The name is absent

Figure 6: Lydia

Lydia speaks at some length on the positive impact her learning has had on her ability
to organise and motivate her corps of dance teachers. The interesting issue here, as we
consider the links between different outcomes, is the way this has spilled over into her
personal and family life. Specifically, it has taught her the value of compromise and
tolerance. She adds more detail on how what she has learnt has enhanced her
parenting skills, both in day-to-day communication with her children and husband and
in solving particular problems, for example in relation to the children’s education. Yet
the learning has not been without its risks. Lydia refers to one module on the course as
having been particularly likely to cause “brain damage”. She found the demands of
the course exacting, as she was trying to combine the roles of student and professional
course director at the same time, with her family life in addition. If we apply the
human capital approach in its dry sense to the distinctly undesiccated field of dancing,
Lydia invested heavily in her own training and development and that investment
might well have been lost or even had negative returns, in terms of professional
career, personal confidence and even family life. Education can be a risk,
psychologically as well as economically, and Lydia describes how aware she became
of the risks that she was taking, personally as well as professionally.

Unlike Juliet and Kali, Lydia reports no involvement in organised forms of civic
engagement. On some conventional measures of social capital she does not register.
Yet her case illustrates the way in which personal development of a holistic kind runs

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