Women and Adult Education

BY LINDA K. JOHNSON, Ph.D. - DEC 6, 2021

Recently I came across a publication exploring the founders of adult education. The conference paper authors, Susan Imel and Gretchen Birch, noted that the roots of adult education can be “traced as far back as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Stubblefield & Keane 1994).”  While recounting the influence of the Carnegie Foundation in the 1926 founding—just six years after the passage of the nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—of the American Association of Adult Education*, the authors purpose is to highlight the critical role that twenty-six women played in creating modern day adult education practices.

One of those twenty-six women is Nannie Helen Burroughs (pictured). She was born in 1879 and one of her many accomplishments was the founding of the first vocational school for Black women and girls. The National Training School for Women and Girl opened in 1909 to provide women with education and training for employable skills such as printing and shoe repair. Invoking the spirit of Ms. Burroughs, a recent news story highlighted how women are enrolling in Aspire’s living wage career training programs to enhance their lives and the lives of their families.

The publication first caught my attention because the majority of Aspire’s founders, volunteers, and adult students are female. Sixty years ago, the National Council of Jewish Women Dallas Chapter founded Operation LIFT, its first community-wide project. I am so grateful for NCJW’s leadership and the leadership of directors from Margaret Hirsch to Lisa Hembry, as well as hundreds of community volunteers who have occupied board and volunteer positions. Most of all I am inspired by our courageous and smart women students who trust us to help them reach their goals.

* In 1982, the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) was founded as the result of a merger between the National Association for Public and Continuing Adult Education (NAPCAE) and the Adult Education Association (AEA).

For more information:

Imel, Susan and Bersch, Gretchen (2014). "Unsung Heroines: Early Women Contributors to Adult Education," Adult Education Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2014/papers/35

Nannie Helen Burroughs  https://blackwomenssuffrage.dp.la/key-figures/nannieHelenBurroughs and https://www.nps.gov/people/nannie-helen-burroughs.htm

NCJW Dallas and Operation LIFT: https://www.ncjwdallas.org/additional-history-21-century/