysis and description to under-theorised categories of specific forms of institutionalised forms of ‘adult education’, which have developed since ‘nation states’ first engaged in the organisation of ‘education’ in the early nineteenth century. Recent interest in trans-national history has also tended to reinforce the focus on nation states as the unit of analysis concerning policy questions. These approaches have largely failed to capture cross-cultural influences at work in the historical development of organised adult learning, particularly prior to the establishment of nation states
in the 19th century, and have also failed to address the historical contributions of nonstate actors, such as political, social, and religious movements, to the organisation of adult learning.