In the second of a two-part article, Professor Peter Mayo discusses the adult education's relationship with the economy and with 'civil society'.

Much of the present discourse regarding adult education, worldwide, centres around the economy. That there should be a link between adult education and the economy is understandable.

This is one sector that cannot be ignored and the setting up of institutions such as ETC, and more recently MCAST, are welcome developments. In micro-states like ours, the state must shoulder a substantial part of the responsibility for the vocational preparation of adults. Small companies do not enjoy the necessary 'economies of scale' to render in house training a viable option. They also face the danger of 'poaching.'

We also need a lifelong learning guidance and counselling service in this area that would be accessible to different people at different places, as my colleague and friend, Professor Ronald Sultana has been arguing. The current postgraduate diploma course in this area, a joint venture between the University's Faculty of Education and Centre for Labour Studies, is most welcome.

Furthermore, under the impact of globalisation, it is difficult for micro-states like ours to attract outsourcing of manufacturing jobs that are, labour-intensive and so we must channel our efforts in preparing adults, through adult education programmes, for those 'quality' jobs that are knowledge-based.

That the dominant, all-pervasive policy statements on adult education around the economy is worrying. These statements reflect a way of thinking that is neo-liberal in nature and project the notion of the learner and citizen as 'producer' and 'consumer.' This way of thinking neglects a larger though repressed tradition of adult education that emphasises the role of the citizen as social actor, and the role of adult learning as a vital activity within social movements, including labour movements.

This is why, in our Faculty of Education programme, at the University of Malta, we have complemented our diploma course in Adult Training and Development, that allows ample room for critical perspectives on the relationship between education and work, with the more community-oriented diploma course in Adult Education. There is more to adult learning than simply learning for 'employability' that, by the way, does not necessarily mean employment.

The very vocationally and market-oriented nature of much of what is heralded as adult education, these days, is worrying. The tenor of many policy documents in Europe and elsewhere continues to be utilitarian and functional-rational. Even our local document for the setting up of a Commission for Higher Education - adult continuing education is an important component of Higher Education - reproduces this kind of discourse. One notices the use of such very problematic and outdated terms as 'human capital'. In my view, this document suggests little in the way of enhancing the higher education institutions' role in strengthening the public sphere, not least through their promotion of adult and community-oriented education programmes.

Nowadays, the term adult 'learning' is preferred to adult 'education', with the term 'learning' placing less emphasis on the provision of structures and more on the individual's responsibility for her or his own learning. This language reflects a way of thinking that allows the state to abdicate its responsibilities in this regard and can allow underachievement to be explained away in 'blaming the victim' terms. This is in keeping with a neo-liberal ideology that places emphasis on individual rather than on collective and social responsibility. It is an insidious ideology that minimises the role of the State and leaves everything to the market. Policy documents promoting these fashionable ideas should be the subject of constant critical scrutiny by discerning educators. Too much ideas contained in international policy documents are often taken on board uncritically over here.

Furthermore, an increase in investment in adult education or all education for that matter, with economic returns in mind, without a corresponding reciprocal investment in the economic sector, perpetuates, and probably exacerbates, the situation of 'education for export' that has been a characteristic of colonial and neo-colonial policies to date.

As someone who has spent the last 20 years or so committed to a Freire-inspired critical approach to education, this aspect of adult education is the one that is most dear to my heart. Unfortunately, in the Maltese and Gozitan contexts, there is not much of a 'civil society' tradition to speak of and I am using 'civil society' in the way it is conventionally being used these days, recognising that the term has had different uses from the time of the 'Scottish Enlightenment' onward.

We do not have a strong progressive social movement culture, the kind of culture that promotes the idea of adult education for social transformation, an ongoing process that entails a constant engagement in the struggle for social justice and for challenging the status quo. On the contrary, we have recently witnessed the birth of an organisation that can at best be termed reactionary and that, judging from the sounds of its spokespersons, espouses very conservative views with regard to immigration, 'national identity' etc.

Luckily, there are resources of hope. Environmental lobby groups, organisations concerned with 'justice in trade' and such resident groups as the one safeguarding rural community interests in Manikata, show us the way forward in this regard. It is these groups that provide fertile ground for the kind of citizenship education to which I am referring.

Internationally, the best traditions of a critical education for a genuinely active citizenship have emerged in those social and political movements which have struggled for the idea of a society not as it is now but as it should and can be. Their efforts in promoting adult education are motivated by a concern for social justice, ecological sensitivity and the strengthening of democracy. This is based on valuing social difference, biodiversity and the struggle to recuperate public spaces - these public spaces have been shrinking, having been the target of corporate encroachment and therefore turned into commodities, over the years.

Concluded