Abstract
Over the past half-century, the word “andragogy” has migrated from the fringe vocabulary to the standard lexicon of adult education. It has identified common psychological traits in “non-traditional” students and distinguished its methods from “pedagogy,” the teaching of children. This chapter will explore andragogy's apparent strengths and arguable weaknesses in terms of its socio-economic assumptions and the social class interests it may wittingly or unwittingly serve. It will conclude with a critique.
TopIntroduction
Confronted as we are by profound changes in everything from our understanding of neurology (mental health), ecology (environmental sustainability), and the implications of particle physics and cosmology for our understanding of the universe and, perhaps, the hope of finding a meaningful place in it (spiritual sublimity?), it is no great revelation to find ourselves in basic agreement with the far-famed British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who, in 1931, expressed awareness of the fleeting nature of human cultures, the ideas they are said to embody, and the words people use to describe them. So, Whitehead realized that confidence could be had in the validity of declarative statements “only when the timespan of cultural change was greater than the span of individuals” (Whitehead, 1931).
Contemporarily, from learned debates about cultural relativism to street-level concerns about “fake news,” “conspiracy theories,” and the ethics of artificially intelligent plagiarism and Chat-GPT essay-writing, our sense of disconnection from an absolute, eternal, non-negotiable truth, or at least in the merit of the pursuit thereof, has never (at least from our admittedly provincial, presentist perspective) seemed more elusive. Deprived of (or liberated from) the comfort/confinement to be found in unquestioned, received wisdom about (and faith in) eternal verities, our age of endless uncertainly and socially constructed reality has led us to believe that the recognized and revered certainties of our or any other community, whether they relate to practical actions, empirical facts, ethical preferences, or supernatural (metaphysical, theological) speculations, are at best tentative, conditional, contingent, very likely transitory, certainly incomplete, and quite possibly wrong.
So it is that andragogy, the core concept in this chapter and in this book, may be taken as a passing fancy—once a neologism, serviceable in the present moment, often elevated to “a badge of identity” (Brookfield, 1986), and methinks, destined eventually to be an archaic cultural remnant.
We may hope that its fancy will not pass too soon, of course, lest the contributors to this volume be complicit in an elegant practical joke played upon them/ourselves. We may have, I think, some confidence that it will be around for a while; but, we may also hope that its demise is so distant that our comments on it will not be obsolete before it is dropped from our ever-shifting and sifting lexicological (dis)order. After all, no less an expert than Patricia Cross (1981) long since told us that “although the word andragogy makes a neat contrast with the more familiar and traditional pedagogy, the contrast appears difficult to maintain.” And yet, here we are still talking about it forty-plus years later.
The fragility of terms should, however, be kept in mind. Some create splashes in various pans and speedily disappear; others endure for centuries. So, Ray (2013) reminded us a decade ago that not only do neologisms have discernible patterns of creation, evolution, and presumably ultimate extinction, but they (or their proponents) also compete with others for recognition and dominance. Accordingly, while “pedagogy” (childhood learning) seems to have held sway in that particular field and seems also to have successfully colonized others up to and including post-secondary (though chiefly undergraduate) education, and while “eldergogy” (Yeo, 1982) has apparently tussled unsuccessfully with “geragogy” (Battersby, 1987; Johnson, 2016, Wright, 2016) for recognition as the teaching of older adults, newer terms continue to burst forth from the crowded, confused, and confusing jabberwocky of educational theory.
One such is “metagogy.” Whether advanced by identifiable human beings (Propenko, 2009) or artfully/artificially intelligent and potentially posthumans (mplsbohemiam, n.d.; Rollermation, 2011), its supporters boast that it not only “is inclusive of an andragogic approach, but also includes conventional pedagogical approaches as they are appropriate” (Peterson & Ray, 2013, p. 83)—more a “mix-and-match” than a classic Hegelian dialectic. Wagers on their relative longevity will be made only by the most adventuresome.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Andragogy: Coined in the early nineteenth century, it was meant to identify the need for adult education and, later, to give voice to the needs of adult workers to improve their social standing and participate in the building of a society that would reflect their class interests; more recently, it has come to embrace a narrower vision with the goal of catering to adult students seeking employability skills that conform to the needs of late capitalist corporations.
Social Class: Contrasted with sociological stratification, which measures inequality in income, influence, and status among individuals and groups, social class identifies structural relations of power in relation to the overall mode of production of knowledge as well as goods; it permits a better understanding of the interests and ideologies of dominant classes (owners and managers) and the ways in which education serves their political and economic interests by making middling and working class people politically submissive and economically dependent.
Corporatism: A term used to refer to a pattern of social organization in which institutions such as colleges and universities come to adopt a labor process that mimics that of large-scale business, with reliance contract workers, commodification of curricula, and a market mentality that stresses consumer demand, innovation, and entrepreneurship over traditional academic values and any form of critical theory.
Pedagogy: Originally the theory and practice of educating children, it became associated with the understanding of education in general; as such it provided a foil for those eager to carve out a professional role for exclusively “adult” education. While the social purpose of childhood education has been commonly understood (if highly contested), the aims of adult education remain fundamentally controversial.
Late Capitalism: A fluid term that has been in use for over 100 years, but now commonly refers to a political economy featuring a digital, high-tech, and postindustrial capitalism in which financial capital is dominant, income inequality grows, large corporations dominate market mechanisms, and a postmodern culture prevails.