Aids: a challenge for adult educators

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Aids: a challenge for adult educators

Patricia A. McPartland, South-Eastern Massachusetts Area Health Education Centre, Inc.

The problem

The private and public consequences of the AIDS epidemic have the potential for affecting our lives for many years to come according to recent statistics. The AIDS epidemic is insidious. According to WHO[1] several cases throughout the world have been reported, as indicated in the table below:

Table 1 Reported AIDS cases in selected countries

Country / Number of Reported Cases / Date of Reported Cases
Canada / 2,492 / as of April 6, 1989
France / 5,655 / as of Dec. 31, 1989
Germany / 2,991 / as of March, 1989
Great Britain / 2,103 / as of March 31, 1989
Italy / 3,327 / as of Feb. 28, 1989
U.S.A. / 88,096 / as of March 31, 1989
Total cases worldwide / 146,569 / as of March 31, 1989

Source: World Health Organisation, 1989.

For every AIDS case, it is estimated that another ten persons are infected with the AIDS virus. It is believed that 1.5 million to 2 million people in the USA are infected with the AIDS virus. In time, researchers predict that between 20% and 50% of these people will develop the disease. The Centres for Disease Control project that there will be 365,000 cases in the U.S. by 1993. Many of these people with AIDS are adults. Of the 88,096 Americans with AIDS, 86,656 are adults. AIDS has an impact on everyone. Not only are we and our children at risk of getting it but in a real sense we are paying for the consequences of this disease through our tax dollars. It is estimated that $45,000 to $130,000 a year is spent on the care of an AIDS patient.

The private and public consequences of the AIDS epidemic have widespread social, economic, moral and legal implications. Adult educators can play an important role in helping our society face the AIDS crisis. Many adult educators argue that one of the major goals of adult education is to help persons learn to develop and use skills basic for survival in health measures [2]. Helping people to develop these basic survival skills is critical today as our world is being challenged by so many serious health threats such as AIDS. Adult educators such as professors, health care providers and administrators can assist people to meet these challenges through educational intervention. However, the assumptions’ underlying our current, educational strategies mitigate against the problem of AIDS. These assumptions along with suggestions on an educational approach are discussed in this paper.

Assumptions within the adult education system which mitigate against the problem of AIDS

The assumption which mitigates against the problem of AIDS focuses around individualism. The rights of the individual are sacred. Anything that would violate human beings’ right to think for themselves, judge for themselves, make their own decisions, live their own lives as they see fit is not only morally wrong, but it is sacrilegious. As Bellah[3] explains, ‘some of our deepest problems both as individuals and as a society are also linked to our individualism.’.

This individualism is also strongly reflected in our educational system with its focus on technical rationality. The focus of the Humanistic Paradigm is clearly on individualism. The assumptions regarding the adult learner according to this paradigm are:

1. Human beings are naturally, inherently good[4];

2. Behaviour is the consequence of free human choice;

3. Human beings possess the power or potentiality for achieving the good life, solving one’s own problems and developing into the best person possible;

4. Individuals learn what each perceives-to be necessary, important or meaningful;

5. Adults have intrinsic rather than extrinsic motives for learning.

In the Humanistic paradigm, the teaching-learning transactions focus on the individual learner rather than a body of information. This emphasis on individualism presents a barrier to collective action. Yet the problem of AIDS must go beyond the efforts of individuals if it is to be resolved. Efforts to combat this disease by such methods as condom advertising and blood testing have been met with resistance due to the feeling that it infringed on individual liberty. How can the problem of AIDS be solved in public terms?

How should AIDS be discussed in order to be solved in public terms?

In order to resolve the AIDS problem, many of our leaders have turned to educational strategies. Some of these educational strategies rely only on information dissemination. While information dissemination is essential, it is also important not to ignore other approaches. Relying solely on dissemination of material assumes that increase in information will change attitudes and ultimately behaviour. However, knowledge doesn’t necessarily result in changed behaviour. According to Iverson and Portnoy,

in some instances, the information will be sufficient to initiate a behavioural change, while in other instances it may have no direct effect at all on behaviour. It may alter attitudes with subsequent behaviour changes or the change may result in no measurable behaviour change. This relationship remains one of the most perplexing problems. [5]

Another problem with these strategies is that information can empower some people but not necessarily everyone. Drug addicts may realise that they are at high risk, but without treatment, they will not be able to change their habits. Yet these strategies do not call for increases in the budgets for drug facilities so that drug users could receive treatment. Furthermore, these strategies don’t address all the societal and larger environmental situations that contribute to AIDS. It places all the burden on the individual. If the individual behaves a certain way this disease will be controlled. However, this single-minded band-aid approach will simply not be an effective strategy for dealing with this complex problem. While it’s essential to provide information, other approaches including collective action are also essential.

