Introduction

In August 2016, the Danish government set up an expert group on how to improve the Danish adult education system. In the terms of reference, the focus was on how to make adult education more responsive to the needs, first, of public and private organisations and, second, of individuals, with the aim of supporting the development of a productive and highly qualified Danish workforce. The role of adult education was reduced to that of increasing the stock of human capital in order to improve the competitiveness of Danish society (that is, its economy). However, such a narrow, instrumental view of adult education has not always been dominant.

From a historical perspective, adult education has played a much broader role in Denmark as a path to emancipation and a way of creating a sense of community and national identity. Its roots are linked to social movements and the idea of enlightenment, solidified in the form of so-called folk high schools bringing education to the Danish people. The government took popular education under its wings from an early stage. Already in 1851, folk high schools received public subsidies (Ehlers et al, 2011), and from 1896, evening schools were included in the national budget. Central to the Danish tradition is active and voluntary participation in common activities that aim at ‘making important subjects topics of conversation among ordinary human beings’ (Jensen, 1991: 7). Learning is ‘for life’ and for democratic citizenship, and, more importantly, the form and content of adult education are to be developed by participants and educators, not the state or the market. This tradition stands in stark contrast to current adult education policy, with its focus on individuals’ qualification for the labour market.

Three functions of adult education: qualification, socialisation and subjectification

The concepts developed by Biesta (2010) to debate the function of education systems provide us with a framework for understanding the direction that adult education has taken within public policy. Biesta distinguishes between three functions of education: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. By qualification, he refers to the relationship between the division of labour in a society and the education system's role of training people to enter the labour market with relevant skills. In the case of adult education, this involves upskilling and reskilling individuals throughout their working lives.