I have been working for the Workers’ Education Association (WEA) for the past
15 years, since leaving work in secondary schools which had become wearing,
both for me and the students I taught. What drew me to the WEA was its usage
of popular education in courses to enable some people previously alienated from
and damaged by the education system the first time around to see that, if done
differently, learning could be really useful. I remain convinced by the power of
popular education and want to discuss here its immediate and longer term
learning and teaching benefits. I also want to suggest that HE students and tutors
can benefit from these teaching methods and will use examples from two WEA
programmes to make this point. I first discuss how our ‘second chance’
programme (designed for those who missed out on education the first time
around) offers a powerful learning and teaching tool. I then discuss how our
Trade Union (TU) programmes enable students to challenge their ideas about
how the world is organised.