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illustrated by a tour of certain of the West Indian Territories undertaken by a staff member in 1959. This involved (1) consultative services on future programs of study at the new Leeward Islands Teacher Training College at Golden Grove in Antigua and at Erdiston Training College in Barbados; (2) the conducting of two courses for head teachers in Dominica; and (3) the planning of a 10-week summer training course in Grenada on the teaching of young children. The University College observed in connection with this tour that the different territories were making "more and more demands for help and advice in all aspects of education." It went on to state that the College's Education Department "was not yet staffed nor equipped to grant many of the requests, but it will obviously need to develop along lines which will enable such work to be carried on as an organised and systematic contribution to education in the West Indies." 27 A further example of the service role of the University College's Department of Education is the assistance it can render the Federal Government of the West Indies in advising the latter and representing it at conferences on educational matters. Thus, the head of the College's Education Department and the Federal Education Adviser served as the Federation delegates to the British Commonwealth Education Conference in July 1959, the UCWI having been asked by the Federal Government to nominate one representative.28

Community Service Activities

Various community service activities and projects of the University College and its staff members in fields other than education also give evidence of its role in helping meet practical community needs. These are in addition to activities falling under the ExtraMural Department of the College, which are discussed in the next chapter.

Among examples of such activities reported in the issues of the UCWI Newsletter in 1959 May cited the following: (1) research projects by the College's Chemistry Department on medicinal plants of Jamaica, the refining of salt from sea water, and improved methods of making charcoal (the principal fuel for family cooking in the Caribbean); (2) a 1-day refresher course on Diabetic Management sponsored by the College's Department of Medicine and Teaching Hospital; (3) a 5-week Seminar at the College on Economic Development in the Caribbean area as a whole, which was co-sponsored by the College and the Economic Development Institute of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and

27 UCWI Newsletter, No. 278, Apr. 6, 1959.
28 UCWI Newsletter, No. 290, June 29, 1959.

attended by representatives from various Caribbean area republics and territories; (4) the undertaking of a project to survey and preserve West Indian archival records, under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation; (5) participation by physicians and medical staff members from the College's Teaching Hospital in medical meetings and conferences in British Guiana and British Honduras; and (6) the holding of a Creole language studies conference, of special import to certain British and non-British Caribbean territories, under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

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CHAPTER VIII

Adult Education

DULT EDUCATION in the British Caribbean areas is being interpreted for the purposes of this chapter as including various programs of education and training for persons beyond elementary school age who are unable or do not desire to attend a full-time program of instruction at a regular institution of secondary or higher learning, or who having had such instruction require or desire further specialized education. Such programs may vary in scope and level of instruction from literacy training for adults to university level classes on an extension basis. They may include such different types of instruction as basic education in health and dietary practices for persons living in underdeveloped rural areas, vocational training for apprentices and others in evening or part-time classes at technical institutes or elsewhere, and specially designed advanced courses or seminars for specialists. In short, for our purposes here, they include all the various programs embraced under the headings of Community, Literacy, adult, and Fundamental Education.

There are a number of agencies, institutions, and groups in the British Caribbean territories carrying on activities in the broad field of adult education in this sense. The growing interest in such education is also evidenced by the fact that it has been dealt with at several conferences. Of particular interest was the First Caribbean Seminar on Adult Education sponsored by various agencies and institutions in Jamaica, as well as by UNESCO and the British Council, which was held in Jamaica in September 1952. Attending the Conference were representatives not only from the British Caribbean territories, but also from Puerto Rico, Surinam, Martinique, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, UNESCO, FAO, the Caribbean Commission, and the West Indies Development and Welfare Organization. The broad view of adult education as envisaged at the Seminar was evidenced by its statement that "education must be considered as one means of community development and Adult Education as a term including a variety of agencies of social and economic improvement." It noted that "this comprehensive view of Adult Education was reflected in the composition of the Seminar, which included members of the clergy, doctors, agri

culturists, and librarians, as well as social workers and educationalists." The underlying premise of the Conference was that attention to and expenditure on Adult Education must not await the establishment of universal schooling, despite the recognized need for a vast expansion of regular schooling facilities.

