Community Education and Neoliberalism : Philosophies, Practices and Policies in Ireland

This book explores community education in Ireland and argues that neoliberalism has had a profound effect on community education. Rather than retain its foundational characteristics of collective, equality-led principles and practices, community education has lost much of its independence and has been reshaped into spaces characterised by labour-market activation, vocationalisation and marketisation. These changes have often, though not always, run contrary to the wishes of those involved in community education creating enormous tensions for practitioners, course providers and participants. -- editor Excerpt from Lisheen or the Test of the Spirits Therefore, Bob Maxwell was troubled, and that little drama of Russian life did not smooth matters for him. It told of a peasantry sunk in all kinds of ignorance and superstition and vice; of millions on millions of human beings steeped to the lips in everything that could be physically and morally degrading; of a dense, brutal type of humanity, through which there gleam possibilities of nobleness that might satisfy the aspirations of the most ambitious dreamer of a risen and exalted humanity. The dreadful and poignant remorse that seizes the chief actor in this powerful drama, his magnificent exculpation of others, and self-condemnation, reveal depths of con science and feeling that are generally unassociated with a criminal of such magnitude; and the author clearly wants to prove that, deep down beneath the stagnant and squalid surface of peasant life in Russia, there are hidden springs of nobility, that only need a strong hand to spread abroad and sweeten all the land. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction: Community Education in Neoliberal Times....Pages 1-34 Front Matter....Pages 35-35 Models of Community Education....Pages 37-67 Community Education in Ireland....Pages 69-102 Critical Education and Community Education....Pages 103-130 Front Matter....Pages 131-132 Community Education and Employability....Pages 133-162 Community Education and Accreditation....Pages 163-193 Insiders, Outsiders and the Professionalisation of Community Education....Pages 195-225 Rekindling Community Education in Neoliberal Times....Pages 227-245 Back Matter....Pages 247-287