Adult Education and Globalization: Ettore Gelpi’s pedagogical critique

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of selected works by Ettore Gelpi (1933-2002) which were variously published between the last decade of the XXth century and the beginning of the XXIst. While these writings do not contain an organic analysis of the historical process started in the years 1989-1991 and known as «laissez-faire globalization», they do provide an accurate examination of globalization’s major consequences for society, the world of work and the field of adult education, especially in Western countries. In this part of the world, in fact, adult education has lost considerable ground. Once a factor in inclusion, upward social mobility, an increase in autonomous and critical public opinion, democratic development and intercultural dialogue, adult education is now being increasingly restructured around the concept of «employability», thus turning it into an instrument for competitiveness and flexible accumulation which is realised, as Gelpi demonstrates, to the detriment of human development.