The decolonisation of learning raises significant questions in its turn, as the previous chapter has already suggested. Whose culture is defined as being more significant than others? Whose knowledge actually counts? And whose knowledge is being correspondingly devalued as a result?

This chapter moves on to focus on decolonisation and racial inequalities more specifically. Whose knowledges have been predominant and whose knowledges have been devalued as a result of slavery and colonialism in the past, along with the impacts of neo-colonialism and imperialism in more recent times? What can be learnt from strategies to decolonise the curricula in other disciplines? What might be the pedagogical implications, the ways in which a decolonised curriculum is offered to learners (Morreira et al, 2021)? And what might be the lessons to be applied to decolonising the curricula in community education and development studies in contemporary contexts? These questions will be explored more fully in subsequent chapters. While there is much to learn from the experiences of other disciplines, pioneering work of potential wider relevance has already been undertaken in adult community education and development too. This has been especially significant in relation to the development of participatory action research (PAR).

Having summarised the contributions of PAR, the chapter will conclude by revisiting the starting point: whose knowledge counts? How might different forms of knowledge – including Indigenous forms of knowledge and experiential knowledge – be valued? And how might they be critically evaluated and most appropriately employed through processes of reflexive dialogue?

Decolonising curricula and pedagogy

Decolonisation has been envisaged in a variety of ways, as previous chapters have already outlined, from decolonisation as formal independence from colonial rule through to calls for more fundamental challenges to the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and continuing structural inequalities internationally, starting from the bottom up. Morreira et al refer back to the contributions of Du Bois, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Ngugi and Fanon in this regard, emphasising the importance of calling into question both the systems of power and the systems of knowledge that have served to perpetuate oppression (Morreira et al, 2021). According to Ngugi wa Thiong’o’, in fact, imperialism's biggest weapon has been the cultural bomb, which served to ‘annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves’ (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 2005: 3).

This chapter moves on to focus on education and participatory action research (PAR) within the trade union and labour movement. The three overarching themes of the book run through this chapter in parallel, with a particular focus on the role of ideas and the development of critical consciousness within social movements. This includes experiences of questioning whose knowledge counts and the implications for the promotion of knowledge democracy, re-examining social movements’ own histories as the basis for developing more inclusive approaches and building solidarity for the future. The trade union movement has much to learn from its past engagements with colonialism as well as its past and more recent engagements with movements for decolonisation, as this chapter sets out to explore.

Trade unionism has been criticised for failing to challenge the legacies of slavery, colonialism and imperialism in Britain and the US in particular, with continuing inequalities of race within the movement itself as well as within the wider society (Marable, 1991; Ramdin, 2017). There have been very different histories too, however, as the previous chapter has already illustrated. Although there was evidence of trade union collusion with the racist regime, for example, there was also evidence of heroic mobilisations of solidarity against apartheid. While pulling no punches on the failings of trade unions in working against colonialism and racism more generally, trade unions have also made very real contributions (Davis et al, 2006).

The first part of this chapter summarises the competing approaches that have been identifiable within the history of trade union and labour movement education, with a particular focus on the implications for international solidarity and anti-racism. This sets the context for the discussion of specific approaches to trade union education and participatory research. The Unite History Project (UHP) co-produced six short volumes about the history of one of the two component parts of Unite: Amicus and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, whose centenary would have been in 2022 had it not been for the merger, including materials produced via oral history interviews that were conducted by trade union educators and activists themselves (in order of publication Davis and Foster, 2021; Seifert, 2022; Mayo, 2022; Foster, 2022; Davis, 2023; Weir, 2023).

Concerns with the divisive impacts of ‘culture wars’ provide the starting point for thinking about the decolonisation of community education and development. Where have these ‘culture wars’ come from, and how do they relate to long-standing debates about the role of ideas in processes of social change? The development of critical consciousness has been centrally significant here, with particular relevance for community education and development. How to unpack these debates about cultures, the role of ideas and critical consciousness in movements for social justice and equality?

While these debates are centrally important in theoretical terms, there are also major implications for community education and development practice. Attitudes towards slavery and colonialism in the past can so readily blend into attitudes towards racism now, along with attitudes towards the desirability or otherwise of living in a multicultural society. Racism and xenophobia represent some of the most challenging issues for professionals and community activists alike in the context of increasing social polarisation fanned by politicians from the Far Right.

Cultural warriors have also been engaging with religious fundamentalist debates, whether to celebrate their traditional values or to deplore their apparent decline due to increased secularism or supposed threats to Christianity from Islam. There are potential implications here for those concerned with human rights issues such as women's sexual health and LGBTQ rights, divisive enough already in so many contexts. The toxicity of cultural warriors’ interventions on such topics is not to be underestimated, with significant consequences for those concerned with building support for more socially just alternatives.

