ALPHA 96: Basic Education and Work
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Alpha 96 Basic Education & Work Edited by Jean-Paul Hautecoeur Prepared by the UNESCO Institute for Education with the assistance of the Ministry of Education, Government of Quebec the National Literacy Secretariat, Government of Canada the Ontario Training & Adjustment Board, Canada the Ministry of Culture, Government of Slovakia and the Lumen Foundation, Bratislava, Slovakia CULTURE CONCEPTS Publishers Toronto, Canada ALPHA 96 O 1996 jointly by Culture Concepts Inc. & UNESCO Institute for Education Published in exclusive World English Translation by Culture Concepts Inc. by permission of UNESCO Institute for Education. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Culture Concepts Inc. UIE ISBN 92 820 1075 9 Culture Concepts ISBN 0-921472-14-5 The UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg, is a legally independent entity. %le the programs for the Institute are established along the lines laid down bv the General Conference of UNESCO, the publications of the Institute are iss& under its sole respbnsibi~it~.UNESCO is not responsible for their contents. The points of view, selection of facts and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily coincide with the official positions of the UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg. The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the UNESCO Secretariat concerning the legal status of any country or territory or its authorities, or concerning the delimitations of the frontiers of any country or territory. The opinions expressed, facts selected and points of view by the authors do not necessarily repre- sent those of the publisher, Culture Concepts. Nor does the publisher claim any responsibility for the accuracy of references and sources provided by the authors. Since chapters represent international authors, regional spelling and structure has been preserved as much as possible. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Alpha 96 : basic education and work Translation of: Alpha 96 : formation de base et travail. Includes bibliographcal references. ISBN 0-921472-14-5 1. Fundamental education. 2. Industries -Social aspects. 3. Community development. 4. Occupational training. 5. Labor market. 6. Elementary education of adults. I. Hautecoeur, Jean Paul, 1943- . 11. Unesco Institute for Education II. Quebec (Province).MinistPre de I'education. LC5161.A5613 1996 374'.012 C96-931726-3 Cover photograph: "Last Call", 1995 by Andre Athieu, sculptor Translation from the French: Peter Sutton, translator and editor, UK Printed and bound in Canada UNESCO Institute for Education Culture Concepts, Publishers B.P. 131023 5 Darlingbrook Crescent 20110 Hamburg, Germany Toronto, Ontario M9A 3H4 Canada CONTENTS Introduction ..............................................................1 lean-Paul Hautecoeur Section One: A Critique of Literacy Ideology & Some Current Literacy Practices in North America Chapter 1: How the Reorganization of Work Destroys Everyday Knowledge.. .... 11 Sheryl Greenwood Gowen Chapter 2: Literacy and Motherwork ...................................... .33 Mechthild Hart Chapter 3: Is Literacy, "A Good Deal"? .................................... .57 A Critique of the Literacy Debate in Canada jean-Paul Hautecoeur Section Two: Transition from Traditional Literacy & Basic Education Practices to Learner-Workers' Workshops Chapter 4: Also Works: Earning and Learning.. ............................. .81 Wendy Desbrisay Chapter 5: From Trainee-Learner to Actor in an Alternative Economy ............95 Michel Chourin, Chantal Senecal Chapter 6: Learning to Make Choices. ................................... .l07 Daniela Semenescu Section Three: Four Global Basic Education Experiences with Differing Intervention Strategies Chapter 7: A Community Approach to Basic Education ......................l27 Patricia Ahern Chapter 8: A Holistic Education Project for the Gypsy Community in Aranyosaphti ...................................................... 145 Attila Bocs Chapter 9: A Way out of the Crisis of Work: Communty Self-Education. ........ 161 Adela Rogojinaru Chapter 10: The Economic Equity Project.. ................................ ,171 jorge Garcia Orgales Section Four: New Types of Economic Organization, Regional Development & Resistance to Dislocation Chapter 11 : The "In Loco" Association and its Work in the Serra Do Caldeirao. ...............................................193 Julia Carolino Chapter 12: From Hobby to Business ..................................... .207 Emilia Fulkovi Chapter 13: A Community Development Foundation in JAszszentlAszlo. ...........21 5 Ferenc Balipap, Dezsd KovAcs, Endre Markolt Chapter 14: Education in the Service of Economic Survival ..................,227 Enrique Pieck Section Five: Education and Training in a New Type of Socially Useful Enterprise Chapter 15: Structured Work and Integrated Learning in a Social Economy Project ...........................................251 Liesbeth Smeyers, Danny Wildemeersch Chapter 16: Economics with Humanity, Social Work and Basic Education .......269 Jean Stummer Chapter 17: The Chic Resto-Pop: The Reafirmation of Citizenship Through Socially Useful Work.. ........................................279 Jean-Marc Fontan, Eric Shragge Section Six: The Relationship between Basic Education & Work in the Postmodern Context Chapter 18: An Alternative Literacy and Work: Bricolage and Mass Media. ......301 Stanislav Hubik Chapter 19: Basic Education Towards Self Reliance and Community Development .........................................323 Jean-Paul Hautecoeur Chapter 20: Conclusion.. ...............................................,347 lean-Paul Hautecoeur Previous titles in this collection: ALPHA 90: Current Research in Literacy ALPHA 92: Literacy Strategies in the Community Movement ALPHA 94: Literacy h Cultural Development Strategies in Rural Areas Orders may be sent to: UNESCO Publishing, Commercial Services 7 Place de Fontenoy 75352 Paris, France INTRODUCTION Jean-Paul Hautecoeur U N ESCO l nstitute for Education ALPHA 96: Basic Education and Work is the fourth publication in the UNESCO Institute for Education's ALPHA series, compiled as part of the research programme on Literacy Strategies in Industrialized Countries. This two- year programme of action-research aims to develop international intellectual cooperation in the field of adult literacy, to support experimental socio- educational practice, and to disseminate the research results to an international readership. Such projects can only be conducted with the sup port of government partners and non-governmental organizations, and with the voluntary collaboration of numerous researchers. The subject of ALPHA 96: Basic Education and Work is obviously highly top- ical, unlike that of ALPHA 94: Cultural Development in Rural Areas, which might suggest that it was a piece of marginal dilettantism. Nonetheless, the issues of the crisis of work, of resistance to loss of culture, of dislocation and disqualification, and of the search for appropriate methods and forms of organization to replace imposed training "provision", as well as the major issue of resistance to impoverishment through community initiatives, were to be found throughout the earlier work, ALPHA 94. This volume, ALPHA 96, is a logical progression, on a larger canvas and with a new team, of the same approach to research based on a phenomenon of change: literacy. In the title of ALPHA 96, Basic Education ("formation de base" in the orig- inal French title) has replaced literacy. The change in terminology reflects changes in usage and practice in the fragmented field of adult education. The influence of economics and the priority given to work and employment jus- tify the choice of education rather than literacy, which is restricted to the field of sociolinguistics. Also, our critical approach obliged us to look for differ- ent words to observe, reveal and name experimental and marginal social practices which are, willingly or not, dissociated from dominant practice. Amid the often unbearable problems of everyday life for the groups and 2 ALPHA 96 individuals who are discussed in this volume, there is rarely any thought of literacy. Literacy is a term used by professionals, politicians and pressure groups, and has not become part of the vocabulary of citizens to whom it is applied. As for literacy provision, in reality this only covers an infinitesimal proportion of the population, despite the attempts of central bodies to involve the huge numbers of people who are disqualified and discarded. Basic education, as we understood it at the beginning of the research, means something other than the education and training models and programmes run by educational establishments, by companies and some voluntary asso- ciations. Basic does not have the usual meaning of the initial skills on which an educational curriculum can be based; nor does it mean minimal or prosaic skills, as though seen from a superior position and as though there were only one centre to the universe and one direction for history. We understood basic education in the anthropological sense, analogous to basic personality: a structure for assembling and transmitting knowl- edge, a generative grammar of total exchange.