The situation of adult education in Spain and Catalonia

Abstract

The need to raise the level of instruction, the cultural level in all its dimensions and to improve the training, as well as offer possibilities of amplified recyclage and professional reconversion of the employed population, the unemployed and the active potential, and also the whole adult population actually residing in Spain, is imperious, but on the contrary, the demand which is really expressed is low, although we know that the “potential deman”, is impressingly high: the population of our country is not conscious of its educational rights and moreover, live in a universe where consumption is valued positively, but culture, creation or cultural consumption is much forgotten, as if industrialization, economic growth and democratic guarantee do not have relation to do with the educational level of the population. A good part of this article is dedicated to the initiatives and experiences which are presently being developped in the field of permanent adult education; it includes school and out-of-school experiences, formal and non formal, the manner that an inventary would be made of that which pertains to the educational system as well as that which administratively pertains to the competence of the Ministries and Cultural Departments, or in other words, all those which some authors designate with the controversial name of “cultural animation”,. The exposition contained in the text of the article is a first description, since of the knowledge of the reality and of its analysis in function of one or the other theoretical presupposition, we could advance in the field of theoretics and also in that of concrete practices. The initiatives of two organizations related with the “Generalitat de Catalunya” (autonomous government of the Catalonian region) is superficially described in the last section and great efforts are being made to contribute to an educational renewal or qualitative improvement of permanent education of adults in Catalonia, since the Generalitat beginning December 31st 1979, has full competence in adult education -while the Central Government preserve the exclusive competence-; due to the recent transfer of competences by the Central Government to the Autonomous Administration, it is too soon yet to evaluate the results of the job accomplished.