This is why this chapter sets out to explore the notion of culture itself and the role of ideas, critical consciousness and human agency, along with the idea of ‘cultural Marxism’ and the ways in which this term has been applied as a term of abuse by the Far Right (Finlayson et al, 2022). The chapter sets the framework for the discussion of cultural racism and the legacies of the past, focusing on the need to address these challenges via the decolonisation of adult community education and development curricula for the future.

Cultures, ‘culture wars’ and racisms, past and present

Cultures have long been the subject of contestation and challenge.

This chapter explores the ways in which the book's three overarching themes weave through comparative experiences of municipal strategies in Britain and the US that work with communities and social movements to tackle the legacies of slavery and colonialism (Blunkett and Jackson, 1987; Mackintosh and Wainwright, 1987; Jackson, 2021). These experiences illustrate some of the challenges involved in the promotion of decolonisation as an ongoing process, questioning predominantly held ideas – the prevailing ‘commonsense’ of neoliberal globalisation – and providing the basis for promoting more inclusive policies and practices. Building on the experiences of community development programmes from the late 1960s, social movements began to engage with municipal authorities to respond to these challenges by developing strategies for equalities and international solidarity.

Whatever their inherent contradictions, programmes such as the US War on Poverty and the UK Community Development and Urban Programmes had promoted community participation, strengthening social movements in a number of contexts, as Chapter 4 has already outlined. There were positive legacies here as well as negative ones, providing the basis for neighbourhoods, communities and social movements to work with – as well as against – the local state, finding spaces for the pursuit of progressive agendas. This was despite the increasing predominance of neoliberal policies at national levels during the Reagan/Thatcher years of the 1980s.

A number of towns and cities reacted progressively when faced with these pressures and challenges. Together they developed a range of alternative economic, social and political strategies, working in collaboration with the trade union movement along with community-based organisations and social movement campaigns (Blunkett and Jackson, 1987; Mackintosh and Wainwright, 1987; Newman, 2014; Jackson, 2021). This is in no way to suggest that such collaborations were without their own inherent tensions and conflicts. They were not. But there were possibilities for progressive collaborations all the same, with examples from Britain and the US for illustration, demonstrating the scope for alternatives to neoliberalism as developed by the new urban Left. These alternatives focused on the promotion of equalities and social solidarity rather individualism and hostility to the ‘other’, whether the ‘other’ was being characterised as the ‘enemy within’ – such as striking miners – or the enemy without – the refugees and migrants who were supposed to be threatening to ‘swamp’ Thatcher's Britain.

The motivation to write this book started from my increasing concern with contemporary ‘culture wars’, as Chapter 1 explained. There were fundamental challenges for community education and development here, challenges to their theoretical underpinnings, challenges to a critical understanding of their histories and challenges to the very basis of their practices. Key theorists were being dismissed as ‘cultural Marxists’. And the histories of community education and development continue to be at risk of distortion by cultural warriors’ refusals to recognise, let alone to engage with, the legacies of slavery and colonialism.

Most importantly, cultural warriors focus on blaming ‘the other’, especially migrants and refugees, along with their ‘woke’ supporters, such as ‘lefty lawyers’ and bleeding-heart liberals. Those who have been characterised as ‘woke’ are supposed to be responsible for the challenges of the day. It is in this way that cultural warriors aim to divert attention from the underlying causes of increasing polarisation, discrimination, poverty and xenophobia, along with increasing threats to the very future of the planet. Cultural warriors’ methods represent the very antithesis of. community-based approaches that start from communities’ own experiences and feelings, taking them as the basis for critical but respectful processes of dialogue while aiming to contribute towards democratic processes of social change for the longer term.

In contrast, cultural warriors focus on stirring feelings of resentment and fear, fanning divisions within and between communities as a result. Far from disappearing, manifestations of such toxic divisions have been continuing, and indeed increasing, as I have been writing this book. For example, the previous UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been strongly criticised for her incendiary statements about migrants and refugees, including her unfounded allegations about their supposed criminality – statements than could, and too often have, encouraged violent mobilisations from the Far Right. There have been community mobilisations, such as in Llanelli in 2023, when a protest camp was set up outside a hotel where asylum seekers were to be housed. This has been described as bringing a deluge of hate to a previously peaceful Welsh town (Chakrabortty, 2023). Such mobilisations provide chilling illustrations of the effects of these divisive strategies, potentially aggravated by more recent statements warning of a hurricane of migrants arriving on British shores.

Reasons for writing this book

Culture warriors have been re-enforcing divisive and discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, posing disturbing threats to social solidarity. And progressive social movements have been facing mounting pushback in recent years, vilified through Far Right cultural warriors’ toxic attacks on the very basis of their claims for social justice, challenges that have been effectively re-enforcing rather than confronting racism, discrimination, exploitation and oppression. These ideological battles raise many questions for community education and development, questions that are particularly acute for those committed to the pursuit of strategies for transformative social change.

