Reflections on the life of Colin Lawton by Jack Cross AM

 

I attended the funeral of Colin Lawton on 19 December as a representative of the WEA and U3A Adelaide.

Colin was one of the most outstanding adult educators that South Australia has produced. In 2000 he was declared Australia’s Adult Educator of the Year. In July 1949 he became General Secretary (or chief administrator) of the WEA, a position he held to 1957 when he took up the position of Secretary Organiser of Adult Education at the University of Adelaide. As Secretary Organiser he then became the university’s representative on the WEA Board. In 1982 with his retirement he moved back to the WEA. In 1985 he was made a Life Member of the WEA and in 1987 the chaired the WEA Board.

In 1986 he founded the University of the Third Age in South Australia. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1988 – a grand South Australian!

More details of the colourful history of the WEA can be found in the book Labour and Learning, available from Dymock’s Rundle Mall and the WEA.

Jack Cross AM

One hundred years of the WEA

An excerpt from the Australian Journal of Adult Learning Volume 53, Number 3, November 2013 by Dr Denis Binnion.

 

Australian Journal of Adult Learning

Volume 53, Number 3, November  2013

 

 

 

 

 

One hundred years of the WEA

 

Denis Binnion

WEA Adelaide CEO (retired)

 

 

 

In 1913 Australia was a bustling place with great enthusiasm about the future as six disparate states tried to work out the operations of their new federal government system which was a mere twelve years old. Travel between the states was generally by coastal steamer, the fastest and most comfortable form of transport available then, and more often than not interstate travellers voyaged on the fleet of the Adelaide Steamship Company which plied the waters from Cairns to Sydney to Fremantle. One passenger who travelled this coastal route between the six capital cities in 1913 was Albert Mansbridge, the founder of the Workers’ Education Association in England ten years earlier. Mansbridge hoped his English organisation would “promote the higher learning of working men and women” in Australia just as it had in England. With almost religious fervour and much enthusiasm he took his organisation to the colonies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia Mansbridge visited all capital cities where he conducted public meetings calling for the formation of a WEA in each state. His trip to Australia was a great success and WEAs emerged in all states in 1913.

 

 

The financiers of this trip from England were a handful of the unions and the state universities. Mansbridge was doing the standard university lecture tour around the country. But as the foundling WEA organisations emerged other groups became the major sponsors

and supporters, as the unions fell into the background but not into oblivion. The state governments came to the party with some limited funding for classes and the relatively newly enfranchised women

of Australia took the opportunity to influence the development

of the democratically governed WEAs. The Kindergarten Unions (exclusively female) and the Women’s Christian Temperance Unions all played a part in establishing this new adult education service.

The mission of the WEA was to break down the barriers ordinary working men and women faced in either attending or even accessing the type of education that universities provided. In this era most “ordinary” Australians did not progress beyond primary school.

High schools, especially outside the capital cities were few and far between. Most school teachers had had none or only a few months of teacher training. The populace was keen for “higher education”. And that is what the WEAs originally provided for men and women

who joined the year long university courses for minimal fees but with no examinations or paper qualifications at the end. Those who could not afford more than primary school education warmed to year long courses in economics, political history and English literature. The WEA was meeting a great social need for education for adults beyond what they had received in primary school.

 

Over the years the mission of the WEAs changed as did the times and nature of Australian society. As attendance at high school became universal after World War Two the demand for university style courses faded and the surviving WEAs and the organisations into which some had been subsumed, like the CAE in Melbourne, altered their educational provision. Shorter courses in a broader range of subjects became the fashion as people wanted help with their daily living rather than university style programs. Home Decoration, Hostess Cooking and French for Travel became popular along side of

a range of “second chance” education programs for those who had not succeeded as they had hoped at high school. Remedial Mathematics, and Basic English Grammar courses and literacy programs

480  Denis Binnion

 

 

complemented the home improvement type courses. With increasing levels of education in Australia and increasing standards of living the range and focus of provision altered again in the 1970s and 1980s. The WEAs introduced “lifestyle” courses in alternative medicine, interpersonal relationships and communication. The educational provision increasingly was related to life changes and the needs

that they produced: - changing employment or losing employment; terminating or beginning new relationships or families; planning overseas travel; buying a new house or moving house; planning for retirement or a new baby; or coping with and learning about new technology- computers, the internet and digital photography.

 

So what about the future? Despite the development of online learning for formal qualifications this applies less readily to non-formal adult learning. Much research has shown that adults attend adult learning classes for a variety of reasons including social contact. Any online course in ballroom dancing will never have the appeal of a class at

the local WEA dance hall! After all in the 1950s the WEA was known to stand for “weddings easily arranged.” The terminology might have now changed but the basic motivation for attending classes with others has not. People like to share common interests, socialise with others and potentially find a suitable person for a new friendship or

relationship. Furthermore the WEAs have had 100 years of experience in changing and adapting to changing social circumstances. They

will continue to do that. In recent years WEAs have added local and overseas study tours, some accredited computer training and tailor made workplace training programs to their course offerings. As the WEAs respond quickly and efficiently to changing demand they will alter and survive into the future as they change course offerings, types of provision, locations for delivery and their use of new technology. The democratic student and community focused governance of WEAs will also ensure that they change and survive. Students will have

direct influence on the future direction of the WEAs just as they have

had over the last 100 years.

 

 

About the author

 

Denis Binnion joined the South Australian WEA in 1979 as a

course programmer in language and liberal studies. He became CEO of the WEA in Adelaide and led the organisation for nearly twenty years. In 2012 he became a member of the Order of Australia.