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ACE 1 aims to provide opportunities to improve the knowledge, skills and quality of life for adult Australians. ... ACE increases opportunities especially for adults with special needs who are under-represented in employment and training, (MCEETYA 1993, 4).
No longer can whiteness, maleness or heterosexuality be taken as the ubiquitous paradigm, simultaneously centre and boundary (Ferguson 1990, 10).
This paper represents work in progress on the theme of the subject in adult education. It is concerned with situating theories of learning and adult education in the context of the raced, gendered and classed conditions of learners' lives. In particular I draw on notions of community education currently circulating in Australia, but I believe my points are reflected in the broader literature on adult education. McIntyre (1995, 178) drawing on Raymond Williams's work notes that community seems to lack any negative or opposing term. Furthermore Australia's fourth sector, adult community education, seems to have displaced the term adult education in a 'communitarian discourse (which) imposes a sense of harmony and unity in the face of disharmony and fragmentation' (McIntyre 1995, 181).
Agreed features of this sector include: a learner-centred and consumer driven philosophy; responsiveness to (local) communities; accessibility and inclusiveness with particular reference to specific target groups; diversity of offerings, providers and pathways to work; and flexibility especially in terms of delivery issues such as time, place, methods and entry/exit levels (Kelly Associates 1997, 16-18). But these features are problematic and I have concerns about the degree to which they implicitly suggest that ACE meets all needs. My concerns are more sharply focused by the question Who is the adult in adult education?
To use Patti Lather's (1996) expression, I want to 'trouble' that adult body in ways which will help me to understand the ongoing formation of adult education as a discipline and the positioning of Australian ACE within that discipline. While the scope and possibilities of this work are too large to be fully debated here I want to use this paper as an opportunity to explore the contradictory and problematic aspects of an education system which frames learners in terms of a relation of difference.
a stable self modelled on conceptions of intentional and autonomous decision making and rational action emanating from these decisions
a self defined in terms of reified concepts of adult development and linear models of maturation
understandings of identity which are constrained by unitary categories (female/ male, or Aboriginal /non-Aboriginal, or able-bodied/disabled) rather than the cross-hatched ways (for example white-able-bodied- heterosexual-fe/male self) in which we live our lives
the absent presence of whiteness as the invisible norm.
The writers I mention here challenge the ideals embodied in the white (male) western canon and as I understand it they have been doing this since well before poststructural theorising became prominent in the academy. Yet in the process of decentring the western canon they warn of the erosion of any 'foundation' upon which marginalised peoples might establish a claim for changing the ways in which imperialism, colonialism and racism continue to distribute resources to the 'mythical norm ... usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure' (Lorde 1996, 163). In terms of feminist politics many women writing within the broad disciplines of postcolonialism and cultural studies question whether it can be guaranteed that the assumptions of a (white) feminist politics will afford a better life for people of colour of either sex (Sandoval 1991, 4). They warn against a premature closure of identity around gender politics indicating that sexism is not the only practice which constrains their lives.
Mohanty (1995, 74) proposes that treating women as an abstract category promotes the disappearance of race from the frame. Similarly Brah (1993) points to the problem of generating hierarchies of difference by reminding us that difference need not necessarily lead to division; that experience is not constituted solely within a single oppression and that cultural difference can be appropriated to build boundaries (see also Mohanty 1995, 78) as much as it might form alliances. When a politics of difference becomes the ultimate marker of subjectivity these writers warn of the many traps awaiting the theorisation of the subject.
The issue of the inadequacy of reified categories has been taken up by many white women as well. For example Spelman declares
no woman is subject to any form of oppression simply because she is woman; which forms of oppression she is subject to depend on what 'kind' of woman she is. ... That she is subject only to sexism tells us a lot about her race and class identity (Spelman 1988).