Cultural warriors fundamentally question the theoretical underpinnings of transformative approaches. Their perspective on cultures, identities and the development of critical consciousness are at odds with the contributions of key thinkers such as Paulo Freire, whose writings have had so much influence on the development of debates on adult community education and community development for social transformation. It is precisely these types of approaches that are most threatened in the contemporary context.

In addition, cultural warriors’ attitudes towards the colonial past pose major challenges. These need to be explored more broadly and set within the context of debates about decolonisation. The histories of slavery and colonialism have been central to the development of community education. These histories date back to the post-slavery reconstruction period in the United States through to the British government's strategies for decolonisation after the Second World War. Their impact continues to be felt today and so needs to be critically examined and re-evaluated. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been centrally important here, drawing attention to the continuing legacies of slavery and colonialism in the context of Far Right and White supremacist ideologies in the US and internationally.

There is now a greater awareness of the shameful legacies of the past, with enhanced recognition of the continuing impact of slavery and colonisation in the contemporary context. Conversely, there has also been a significant backlash involving attempts to undermine such criticisms, to trivialise them as ‘woke’ or to deny their significance altogether.

This chapter explores the contested histories of adult community education and development per se, from post-slavery experiences in the US through to post-colonial experiences in Africa and elsewhere. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive review, the chapter's aim is far more modest – to identify common threads that interweave with the themes of cultural wars, the development of critical consciousness and decolonisation, with a particular focus on the threads that have relevance for more recent debates about community education and development in practice.

The previous chapter challenged a number of assumptions about whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is correspondingly devalued as a result. This chapter explores additional questions about whose interests are actually being served when people's knowledge is enhanced through community education and development projects and programmes. Is the aim to build communities’ resilience to cope with the challenges that face them, promoting self-reliance and individual advancement within the confines of their contemporary situations? Or do the aims go further, to enable them to address the underlying structural causes of their problems? To what extent have community education programmes been designed to safeguard the interests of the status quo? And how far have they been designed and delivered in more challenging ways within the context of strategies for decolonisation?

These questions have already been posed in previous chapters in relation to the contributions of Paulo Freire and others in different contexts. Here, the focus is upon projects and programmes in the post-Civil War context in the US and the post-Second World War context in Britain's African colonies. The final section reflects on potential connections with more recent initiatives to address the challenges of the legacies of Black migration from the South to the cities of the North in the US and Black and Asian migrations to Britain following the Second World War.

Community education and development in the US, post-slavery: from Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. Du Bois and beyond

Slavery was formally ended in the US in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. But early hopes for racial justice were soon dashed. Racial segregation and structural inequalities were re-enforced in the post-Reconstruction Southern states, including re-enforcement via mob violence in the form of lynchings. This situation continued right up to the Civil Rights Movement's challenges to segregation from the mid-20th century onwards.

In the 21st century, educators’ work is arguably more complex and more needed than ever before. The last six decades have witnessed significant changes involving global economic forces, increased competitive production modes, climate change and its ramifications on human and non-human beings. We have felt the impact in education of a pandemic, which seemed to ‘slow us down’, amid a fast-moving and ever-developing technological landscape which had, and continues to have, significant impacts on people’s ways of life. There has been a merging of finance, trade and communication knowledges; societal instability; and a global resurgence in right-wing politics and social movements which are exercised around assumed threats of immigration, ‘race’ and ethnicity and other forms of diversity.

Comparative measures of educational achievement (e.g. PISA, TIMSS, NAPLAN) demonstrate that although Australia is broadly understood to offer quality education, this masks stark and persistent inequalities. Wider disparities are evident between students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds than in many other OECD countries. These inequities start before children enter schools. Children experiencing economic and social adversity are underrepresented in preschool and overrepresented in population level measures of ‘developmental vulnerability’ prior to school commencement. Young people from Indigenous backgrounds, rural/remote areas, and lower socio-economic backgrounds suffer significant achievement gaps across all measures, and the gap widens as they progress through their education. Some young people are being left behind as their more advantaged peers outpace them, with life-long consequences. Although public discourse encourages us to see educational failure as the fault of individuals, there is wide agreement that these inequities result from policy failures in Australian education.

Educators in Australia have a duty of care to their students, inclusive of both a moral and legal obligation to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the students in their care. Specifically, this duty requires educators to take reasonable measures to protect students from experiencing foreseeable harm; failure to do so may constitute negligence. In the simplest sense, a foundational element of educators’ work is to ensure the schooling environment is a safe one, free from bodily or mental harm. In practice, this may be more complicated than it sounds. Students may reserve verbal abuse and/or physically violent behaviours for when school-based adults are not present, making educators’ intervention more challenging. Further, individual schooling cultures may inadvertently encourage or discourage these forms of harassment through the messages of in/tolerance that educators convey to their students via their un/willingness to engage when particular students identity characteristics are targeted for harassment or victimisation.