Dewey raised a central question: ‘How do we make private individuals into conscious publics?’ For Dewey, the solution was education[6]. He believed that it was necessary to empower the have-nots through education and informational facts artfully expressed. Dewey[7] and the progressives argued that the purpose of education was 1) to broaden the view of education to focus on socialisation; 2) pragmatic, practical learning based on the understanding of one’s own experience; 3) social action; 4) strong relationship between education and society.

Dewey suggested the following conditions and methods by which a public may emerge from its eclipse. The seven conditions for achieving a great community are as follows:

1. associations which are emotionally, intellectually and consciously sustained;

2. the consequences of these associations are known, esteemed and sought (by the public);

3. genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities inform desire and effort and direct action;

4. creation and articulation of contemporarily meaningful signs and symbols;

5. communication and dissemination of knowledge derived from community based social inquiry;

6. participation of individuals in forming and directing group activities, in acknowledgement of the uneasy tension between the rights of individuals and the rights of groups;

7. the public is conscious of its potential.

For Dewey,

communication alone can create a great community.. our Bible is not one of tongues but the signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible. [8]

However, are we effectively communicating? Bellah et al. found that

Many Americans are limited to a language of radical individual autonomy and cannot think about themselves or others except as separate and distinct entities with little commonality beyond the superficial level of lifestyle, employment or personal preference.[9]

Therefore, as a society we need to develop a language of interdependency. We need to start ‘thinking about our collective future’. Bellah recognises that our cultural traditions, rooted in individualism, and their limitations in helping us think about our collective future. Without that he believed that we are threatening the very survival of our freedom. He said,

Modern individualism seems to be producing a way of life that is neither individually or socially viable, yet a return to traditional forms would be to return to intolerable discrimination and oppression. The question then is whether the older civic and biblical traditions have the capacity to reformulate themselves while simultaneously remaining faithful to their own deepest insights.[10]

For Aronowitz and Giroux, the first step is to specify

What we as a community want education to be. This means acknowledging both the importance as well as the limits of the language of critique. It means moving beyond analysis of the ideological and material conditions of public schooling to the language of possibility. In this case, we move to the terrain of hope and agency to the sphere of struggle and action, one steeped in a vision which chooses life and offers constructive alternatives. Secondly, rethinking the purpose of education also means reformulating the social and ideological role of educators. We believe that educators at all levels of schooling have to be seen as intellectuals, who as mediators, legitimators and producers of ideas and social practices perform a pedagogical function that is eminently political in nature. [11]

Though Aronowitz and Giroux do not specifically address the issue of AIDS, they do not believe that schools are places that would provide equal opportunity to discuss such topics as sex, AIDS, drug problems, etc.

Conclusion

Education is essential to dealing with the AIDS crisis. In order to maximise its effectiveness, these educational interventions must go beyond information dissemination to include all the societal and larger environmental situations that contribute to AIDS. These approaches must not only empower the individuals, but must also empower our society.

The assumption in education which mitigates against the problem of AIDS focuses around individualism. It places all the burden on the individual. If the individual behaves a certain way, this disease will be controlled. It is necessary to look beyond the scope of the individual and begin to take collective action. The AIDS situation is everyone’s concern.

Reproduced from 1989 Conference Proceedings, pp. 57-64  SCUTREA 1997

[1] WHO (1989) AIDS Update: AIDS cases report, surveillance, forecasting and impact unit: global programme on AIDS. March

[2] Bergevin, P. A. (1976) Philosophy for adult education. New York, Seabury Press, p. 38

[3] Bellah, R. et al. (1985) Habits of the heart. New York, Harper & Row Publishers, p. 142

[4] Patterson, C. H. (1973) Humanistic education. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall

[5] Iverson, P. and Portnoy, B. (1977) Reassessment of the knowledge/attitude/behaviour triad. In Health Education. vol. 8, November

[6] Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and education. New York, Macmillan

[7] Dewey J. (1957) The public and its problems. Chicago, Swallow

[8] ibid. p. 142

[9] Bellah, R. et. al. (1985) op. cit. p. 84

[10] ibid. p. 144

[11] Aronowitz, S and Giroux, H. (1985).Education under siege. Massachusetts, Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc. p. 19