But Spelman's insights are not the basis of dominant strands of feminist thought and the conflation of the differences among women to the one dimension is common in the adult education literature. This practice occurs as a collapsing of difference onto the generic woman student (Shore 1997, forthcoming) or as a conflating of difference-with-gender-with-women as exemplified in Edwards and Usher's (1996) paper on narratives and adult education. Whiteness tends to be an absent presence in these debates; always there yet never acknowledged. Like Roman (1993) I want to foreground the fact that 'white is a colour!'.
My interest is in the tactics, manoeuvres and processes which covertly construct the (white) subject of adult education and the implications this has for the formation of the emerging discipline. To this extent the project has a different orientation from a project which seeks to decentre whiteness. I propose that we need to make whiteness more visible, to amplify the silenced discourses in order to track the ways in which they covertly frame the discipline and pedagogic practice. My only reservation in adopting this approach is that it does not result in the reinscription of theoretical practices which stem from the 'mythical norm'.
An additional dimension of my project is to understand how such theorising might be explored in the context of Australian adult education. In brief, questions of 'race' and difference are inflected in our colonial relations with England, our colonising relations with Papua New Guinea, our lengthy occupation of Aboriginal land, our contentious history of immigration practices and particular inflections of gender and femininity/ masculinity embedded in Australian subjectivities.
I want to examine how these issues are played out through particular tactics which result in commonsense categories of adult education which at one and the same time elide and normalise whiteness. In parallel work relating to this project I have proposed a series of five categories commonly adopted within Australian literature to describe adult education provision. In brief these categories include the construction of participants as equal partners in learning; the learner as adult rather than child; the theoretical positions informing provision for example radical, critical, feminist and/or competency-based perspectives on learning; the context in which provision takes place, exemplified in the descriptions of 'the' community, technical colleges, workplaces, and so on; and finally the range of social and cultural groups identified in government policy as the target for special programs in ACE.
In this paper space is limited therefore I will only address the latter category and examine how the construction of this category operates to normalise a particular style of 'white' adult education practice.
public policy, planning and resource allocation settings when 'ACE' is used loosely and interchangeably to describe a group of clients, a learning philosophy, a category of provider, an educational sector and a type of course.
Within this context the concept of target groups with special needs is a core tenet of Australian policy. It rests on the assumption of a robust centre and a struggling margin. The current Australian ACE policy identifies the following categories as adults with special needs who are underrepresented in employment and training:
people without social and functional skills in English language, literacy and/or numeracy
people with disabilities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
people not in the paid workforce
people who are geographically or socially isolated
people without post-secondary education
low income people
immigrants and those people of a non-English speaking backgrounds
This list operates in concert with discourses of multiculturalism and disadvantage to represent ACE as a home for those people excluded from Lorde's (1996) 'mythical norm'. Those people represented by the target groups are invited to participate in ACE programs precisely because of their difference from the norm, their Other status. In community education provision, to identify target groups such as those listed in the National Policy on ACE (MCEETYA 1993) means these groups count more only in the sense that they are framed as 'special', and I would argue that framing includes a notion of 'deficit' in the trappings of white (male) knowledge. Their visibility is precisely a function of not being white, male, employed, or able-bodied.
But the offer of inclusion, like multiculturalism, is based on a structural ambivalence — the simultaneous operation of two conflicting wishes — which does not overturn the self/Other binary (Ang 1996). In speaking of Australia's immigration practices particularly with 'Asian' countries Ien Ang (1996, 46) notes 'we let you in despite/because of your difference' because, ultimately 'we want your difference'. Although as Ang points out in terms of immigration it is 'not just any difference' which is desired. Only particular kinds of difference are welcome. I suggest that these issues are also apparent in adult education provision and I contend that structural ambivalence is a central feature of adult community education. The 'offer' to participate in community education is tied up with tolerance and differential treatment accorded to the individual and to social and cultural collectives. The move to include the Other is simultaneously a move to include and resolve their difference; it ignores its assimilationist effects and at the same time seeks harmony in the move. The implications for adult education are I think, quite significant. The Other — be they community groups, individual women, unemployed people, Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders, or even proponents of a particular theoretical tradition (for example feminist women), are invited 'home' to adult education but they must act according to the rules of the (master's) house or risk being evicted. These house rules are being established within the context of an emerging disciplinary framework. While some of the rules are explicit, and I will elaborate on these in later papers, my main concern is with the silenced discourses of whiteness and the degree to which these discourses frame what is and is not legitimate adult education.
