Learning and Leisure - the disappearance of 'Night School'

In the old days people went to 'Night School' to learn a new skill, like a language, or carpentry, or DIY, or car maintenance, and you had to book well in advance to secure your place. That idea morphed into 'Adult Education', and that into 'Adult and Community Education', as if by adding the word 'community', whole communities would suddenly be engaged in out of hours education. For the past couple of decades I have been a teacher for adults at day and evening classes and have noticed big changes in the way adults learn and are taught. Class numbers are dwindling, and the average age is getting older. Aren't younger people interested in leaning new skills, I wondered?

The first thing you notice  if you turn up at a government-funded  leisure class is the mounds of paperwork. The increase in paperwork was first highlighted as far back as 2008 in this article  in The Guardian. On the obligatory termly feedback forms, learners ask over and over again for less paperwork, but their pleas are ignored, despite the fact this might be the only criticism they have of the class. The vast amount of paperwork is to ensure quality of teaching, an admirable aim, but remember, these are adult customers we are talking about, not children forced into a learning environment. If they don't feel the class meets their needs they can ask to choose another course, ask for a refund, or complain. Few do, as the quality of teaching is often excellent, with or without the 'peer review, mid-term survey 'etc etc.

Some of the classes are classes  earn you a qualification, for example an NVQ or similar, but according to the Adult Learning Survey figures, only 25% of the classes are of this type. The rest are leisure learning classes such as 'Holiday French', 'Watercolour Painting', 'Guitar for Beginners'. These provide a social as well as an educational function, though the coffee breaks might well now be consumed by form-filling, as the learners puzzle over whether or not they really know how to play Scarborough Fair well enough to tick it off on their list of objectives, and whether or not playing to each other counts as evidence, or whether the tutor must video it.

The amount of paperwork has meant Adult Education teachers in subjects such as the  Arts, Sport or subjects such as Yoga have given up with a system which demands they do initial assessments on people who don't want to be assessed. Adults who have come to a class to relax or because they failed in school find that their first lesson (even in Yoga) consists of an assessment of their current ability, (slightly scary) and that the whole scheme of paperwork is managed by, believe it or not - the school inspectors, Ofsted. Students are confronted by a 'what are your objectives' questionnaire, often when they are a total beginner to a subject. e.g.Q: 'Astronomy - what are your personal learning goals in this class?' A: 'Er...I would like to know more about the stars.'

The National Adult Learning Survey 2010 'has recorded a steep decline in non-formal and informal learning compared with previous NALS. Participation in formal learning is unchanged. The decline in non-formal learning coincides with the shift in public funding away from short courses in favour of longer courses leading to nationally recognised qualifications.'

At the same time, there has been a huge rise in the number of people who now head for the U3A - the University of the Third Age. The U3A runs its classes as interest groups. There is no paperwork, and the teachers are unpaid volunteers. You can join as long as you are retired or semi-retired, and in these days of the internet, lots of people are semi-retired or work part-time from home. Many of the retired people who used to  support Local Authority Adult Education classes have joined the U3A, and groups are thriving and bursting at the seams. This is for several reasons - first because the cost is so cheap to attendees - £1 or £1.50 a class, plus a nominal joining fee. Secondly, there is no paperwork to do and no exams. Thirdly, the classes (described as interest groups) are led by enthusiasts for their subject, who again are often excellent teachers, and the classes are designed to be guided by the needs of the attendees.

But the biggest rival of all to Adult Education and  the U3A is the internet. Now you can tutor yourself in just about anything on-line. A friend of mine recently learnt how to french-polish a table via an online tutorial, including setting fire to the polish. He wasn't warned not to try it at home. In one way, this method of learning is extremely empowering. The emphasis is firmly on the learner motivating him/herself, and there is something to be said for making mistakes in the privacy of your own home where no-one will see you, or grade you out of 10.

So what is lost? In all these ways of learning the inspiration of a one-to-one relationship with a teacher/mentor. I can't imagine anyone will remember their online tutor in quite the same way as they remember someone they have actually had face-to-face contact with. I remember my teachers as people first, and as teachers second. (Thank you, Mrs Wells, Mr Thurloe, Mike Robson, Chris Bostock). Enthusiasm can come over online, but it is not the same as being galvanized by the personal attention of someone who sets you on fire to learn. With the internet method of learning we have to rely on inspiring ourselves, and perhaps that is a good thing, but perhaps we will miss the real-life contact with someone who cares about our progress as an individual.

The U3A method keeps a sharing relationship open, but runs the risk of  tutors being unqualified or inexperienced in their subject. Health and Fitness courses in particular are much in demand with the older age-group, but the U3A has few members qualified enough to lead them. The Adult Education model focuses narrowly on judging quality of teaching by whether or not the forms are filled, and  not on the invisible relationship between learner and teacher. The internet appeals massively to men, conspicuously absent at most of these classes, but engaging with learning online. There is a strong appeal to them in Doing It Yourself.

As a creative writing tutor, I have seen a big shift away from learning in class to learning online. Is this an advantage or disadvantage to the learner? What do you think? Is leisure learning important? If  leisure learning classes were to disappear altogether, would anything be lost?

