ABSTRACT
The discovery of the problem of urban deprivation led in rapid succession to a vocabulary of complementary diseases — ‘areas of special need’, ‘pockets of deprivation’, ‘twilight zones’, ‘priority areas’, etc. Their inhabitants were variously referred to as ‘the disadvantaged’, ‘the under-privileged’, the ‘culturally’ ‘environmentally’ ‘linguistically’ and ‘educationally deprived’, ‘the needy’, ‘the maladjusted’ and ‘the handicapped’. As Rutter and Madge point out, deprivation became one of the most overworked words in the English language. In 1973 the Russell Committee published its Plan for Development in adult education. The fact that this report represented only one of four major collections of information, reviews of provision and recommendations about policy in adult education this century, has made it of critical importance to all those involved in adult education. The associations tied up with the term ‘liberal’ go much deeper than its more usual party-political meaning might suggest.
