Discusses the origins of university adult education and the motives of the Oxford and Cambridge teachers who organized and taught the first classes. Surveys the history of university adult education by examining four phases, each associated with a particular form of political commitment. (CMK)

States that the International Working Men's Association (IWMA) presented itself as an association wanting to implement a new type of society that was classless and socialist. Explains that education was a topic addressed by IWMA and explores the topic of education at the IWMA general congresses. (CMK)

The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers was set up in 1976 by a number of independent writing and publishing groups to support and develop the writing of working class and other marginalized people. Focusing on the development of individuals within a collective organization over the previous three decades provides important…

We introduce participatory action research as a strategy for "consultation with." We elaborate the possibilities and limits of participatory consultation as a strategy that enables sustained relations with communities of material poverty and resilience wealth. Consulting with an activist organization, and dedicated to producing a…

In summarizing earlier arguments for privileging a class perspective on adult education, this chapter considers that perspective's practical relevance and suggests resources for further reading.

This investigation compares the computer practices of the Garza family, from the first study, with those of the Fuentes family, from the second study. As both families are of Mexican origin, they belong to an ethnicity that has been reported as falling on the "have-not" side of the "divide" (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1999);…

This article focuses on how architecture, and aesthetic interventions generally, might be transformed from hegemonic to counterhegemonic in order to realign political forces in the production of culture and social life. In a prior REMARX commentary for "Rethinking Marxism", the authors critiqued the concept of "the political"…

This paper examines the high levels of social connectedness and civic engagement between the [North] Brisbane School of Arts and the local metropolitan newspapers in their eagerness to establish and promote a reading club that would curb what they felt was the local community's preoccupation with reading popular novels. The Brisbane Literary…

For first-generation poor and working-class college students, surviving the social challenges of higher learning can be at least as demanding as achieving a high grade point average. To increase the odds that first-generation students with low-socioeconomic status backgrounds will persist and prosper in college, it is vital that their chosen…

The social class attainment gap in education is now attracting an increased level of concern. Despite the efforts of the British New Labour government to address the continuing underachievement of working class pupils in England, there has been little progress. This paper reports on one aspect of a wider research study carried out in an Initial…

Diversity in higher education, most everyone would agree, is a positive. Janet Galligani Casey, who serves in the capacity of visiting associate professor at Skidmore College in New York, agrees with it, but she thinks that sometimes all the talk about it hides complicated realities, especially for the working-class student. This article describes…

This essay, based on the personal experiences of a professional librarian, who is also a Vietnam veteran, looks at why Vietnam veterans are a minority in higher education and the misconceptions that surround them. The lack of contact with actual veterans by administrators in many institutions of higher education is noted, and the paper goes on to…

Social class influences parent involvement in schooling. This book uses the case study method to compare family-school relationships in a working-class elementary school with those in an upper middle-class school, focusing on one first grade class in each school, and within the two schools, on 12 families, over the course of their children's first…

The issue of social class rarely injects itself into assignments in honors English composition courses. The students take few chances with structure, analysis, voice, or audience invocation. Clearly bright students, they seemed baffled when asked for complication in their thinking or to take a chance with an unconventional structure. It was time…

A study investigated the relationship between sex and social class in the spontaneous speech of 16 individuals from Newcastle upon Tyne (England). Specifically, the study examined the frequency of glottalized variants of three voiceless stops, and treated variation by sex as separate from, not a byproduct of, variation by class. Subjects were four…