LYNN JARVIS
R.I.P. Adult Education, 1949 – 2009 …
With the start of the new financial year and the ink still drying on a raft of staff ‘reassignments’ the destruction of the once proud and innovative organisation called Adult Education is now essentially complete.
What is left is little more than a Hollywood façade – a name on a course guide booklet, a few aging building signs and a single web page which serves only to direct clients quickly and without fanfare to the new master, the ‘Community Knowledge Network [CKN]’.
The 60 year achievements of Adult Ed have been hurriedly acknowledged with a photo opportunity and a cake and then swept under the carpet, replaced by the mantra of ‘change’.
Questions, however, remain hanging over the architects of this change, Premier David Bartlett, Deputy Secretary of Education John Smyth and Director of Information and Learning Services (former head of the State Library) Siobhan Gaskell as to whether they have actually delivered a radical change to the benefit of the Tasmanian public as their own rhetoric frequently and loudly extols, or whether they have instead been guilty of grandiose empire building at the public’s expense, achieving little but increasing their public turf and their career prospects.
To many on the inside, and now increasingly on the outside, the formation of the Community Knowledge Network has been a triumph of the later. A triumph of bureaucracy over action; of zealots over the learned; of rhetoric over results.
The Community Knowledge Network is essentially the library re-invented. It is run by the former head of the library. All senior management positions have been given to library staff or newcomers, with former Adult Education staff comprehensively sidelined and no-where to be seen in the new management.
It is run from the library. Adult Education centres are now being incorporated into Learning Network Information Centres (LINCs) – or as they used to be called, libraries.
There are now few experienced educators left in the organisation. Apparently they are no longer required.
The aim of this organisational upheaval is the delivery of integrated learning and information services to the public. A noble aim, undoubtedly, yet so far, all that has been achieved is a reduction in learning undertaken by the Tasmanian public and the shameful squandering of human capacity and of over $1,000,000 for the provision of Adult Literacy services.
In the short time the CKN has been in existence, between the industrial action, the bad press, the massive staff discontentment, staff resignations, the serious destruction of morale, the hundreds of meetings by senior management, the embarrassing mistakes due to ignorance and/or incompetence, it has managed to oversee the biggest decline in the provision of Adult Education services in the organisation’s 60 year history. 50% decline in the north-west, 30% in the north and 10% in the south. Their newly instituted pricing policy which puts Adult Ed style learning on a full cost-recovery basis, makes it almost inevitable that this decline will snowball until all that is left is a few money-making courses for those that can still afford them.
In return there has been not a hint of the promised ‘new and exciting’ learning opportunities for those groups in the community who were supposed to benefit from these changes – the unemployed, those with low literacy skills, the disengaged and seniors. In the 2½ years CKN has had the opportunity, there has not been ONE new learning program developed for these groups, or any other for that matter. It has proven time and again to be a CANNOT DO organisation more intent on squashing innovation and learning than on providing it.
No better example is the mishandling of over $1,000,000 available to CKN for the provision of Adult Literacy services (formerly provided by Adult Education) in the past 3 years – essentially producing nothing but a $50,000 consultants report during this time rather than providing on the ground expertise and tuition as was easily achievable with quality management. The Tasmanian public should be outraged.
CKN management has proven repeatedly that it either does not understand Adult Education business or indeed adult learning principles, or that it is intentionally running down this service. Its list of ‘mistakes’ is no secret within the rank and file of remaining former Adult Education employees. Yet the rewards given to those who have squandered literacy money or who have overseen the decline in adult education services or who have sponsored clearly ridiculous decisions, leads one to suspect that the destruction of Adult Education was the intended goal all along.
An announcement to close Adult Education was never going to be a popular decision. Much easier to take it over and run it down, or in words already used to describe the process to, ‘cut the legs off a horse and then say, look its not walking very well, we will have to put it down.’
Whilst ‘change’ is the much lauded young gun here, the reality is that the Tasmanian public would have been much better served by actually turning the clock backwards – in the 1970’s and 80’s Adult Education successfully and efficiently (ie with a much leaner bureaucratic structure) provided the services that the new CKN hopes one day to provide in the future. There were programs for the unemployed and for those wanting to return to work; learning for seniors flourished; Adult Literacy services and Adult Migrant English services reached far and wide into the community; and management was dominated by educators and passionate thinkers not marketers and policy makers.
In a few years perhaps the CKN will emerge from its difficult beginnings to be the kind of organisation it wants to be. However, evidence suggests what we will actually be left with is a lingering sense of sadness that Adult Education, and all that it was capable of, paid the ultimate price in this bureaucratic bun-fight for very little result.
It was a great institution and it changed many people’s lives. It gave much with little and demanded few accolades. It fostered dedicated and passionate staff who always gave more than was demanded. It flourished on the simple notion that learning in itself was good, and none-the-less so when one reached adulthood.
Adult Ed, Rest in Peace
Lynn Jarvis
