The history of the Adult Education Centres

Everyone knows the Adult Education centres. Only they provide coverage in such a wide range of continuing education that for every person an appropriate educational offer is made available. For over half a century, Adult Education centres have been firmly anchored in the daily life of our Federal Republic of Germany. Their success story is inextricably linked to active democracy. Their educational mission is derived from the principles of the Enlightenment and universal human rights. They stand for the right to education, the opportunity for Lifelong Learning, and for equal opportunity; in short: for the implementation of humanistic ideas today and tomorrow.

This was not as a matter of course. It took a democratic state in order for the demand to recognise education as a public good and promote Adult Education was able to take institutional forms. Thus the Adult Education centres went through their first phase of establishment at the beginning of the Weimar Republic. The new democracy not only needed people to work along with it, but citizens who thought along with it as well. In particular, the working class was supposed to make up for lost time and be able to educate themselves, without being restricted by required religious beliefs, a particular political view or even party affiliation.

Under the Nazi dictatorship, the Adult Education centres were exposed to massive repression, were closed or under other names subsumed into the educational regime. After the war they were reestablished in the course of building democracy and able again to gain a foothold, often with the support of the allied occupying forces and the few who returned to Germany from exile. “Education for Citizenship” was one of the guiding principles of reconstruction.
With the division of Germany the Adult Education centres were forced to go separate ways. In the GDR, they were integrated into the state education system. Therefore they were obliged to implement the political and ideological guidelines of the state. Their primary task was to provide school qualifications and language skills as well as provide preparations for a specialized course of study. The Adult Education centres in the West maintained their broad program but supplemented their offer in the context of the educational reform in the 70s toward a more systematic and qualification-oriented learning than before.

Already by the end of 1989, the Adult Education centres in East and West once again forged closer contacts with each other so that with the merger of the two German states the there could also be a fusion of the Adult Education centres under one umbrella organization.

The Adult Education centres were based, from their foundation in the first German democracy and again after their reestablishment in the second, on the interest for education in the citizenry and the efforts to educate the workforce. The political and cultural upheavals of the 70s and 80s inspired the Adult Education centres to work on new topics such as equality between men and women, the environment and migration. The new orientations were well received by the population as well as with employees of the Adult Education centres. Ideas such as emancipation, participation and, finally, inclusion and integration became guiding principles.

The Adult Education centres, in their turbulent history, have learned that with changing living conditions, with new challenges and opportunities the educational needs of the people also change. They would justify these by incorporating them and not refuse to even change themselves. The constant social, economic and political change continuously demands the identification of the Adult Education centres as public, democratically responsible education institutions.

Questions about their identity and their mission under changed conditions belong to critical self-reflection of the Adult Education centres. Addressing these issues strengthens the ability of the Adult Education centres to be innovative. Despite all the differences in the structural conditions of the work of Adult Education centres and all the variety of the individual independent Adult Education centres, such discussions always clearly lead back to the self-evident core of the Adult Education centres: The common idea of education as a public responsibility.

Through its willingness and ability to adapt to new conditions, the Adult Education centres have succeeded throughout their history, to awaken the willingness for education across different population groups and to connect the current educational needs of people with the societal needs of the future. That is how they have become the leading institution for adult and continuing education. Adult Education centres were and are: flexible, ready for change and yet at the same time remain immutable at their core.