Raymond Williams: Adult Education and the Public Intellectual
Raymond Williams came into my life as a result of work I undertook on my thesis in 2014 on adult education. My PhD supervisor, Professor John Holford, suggested I explore Williams’s An Open Letter to W.E.A Tutors (1961) to understand some of the complexities of the historical place of adult learning and the role of the Workers’ Educational Association. What was immediately clear to me was that Williams was arguing for a form of education for the many and by the many, not led by the elite few. He was deeply sceptical of the notion of cultural or educational imperialism, commenting in his letter that: