When it comes to education, one size does not fit all. Overlooked and underfunded, adult basic education is treated as the poor relation of the Kindergarten to Grade 12 and post-secondary education systems in Manitoba. 

Yet the benefits to individuals, communities, and the province are clear, as outlined in The Transformative Power of Adult Education, the latest book by Winnipeg-based author Jim Silver. 

This book provides excellent information on adult basic education, including its history, theory and practice, participants’ perspectives, case studies, benefits, and funding constraints.

Adult basic education includes adult learning centres that offer mature high school diplomas and adult literacy programs that focus on literacy and numeracy. 

Of special note are adult learning hubs, which provide a holistic approach to adult basic education and include support systems such as daycare, transportation, emotional and cultural provisions, and recognition of their students’ personhood and unique gifts and challenges, all of which foster change. 

Silver, professor emeritus at the University of Winnipeg, says, “I became interested in adult basic education because I have long been interested in and involved with poverty and anti-poverty efforts. Adult basic education is a powerful anti-poverty program.” 

His book demonstrates the importance of adult basic education for students, especially those marginalized by poverty. 

“People whose lives are severely constrained by poverty are transformed by their experience with adult basic education. Not only do they earn their mature high school diploma, but they also gain self-esteem, self-confidence, and a sense of hope for the future. In so many cases, this enables them to move out of poverty and to move their families out of poverty.” 

These programs are more than anti-poverty strategies.

“Adult basic education is also an important part of the process of reconciliation,” says Silver. 

“Indigenous youth in Manitoba graduate high school at a rate about 30 percentage points lower than the population at large, but they are represented in adult basic education at a rate about two and a half times their share of the population. So adult basic education is both an anti-poverty initiative and a promoter of reconciliation.”

Given the benefits, why is adult basic education underfunded? Silver argues that the lack of public awareness and therefore public advocacy is part of the reason. 

“Also, adult learners tend to be disproportionately those who are poor and marginalized in our society,” he says. 

“As a result, governments don’t fund adult basic education at a level anywhere close to the levels at which they fund K to 12 and PSE. This is a choice. They choose to underfund adult basic education. They could just as well choose to fund adult basic education, but they don’t.”

Silver sums up the situation. “Adult basic education is a program that works exceptionally well, that meets a real societal need, that pretty much pays for itself because it moves people off social assistance and into the labour force, but that is sorely underfunded.

“We should be promoting and funding adult basic education much more than we have done and are doing.”