Considerable space has been devoted to this project because further information about it is easily available to the reader and because it illustrates most of the principles which can be applied to any class project. It arose out of the class; students were fully involved at every stage; and it was used to broaden the educational opportunities of class members, not to reduce them to technical assistants of a teacher eager to pursue an investigation.
.....LOCAL STUDIES............
W.G. Hoskins in his Fieldwork in Local History emphasised how appropriate this subject is to adult education and how adult classes have made a genuine contribution to its development. 'It is hardly too much to say that adult education classes are one of the most vigorous growing points for the serious study of local history in this country.
..In recent years an impressive monument o this contribution is A History of Nidderdale produced by a Leeds University Extra-Mural Department and Workers' Educational Association tutorial class. In a paper presented to the 1968 Conference of the Universities Council for Adult Education, Bernard Jennings, the class teacher emphasised how the project developed directly out of the interest of the class and how it was never allowed to become narrow and mechanical. He particularly warned against the danger that some members of a class might be allocated only menial tasks, and therefore make very little progress over the period of the project. A teacher's responsibility to each of his students is not lessened by the different role he occupies in the context of a project; group pressures to complete the work can make his concern for the individual even more important. Teachers themselves must also avoid the temptation to consider classes as task forces to help them follow their own academic interests, imposing their own urgency and timetables on the group.
...Local studies of many kinds provide excellent opportunities for class projects. A list of the basic subject areas involved would include social studies, physical and social geography, economics, history, politics, archaeology, literature, geology, photography, painting and natural history.
...Another popular subject which also has connections with a locality but which has many other virtues in adult education is archaeology. Out of this have developed specialised sub-divisions such as industrial archaeology. It combines a discussion of social, economic, political and other historical topics with a scientifically orientated methodology, and it presents convenient opportunities for practical involvement. No teacher of archaeology will need much prompting to develop a whole range of out-of-classroom activities. Frequently, as in summer digs, the classroom can be jettisoned altogether. However, all the points which have been made for other subjects apply equally to archaeology. Indeed the danger of a group of adult students, or part of a group, being demoted to labourers for keen archaeologists is even greater. Teaching must not be lost in the process of achieving the more concrete objectives of a dig.