Workers’ Education in the Global South

Radical Adult Education at the Crossroads

Series: 

Author:
Linda Cooper
Workers’ Education in the Global South explores the historical development of radical workers’ education in South Africa as one particular strand within the broader tradition of radical adult education. Drawing on the theoretical resources of Activity Theory, Gramsci, Freire and others, it investigates the key features of workers’ education as a form of pedagogy with a unique history and logic of practice, and explores how it has been shaped by its location within labour and other social movements as well as its ‘southern’ location within the global political economy. Successive chapters explore its counter-hegemonic but contested purposes, its knowledge practices that seek to overcome the historical divide between intellectual and manual labour, and a pedagogy which often assumes didactic forms but which retains a democratic character through its embeddedness in working class experience. It illustrates the rich processes of experiential learning that happen through day-to-day organising, in workers’ cultural activity as well as through mass action. It argues that this tradition of workers’ education currently stands at a crossroads, as global neoliberal market policies and post-apartheid education and training policies threaten to undermine its radical social vision, and concludes by offering ideas on how this tradition of radical workers’ education might be renewed.
Copyright Year:
2020
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978-90-04-42898-0
Publication:
31 Mar 2020
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978-90-04-42897-3
Publication:
09 Apr 2020
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09 Apr 2020
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Front Matter
Copyright page
Acknowledgements
Acronyms
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 ‘The Sun Shall Rise for the Workers’
Chapter 3 ‘Healing the Breach’ between Intellectual and Manual Labour
Chapter 4 What Is ‘Really Useful Knowledge’ in Workers’ Education?
Chapter 5 The Pedagogy of Workers’ Education
Chapter 6 Informal Learning
Chapter 7 Workers’ Education and the Formal System
Chapter 8 Reinventing Workers’ Education
Back Matter
References
Index
Linda Cooper, Ph.D. (2005), University of Cape Town, is Emerita Associate Professor at that university. She has published widely on workers’ education, including her most recent co-edited publication Renewing Workers’ Education: Towards a Radical Alternative Vision (HSRC Press, 2019).
"It is difficult to do justice to this book. Cooper has done South African educational scholarship and radical education more generally a tremendous service in writing it. It presents a singular challenge to dominant approaches to knowledge in South African educational research, provides an unrivalled account of the history of worker education in South Africa and an unflinching critique of its contemporary reformist directions. It is also extremely well written, combining rich theoretical discussion with empirically-validated arguments, as well as accounts and stories from her research that add enormously to the texture and readability of the text. The book goes well beyond critique, examining the limits on and possibilities for a regeneration of radical theory and practice in this area. As such, it is an inspiration". - Linda Chisholm in Transformation, vol. 104 (December 30, 2020)
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms

1 Introduction: A Workers’ Education Event in 1980s South Africa
 1 Reclaiming the Radical Tradition
 2 Defining Workers’ Education
 3 A Brief History of Workers’ Education in South Africa
 4 Framing the Book Theoretically and Methodologically
 5 Concluding Comments

2 ‘The Sun Shall Rise for the Workers’: The Contested Political Purposes of Workers’ Education
 1 Introduction
 2 Conceptualising the Purpose of Workers’ Education
 3 Key Lines of Ideological Contestation in Workers’ Education
 4 Workers’ Education at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Radical Resistance, Pragmatic Accommodation
 5 Gathering Contradictions: A Possible ‘Breakthrough into Learning Activity’?
 6 Conclusion

3 ‘Healing the Breach’ between Intellectual and Manual Labour: The Epistemology of Workers’ Education
 1 Intellectual and Manual Labour and Hierarchies of Knowledge
 2 Radical Approaches to Knowledge
 3 Knowledge in South African Workers’ Education
 4 Views on Knowledge in SAMWU
 5 Views on Knowledge in the Workers’ College
 6 Emerging Tensions and Contradictions
 7 Conclusion

4 What Is ‘Really Useful Knowledge’ in Workers’ Education?
 1 The South African ‘Knowledge Wars’
 2 Knowledge Use in SAMWU
 3 Gramsci on Organic Intellectuals and Knowledge Production
 4 Knowledge Differentiation in Workers’ Education
 5 Organic Intellectuals: ‘Braiding’ New Knowledge
 6 Tensions and Contradictions in the Knowledge Practices of Workers’ Education
 7 Conclusion

5 The Pedagogy of Workers’ Education: Conscientisation or Indoctrination?
 1 Introduction
 2 ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Pedagogy
 3 Non-Formal Workers’ Education Programmes under Apartheid
 4 SAMWU’s Pedagogy: A ‘Mixed Pedagogic Pallet’
 5 Conclusion: Holding the Tension – A Complex ‘Balancing Act’

6 Informal Learning: Workers’ Education as Praxis
 1 Learning through Organisational Praxis
 2 Workers’ Education and Cultural Praxis
 3 Workers’ Education and Mass Action
 4 Conclusion

7 ‘Democracy Has Become Institutionalized’ Workers’ Education and the Formal System
 1 The Apartheid Labour Market and Skills Development
 2 Transition to Democracy – But Also to Neo-Liberalism
 3 Unions and Post-Apartheid Education and Training Policies
 4 What Went Wrong?
 5 Navigating the Accreditation Terrain
 6 Conclusion

8 Reinventing Workers’ Education1
 1 Distinctive Features of Workers’ Education as an Activity System
 2 The Contribution of Radical Workers’ Education to Our Knowledge Archive
 3 Radical Workers’ Education at the Crossroads?
 4 Finding a Way Forward: Re-Inventing Workers’ Education
 5 Rethinking ‘Workers’ Education’ – Rethinking ‘Work’

References
Index
Researchers in the fields of non-formal adult education, workplace learning, education and training policy, and labour sociology; adult education practitioners and trade unionists; all those interested in social justice education.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
x, 209 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428980

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