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A design for democracy: Britain’s 1919 Report, the context of its creation and its relevance today

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Abstract

The “1919 Report” of the British Ministry of Reconstruction’s Adult Education Committee, produced as the First World War was ending, reflects the optimism of its committee about the possibilities for a more socially just and democratic society and its concern to find an alternative to economic deprivation and disenfranchisement. Its central thesis is that adult education is “a permanent national necessity” for an active informed democracy, which should, therefore, be both “universal and lifelong”. Despite the report’s lukewarm initial reception, its influence on the development of adult education over a century in Britain and in other anglophone countries has been marked. As R. D. Waller argued in 1956, it “is probably the most significant single contribution made to the literature of adult education”, certainly in the United Kingdom. It may well also be the first major national report on adult education published anywhere to be grounded in a comprehensive survey of existing provision. This article examines the context of its creation, its core arguments and their strengths and deficiencies, as well as its reception and subsequent impact. The article ends with a consideration of the report’s contemporary relevance and how its core ideas of voluntarism and co-construction of knowledge can support democratic renewal through education.

Résumé

Un modèle pour la démocratie : le rapport britannique de 1919, le contexte de sa rédaction et sa pertinence aujourd’hui – Le « 1919 Report », rédigé par la commission pour l’éducation des adultes du ministère britannique de la Reconstruction au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, reflète l’optimisme de ses auteurs concernant les possibilités d’avènement d’une société plus juste socialement et plus démocratique, et leur souci de trouver une alternative au dénuement et à la privation des droits économiques. Selon sa thèse centrale, si l’on veut une démocratie éclairée active, l’éducation des adultes est « une nécessité nationale permanente » qui devrait par conséquent être « universelle » et se dérouler « tout au long de la vie ». Malgré l’accueil tiède qui lui fut réservé au début, ce rapport a exercé pendant plus d’un siècle une influence marquée sur l’évolution de l’éducation des adultes en Grande-Bretagne et dans d’autres pays anglophones. Comme l’affirmait R. D. Waller en 1956, « c’est probablement la plus importante contribution individuelle à la littérature en matière d’éducation des adultes » – certainement tout au moins au Royaume-Uni. Il se pourrait aussi que ce soit le premier grand rapport national sur l’éducation des adultes jamais publié à reposer sur une vaste enquête portant sur les offres existantes. Le présent article se penche sur le contexte de sa rédaction, sur ses principaux arguments, sur ses points forts et ses faiblesses ainsi que sur sa réception et son impact ultérieur. Il s’achève sur une réflexion au sujet de la pertinence du rapport à notre époque et sur la façon dont ses idées centrales concernant le volontarisme et la coconstruction du savoir peuvent favoriser le renouveau démocratique par le biais de l’éducation.

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Notes

  1. Ruskin College was founded in 1899 to offer university-level education to all, not just the elite. It is now part of the University of West London. For more information, see https://www.ruskin.ac.uk/about-us/history [accessed 20 February 2024].

  2. One criticism that has been levelled at the report is that it failed to challenge and therefore perpetuated the damaging distinction between vocational training and academic study and underscored the relatively low level of esteem accorded to the former in comparison with the latter – an issue that continues to hamper education policy in the UK a century later (see Stanistreet 2019).

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Acknowledgement

This article draws extensively on Paul Stanistreet’s article “1919 and all that” (Stanistreet 2019) and on Geoff Layer and Alan Tuckett’s paper, “From the 1919 Report to Learning Regions: Networks of providers offering adult learning opportunities” (Layer and Tuckett 2019).

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  1. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany

    Paul Stanistreet

  2. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Alan Tuckett

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Correspondence to Alan Tuckett.

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Alan Tuckett declares no conflicts of interest. Paul Stanistreet, who is the Executive Editor of this journal, removed himself from the peer review process, which was managed by Heribert Hinzen, one of the guest editors of the special issue for which this article was written, and assigned his co-author, Alan Tuckett, as corresponding author.

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Stanistreet, P., Tuckett, A. A design for democracy: Britain’s 1919 Report, the context of its creation and its relevance today. Int Rev Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-023-10018-w

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