Running, just to keep up...

Paul ready for the half marathon start in Puerto del Carmen

I'm just back from a few days in Lanzarote: a welcome dose of winter sun amidst the December dankness, although my main reason for being there was to take part in the Lanzarote Half Marathon along with several other members of our local running club.

With my current level of (un)fitness I certainly wasn't aiming for a PB, although the atmosphere and experience of running in warm weather during December was a welcome lift (as was catching up with a couple of colleagues from the Forward Thinking project who happened to be staying in Costa Teguise at the same time!😀).

The previous couple of weeks had been pretty frenetic for me, with conferences/events in Paisley, Dublin, Belfast and London, as well as plethora of adult education and ESOL-related policy announcements and developments to absorb and respond to, although I must admit drafting a statement for NATECLA to condemn the picketing of ESOL classes by racist mobs wasn't on my bingo list for 2025!🙄

One perk of attending the AONTAS Adult Education Summit was the view!

The increasingly ugly and dehumanising rhetoric from the British government about migrants and migration has left me feeling pretty despondent. I'm finding the constant discourse about 'numbers', 'stop the boats', 'earn the right to stay' (after being kept in limbo for decades), and it's more than disappointing to see similar language increasingly being adopted by Irish government ministers.

I worry about how few mainstream politicians really seem prepared to face down the far-right, nor articulate how and why we all benefit from a society that is more diverse, multicultural and multilingual.

Another recent privilege was attending the Learning & Work Institute's Essential Skills for Opportunity and Growth roundtable

The case for adult education as a bulwark against misinformation and prejudice is also one that appears increasingly difficult to advance: for one thing, it doesn't sit well with neoliberal emphases on 'skills', labour market activation and human capital; there's also been a broader deprioritising and defunding of adult learning over the past two decades, to varying degrees throughout these islands.

In fairness, there are differences: the Welsh Government's commitment to becoming a Nation of Sanctuary remains at least nominally intact; Ireland (26 counties) still has government ministers prepared to talk up the wider social benefits of adults' learning; Scotland's Cabinet Secretary for Education has been emphatic in her condemnation of racists targeting ESOL classes. Yet I fear it is not enough amidst a tide of an emboldened far-right and centrist politicians who seem to think the only way they can save their own skins is by co-opting the same policies and talking points.

It's incumbent on all of us who believe in emancipatory and democratic education that's grounded in social practice to speak up, to keep running up that down escalator. It's exhausting, draining, demoralising. But we're not alone, and we do need to keep going!