Since the 1980s, building a civil society has been a prevailing endeavor in many countries, including Taiwan, which want to be transformed into more democratic states, where greater participation from citizens is expected in public affairs and decision-making (Huang, 1997). Essentially, civil society refers to the arena that allows collective action to take place without bureaucratic and institutional coercions over public interests, values and issues. In order to create such an arena, efforts have been made, based on various perspectives and disciplines such as sociology, political science, and education. However, it still begs the questions of how a civil society, in which people function for common interests and public good, can be sustained, and how and why people are able and willing to act as capable citizens commited to public affairs and values.
Adult education might be one of the most effective answers to these questions. Quigley (2000) argues that adult education, given its long history in promoting people's ability to have their say, plays a critical role in taking radical actions to engage in the social movement of constructing a more democratic and inclusive society, in which marginalized voices are heard and are taken into account seriously. Such a grassroots approach appeared inspirational in the early nineties to some social reformers who were conscientiously concerned with promoting local and community awareness when Taiwan was undergoing some major societal transformations. These people combined the vision of building a civil society through social development with efforts at educational reform, and they proposed the idea of establishing community colleges as a means to provide learning opportunities for people to become effective and capable citizens to promote and practice democracy (Gu, 2001; Huang, 1997). As a result, the first Taiwanese community college was established in 1998, and the model is continuously evolving into a visible social force to foster the building of a civil society. To date, over one hundred community colleges have been established in Taiwan.
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Chen, A.Sm., Wang, Wn. (2009). From Education to Grassroots Learning: Towards a Civil Society Through Community Colleges in Taiwan. In: Raby, R.L., Valeau, E.J. (eds) Community College Models. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9477-4_4
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