Other Conferences which considered and emphasized the role of adult education in the Caribbean generally but drew heavily in reaching their conclusions on experiences and examples of developments in British territories were the aforementioned Caribbean Commission sponsored Joint Conference on Education and Small Scale Farming in 1954, and the Sixth Session of the West Indian Conference in 1955. The documentation prepared by a UNESCO Consultant on Community and Adult Education in the Caribbean also will be recalled in this connection.

In addition to evening and part-time technical and trade training for workers in Technical Institutes, which has already been discussed, specific examples of other forms of adult education will make clear the variety of activities underway in recent years.

UCWI Department of Extra-Mural Studies

The University College of the West Indies' Department of ExtraMural Studies has been carrying on almost from the inception of the College a program of adult education. This has included not only instructional programs for adult learning and self-improvement, but also seminars, lecture courses, and the like, intended to consider and help solve some of the practical and immediate problems in the British West Indian community. As its name implies, the ExtraMural Department functions outside the regular residential degree programs of the University College. It operates in each of the British Caribbean territories in somewhat the manner of a university extension program in the United States, but with some differences.2

Designed to bring the University to the people and to develop leadership in meeting the everyday needs and problems of British West Indian society, the Department is organized under a Director, who has full professional status. It includes Staff Tutors, or Department Heads, in Industrial Relations, Radio Education, Drama, and Social Work, working out of the Mona campus. The field staff consists of 7 Resident Tutors, one for each of the British Caribbean territories, except that the Windward and Leeward

1 The First Caribbean Seminar on Adult Education, 1952, p. 3.

2 A detailed description of the activities of the Extra-Mural Department is found in J. R. Kidd, Adult Education in the Caribbean: The Extra-Mural Department of the University College of the West Indies (Multilithed, 1958).

Island groups have Resident Tutors for each of the two groups as a whole. These Resident Tutors are in charge of the entire ExtraMural Program in their respective territories. In addition the Resident Tutor serves as a liaison point between the UCWI and prospective full-time students in each territory, in such matters as supplying information on the College, conducting scholarship and entrance examinations, and holding interviews with prospective students. In each territory or group of territories there is a Territorial Advisory Committee for Extra-Mural Studies, composed of local educational, governmental, and community leaders, to advise the Resident Tutor on program needs in the particular territory. The main elements in the program include (1) for adults generally, instruction through lectures, discussion groups, short courses, the use of radio, and formal classes at various levels of instruction, embracing in some territories preparation for the examinations for the School and Higher Certificate and the General Certificate of Education, as well as for the external examinations for degrees of British Universities, and (2) special courses, projects, and activities to meet the needs of groups which have responsibilities for leadership, such as teachers, civil servants, extension workers, trade union officials, and others.3

Some idea of the specific nature of the activities of the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in one field-education-has already been indicated in the discussion of work undertaken in collaboration with the University College's Department of Education. A listing of some of the other activities of Extra-Mural Department in the weekly Newsletter of the University College in 1959 makes clear their wide nature and scope. Included among the many activities so listed were the following undertakings which the Department conducted or co-sponsored, or in which it participated:

1. Preparation by the Department's Radio Education Unit of a Catalogue of Programs available for broadcast or for playing on tape recordings. 2. The Annual Dance and Drama Festival held in British Honduras under Department sponsorship, followed by a short course in dramatic production by the Department's Staff Tutor in Drama.

3. A program of some 40 regular classes in various subjects to be offered in Jamaica by the Department, with the level of instruction ranging from introductory to external degree (University of London) standard. 4. In cooperation with the Teachers' Association of St. Kitts, a 4 day Conference of Primary and Secondary School teachers on the theme "Education for West Indian Citizenship."

5. A 4-day exhibition in Trinidad showing in Sculpture the story of the steel band, accompanied by lectures, including one on "A National Culture in Formation."

3 UCWI Calendar, 1958-59, p. 17.

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