Adult Education as a Human Right/Adult Education for Human Rights

Abstract

Adult education has a long history of people coming together to struggle toward a more equitable society-from Highlander Folk School in Appalachia to the Occupy Movement to Fees Must Fall to the Landless Workers' Movement to Prison Abolition (and countless other movements nationally and globally). Now is the time for adult education scholars and activists to stand up and speak out about emerging challenges due to increasingly rapid erosion of human rights. Adult educators have an important role to play in resisting this erosion, and in doing so, to reclaim their roots. Documenting the narratives of struggle is critical in a moment when the erasure of racial and social justice is all around us.Currently, there is a significant backlash against racial justice, attacks on critical race theory, retrenchment of affirmative action, bans on books, and pressure against any minute steps toward equity, racial/social justice work. Racialized scholars and activists are encountering ever more hostility as punishment for raising issues through scholarship, public forums, curricula, or in other venues. One recent example is Kathleen McElroy, a Black journalist who was offered tenure at Texas A&M only to have it rescinded. In 2021, a similar debacle involved Nikole Hannah-Jones. There are countless other cases of institutions that have walked back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) commitments. Many of those same institutions who had previously rushed to declare their commitments to racial and social justice are now noticeably silent.The adult education field desperately needs allies, advocates, and accomplices (Isaac-Savage & Merriweather, 2021) to stand up and speak out publicly. One way to do that is to use research to chronicle struggles occurring on the ground.