Robin Hood - the anti-hero for today as discovered by Lauren Johnson

Today I'm welcoming Lauren Johnson to talk about her new debut, The Arrow of Sherwood. I have always been fascinated by Robin Hood, so I asked Lauren -

Why do you think the legend of Robin Hood has been so enduring?

Lauren : I think Robin endures because he is an antihero – throughout his history, from at least the fifteenth century, he has been a symbol of misrule, of chaos, sometimes of outright violence and lawbreaking. His connection with Mayday in the past is a clear sign of that, because May was all about raucous celebration and upsetting the norm. But he is also a very modern hero. You can see that in the Robin Hood tax campaign – we still want a figure who stands up for the poor and needy, against the seemingly all-powerful wrongdoer. In all our modern TV detective shows, the main character could almost be Robin Hood – they do what they have to, to bring down the bad guy, even if it means bending the rules. He’s mischievous, but he stands for something, and that’s really appealing.

What will surprise the reader about your version of the character of Robin Hood, and will we be meeting Maid Marian?

In The Arrow of Sherwood you will meet pretty much all the archetypes of the Robin Hood story, but probably not in the way you expect. At the start of the book Robin comes back from crusade – he was sent on it to do penance – and the first person he meets is called Marian Peverill. They are supposed to get married, in one of the usual noble arranged marriages, but they deeply dislike each other. There is no respect between them whatsoever. That scene was one of the first I had in my mind – these two famous romantic characters appearing, and they can barely tolerate being in the same courtyard.

I wanted to make Robin, like all the characters, just a bit more human than in lots of versions of his story. He has grown up as a lord’s son but he feels constrained by his family and spent lots of his youth around lowborn men – there’s a bit of a Henry V element to him in that respect. But returning from crusade he is supposed to give up his ties to the common friends he had, and properly become a lord, ruling over them, focusing on increasing his estate and keeping the law. So a lot of the book is about that struggle: between being the lord his family want him to be, and his instinct to help his old friends. Not just because he feels that some other lords are abusing their power and he ought to stop it, but also because there is that danger-seeking element to him that enjoys transgressing rules.

You work as a costumed interpreter, can you explain what this is and how this helps your understanding of history?

Costumed interpretation – sometimes called live or historical interpretation – is a combination of dramatic performance, historical presentation and one-on-one conversation, usually in heritage settings. At its simplest, it means I wear a costume and engage with the public as a character from the past. I have been very lucky to work in a wide range of time periods, portraying very different – but always interesting – characters. I’ve played everyone from medieval princesses to Victorian scullery maids.

I think my experience as a costumed interpreter has helped me massively, not only in my understanding of the past but in my story telling. As part of my research I often go beyond reading about historical events and my character to learn songs, dances, social behaviours, contemporary stories – some of which are pretty weird – and that means I get a really rounded view of the past. Then, having done my own research I have to impart that knowledge to members of the public, from toddlers who might just want to know about medieval animals or my crown, to hyper-informed professors in their 60s. You get very good at gauging what interests the public and the best way of getting your information across.

And then there is simply the fact that I’ve been in the really privileged position of running up and down castle stairs in flat leather shoes, felt how you move in a laced gown with really long beautiful sleeves that can trip you up, sat in a medieval great hall and watched recreated court cases or stories being told – I’ve even shot a trebuchet in my time and withstood a siege from the castle walls. (Not literally, I hasten to add.) When you have the physical experience of a period of history and you’re engaging with your character, you get very close to feeling like you are back in that era, and I think it helps you understand their behaviour.

How important is the real-life history to your re-telling of the story and what is the favourite source you have used?

For me, the real-life history is very important. Obviously, I’ve written a story about a man who almost certainly didn’t exist in the way his myth is now remembered. But I very much wanted to root my version of Robin Hood in a real world – a period that I had spent a number of years researching and interpreting.

I came at this story with a clear question in my mind. A lot of the popular mythology of Robin Hood has ossified over the years – we think of him being a nobleman who lives in the forest with his common friends and Maid Marian, who helps King Richard against evil Prince John and steals from the rich to help the poor. But that character doesn’t really make sense in the twelfth century, when Richard and John existed. Noblemen were usually very separate from the people on their land, and you didn’t get noblewomen hanging out in forests with paupers. So my question was: If a nobleman called Robin of Locksley had existed in that era, how might he have become the Robin Hood we recognise today? I wanted to fuse the historical fact with that myth.

In terms of research, my favourite sources are contemporary ones that bring the past to life. I love twelfth century stories – Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, the moral fables. And I really like visual sources. I would love to take more time to just sit and look at manuscript images, because they are extraordinary, and they reveal so much about medieval life and their sense of humour. It’s a later document than my story is set but the Luttrell Psalter of about 1320-40 is brilliant from that perspective – it’s full of scenes of medieval noble life, like the lady sending her husband off to war and handing him his armour, or feasts being served at great tables, or royal ladies on the move, with an absurdly long wagon and all their servants and animals. Those sources bring the past to life, and make your realise that they were still human beings – it bridges the gap between us and them, and that is always what I want to do in my work.

Thanks Lauren, I've loved talking to you - and all the best with The Arrow of Sherwood.

You can follow Lauren on Twitter @History_Lauren or visit her website at http://laurenjohnson1.wordpress.com