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. 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. As with the Liverpool Institute experience, the Antigonish Movement was university based and initiated. It was also situated in a very economically depressed area. Although it was strongly anti-communist it was nevertheless influenced by, and imbued with, certain co-operative and the Christian socialist principles based on a critical analysis of the existing social order.
