ABSTRACT
The role of adult education in community action has aroused a great deal of debate and discussion amongst socially committed adult educators over the last decade. 1 On the one hand are those adult educators who see in it an exciting possibility to extend the concept of adult learning, to make it more relevant to the interests, needs and problems of the working class and to open up educational resources to the latter so that they can make the maximum use of the opportunities it offers them. 2 On the other hand are those who feel that ‘adult educationists should be wary when they are offered the resplendent new garments of community development, intended to transform their perception of themselves and their possibilities as they sally forth as community adult educators’. 3 The latter argue that the concept of ‘community’ should not be taken too seriously and that the role of adult education in the community development/community action process is more limited than the enthusiasts might have us believe. 4 Theirs is a more sceptical, cautious analysis; highly critical of the political naivety of the former and a more explicitly Marxist analysis, locating the origins of local community problems in the larger economic and social inequalities of a class society.
