Culture and Adult Education: A Study of Alberta and Quebec

George G. Ambury is an associate professor of adult education at
Queen’s University.

Hayden Roberts brings to this study his extensive experience in a wide variety of cultural and educational settings. This work, first, is an exploration of a method for the comparative study of adult education and, second, is the presentation of his findings respecting the forces that lead to differences in the adult educational systems of Quebec and Alberta. The author suggests that the fundamental force which influences the provision of educational services is the social philosophy or national ethos of the nation or region. This belief leads to his guiding hypothesis: that, due to the prevailing ideologies in the two regions, adult education programs in Quebec will be more oriented to social and cultural development than in Alberta, where the emphasis will be on providing programs that are seen as being more personally and economically beneficial.

Social systems analysis is seldom as straightforward as the scholar might wish. In Roberts’ examination of the data respecting the social philosophies and government structures in Alberta and Quebec, he finds, within the overall philosophies of each region, conflicting ideologies which in turn influence decision makers in their ascription of needs and provision of funding and programs. The author, however, concludes that the evidence does tend to support his hypothesis.

A problem is introduced by the operational definition of adult education (UNESCO, 1976) in that the data were easily available for only some of the organized educational processes and those that were available were sometimes not comparable between regions. Nevertheless, this work makes a significant contribution to the literature of comparative adult education both through its demonstration of a useful method of inquiry and through its addition to our knowledge respecting differences in educational programs and priorities in Quebec and Alberta.