Start funding. He was also on the executive board of an Education Action Zone and
did voluntary work for a youth centre, which is run by local people and has had
national recognition for its work. He used to work for the Labour Party and for one of
the councillors.
Digby’s various life contexts have been hugely influential in shaping his political
values from his period in the NUM onwards. His early school experience in the North
East was not very positive and he describes bullying and “sadistic” treatment from
some of the teachers. He says he enjoyed it nevertheless and was inspired by one
particular teacher, but he didn’t learn much except how to “fight and smoke”. He left
without any qualifications. Schooling made little contribution to his community
commitment he says, except negatively, in that in retrospect it made him want to do
something to improve schools for his children. On the other hand, adult education
courses with the NUM, including residentials, were a revelation to him, and helped
him go on to get a diploma in politics and economics from Nottingham University.
These courses were not the source of his values, and in fact arose out of his existing
political commitments, but they helped him to shape and articulate his views and gave
him the skills for his later work in the community.
What is striking about Digby is his enormous commitment to the community, which is
the source of his values and the object of his civic work. It was his community (the
pit, the NUM, and the village are inseparable in his account) that gave him the
opportunity to take the courses that transformed his life. What motivates his civic
activity is the desire to give others in his community the learning opportunities that
his community gave him:
“ I’ve got a chance to educate myself and I think I’m trying to give other people
exactly the same chance. ”
Digby’s story is significant because he describes very clearly the ways in which his
adult learning experiences provided him with the tools and opportunities to extend his
community involvements. His adult learning experiences gave him a new knowledge
base and conceptual framework for articulating his beliefs. It provided him with the
skills, qualifications and networks that would allow him to restart his career in a field
that gave expression to his civic-minded values. It also gave him the benchmarks for
his aspirations of achieving better education for his community and thus the
motivation for his community activism.
What is equally significant here, though, is the converse. The ‘community’ provided
him with his initial values and with opportunities to learn the things that he later
employed as a community activist. His learning arose out of his community
involvement and was consistent with it, and the compatibility of the two is clearly a
central aspect of the story of successful adult learning that he tells. It is interesting to
speculate whether Digby would have engaged in learning in the same way, and
whether his learning would have had similar effects, had there not been the NUM
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