Adult education in the Victoria University district, 1948-1959

Abstract

The ploughshare of war seems twice to have turned a furrow of adult education activity in New Zealand. It may be co-incidence or it may be that wartime leads many people to a closer examination of the bases of their beliefs and attitudes, that the physical uprooting of war provides a setting in which people are prepared to consider possibilities of changes of vocation and livelihood. The fact remains that two major wars have each contributed to the acceleration of adult education in New Zealand. Organised adult education, in the form with which we are concerned here, dates from the setting up of the Workers Educational Association in 1915. The immediate impetus to adult education work in New Zealand at the time of the setting up of the Consultative Committee on Adult Education in 1945 was the large scale work undertaken by the Army Education and Welfare Services. As A.B. Thompson points out in his book Adult Education in New Zealand. N.Z.C.E.R. 1945. Adult Education of one sort or another had existed from the earliest days of organised settlement. The W.E.A. however provided the first attempt to organise work on a national scale. This was followed by extension work by the Home Science faculty of Otago University and the setting up in 1930 of the Canterbury Adult Rural Scheme which in 1935 merged into the Association for Country Education. This A.C.E. scheme attempted to organise and develop cultural facilities in country areas by taking to them a travelling library and by organising study meetings there. Other rural work was done by the Country Women's Institutes which combined with the Women's Division of the Farmers Union in Co-ordinating Committees to employ tutors for craft and home science work with rural women.