Policy frameworks often make use of equity categories as a means of ensuring access for certain disadvantaged groups and to a certain extent they have been successful in this endeavour. For Cameron McCarthy (1995) however, this kind of reductionist identity politics, represented by the 'inclusive' list presented above, operates from a shrunken definition of humanity and ignores the production of white identities. Ien Ang (1995) believes this type of politics of inclusion results in assimilation — a desire to erase major identity markers and promote a homogenous set of cultural values and beliefs which fall in line with current mainstream patterns. Ang's solution to this is a politics of partiality which holds that 'feminism (and I would add adult education) can never ever be an encompassing political home' (1995 73).
it is not too much to hope for a future in which we can recognise differences without seizing them as levers in a struggle for power. But making this future must involve us all. Men cannot dissociate themselves from 'women's issues', straight people cannot ignore the struggles of gay and lesbian people, and white people cannot declare themselves indifferent to racial politics. It is too easy for 'sympathetic' self-effacement to become another trick for quiet dominance (Ferguson, 1990, 13).
I contend that examples of sympathetic self-effacement often go unnoticed because in adult education much of the dominant literature operates from a stance which desires to make the Other visible. This involves legitimating from the centre a space in which the other can speak — where the other gets to operate or be visible only because of the largesse of the centre. I contend that issues such as gender and poverty as well as racialised experiences need to be foregrounded in adult education because they matter — not because they are part of a campaign to make the Other visible. Whiteness needs to be foregrounded too, but as I have said it is a fugitive literature and my academic investigations more often than not bump up against silence and invisibility, rather than clarity and focus. Even so this literature on 'whiteness', fugitive as it is, has had a profound impact on how I think through issues of policy and pedagogy 5 . Like McIntosh (1988, 4) I have found that 'my schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor ... I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will'.
In view of the preceding discussion becoming answerable for what our schooling has taught us to see (Haraway 1991) and understanding that (adult) education plays a major part in perpetuating these inequitable practices, is fundamental to any pedagogical process. This is sometimes destabilising, it certainly has been for me. It is about understanding the incommensurabilities of everyday life and those uncomfortable moments of 'miscommunication' (Ang 1995) which I suspect would teach some of us more about ourselves if we but used them as the focus of our gaze rather than turning to the Other to be educated.
The challenge here I believe is twofold. First to develop an understanding of identities and subjectivities which moves beyond the individual and is at the same time aware of the centrality of individual and collective agency embedded in the modern Enlightenment project of adult education. I would humbly suggest this parallels Stuart Hall's (1996, 2-3) suggestion that cultural studies needs 'not an abandonment or abolition of the 'subject' but a reconceptualisation — thinking it in its new, displaced or decentred position within the paradigm'. It is my view that this is also what is required for the subject of adult education. In addition I think that critical discussion about notions of whiteness are well overdue. It may be time to begin to track how these discourses influence a theorisation of the subject which would take into account the issues I have been raising while not necessarily implying harmonious resolution within existing paradigms.
2 See Commonwealth of Australia (1991) and MCEETYA (1993) for examples of the discourse of 'effective participation' in Australian society.
3 For further discussion of this issue see Davison and Gribble (1991), Hall (1993), Rockhill (1996) and Stalker (1996).
4 Kelly Associates, a Melbourne consulting firm, are currently facilitating a review and revision of the Australian National Policy on Adult and Community Education which will feed into the current Senate Inquiry into ACE.
5 My indispensable colleagues Elaine Butler, Melanie Coombe and Di Shearer have also pushed me in my thinking and provided valuable support, critical challenge and references. While they have been instrumental in helping me develop my thoughts for this paper, the ideas presented are still in a very raw state.
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