UC archives shedding light on 'The People's University'
07 February 2011
Journalist and historian Ian Dougherty has been working his way through "several hundred boxes" of Macmillan Brown Library archival material researching the social history of one of this country's most influential providers of adult education.
Journalist and historian Ian Dougherty
Journalist and historian Ian Dougherty has been working his way through "several hundred boxes" of Macmillan Brown Library archival material researching the social history of one of this country's most influential providers of adult education.
The Dunedin-based writer and recipient of the 2011 Canterbury History Foundation Canterbury Community Historian award (pictured right) has been commissioned to write the centennial history of the Canterbury Workers' Educational Association (WEA), ahead of the organisation's centenary in 2015.
His book, with the working title "The People's University", will be the first comprehensive history of any regional adult education organisation in New Zealand.
Mr Dougherty, who spent a couple of months in Christchurch last year doing initial research for the book, has returned to the Macmillan Brown Library this summer to delve deeper into the library's extensive WEA archives, which include minute books, annual reports, prospectuses and correspondence, both formal and informal.
The author of 20 books, mostly on New Zealand history and culture, says he is enjoying the project and his short "residency" within the University's History Programme. He plans to get the bulk of his manuscript written this year and will then "freshen it up" closer to publication on the anniversary.
"It is nice to have the time to do a decent job of an important subject - 100 years of adult education in Canterbury by arguably the most important and prominent provider of adult education of the last 100 years," he says.
The Canterbury Workers' Educational Association began in Christchurch in 1915, with the aim of providing university level education to working men and women with an approach based on dialogue rather than achievement of qualifications.
The University of Canterbury's history is closely entwined with that of the Canterbury WEA with a large number of the association's early organisers, committee members and tutors hailing from the then Canterbury College - including such prominent figures as Professors James Hight, James Shelley and John Condliffe.
From 1915 to the mid 1970s the WEA and Canterbury University were very much "partners in education" with the funding system coming through the University, but even with the end of the formal arrangement many individuals on staff have continued the close relationship. Mr Dougherty says the WEA was an "extraordinarily pervasive organisation".
"In the 1920s and 1930s there was hardly a suburb in Christchurch or town in Canterbury, including the West Coast province, that didn't have some presence such as a tutorial class or study circle.
"The WEA was a huge contributor not only to Christchurch but to Canterbury in providing that access to education for many people who may have left school at the age of 12, 13 or 14".
Mr Dougherty's account will include the founding of the association's travelling library in the 1930s, which was later the inspiration for the New Zealand Country Library Service - a fact he says further elevated the organisation's history to being of national significance.
Mr Dougherty has an MA in history from the University of Otago and a Diploma in Journalism from the University of Canterbury. His considerable record of publications on people, places, institutions and sport includes four polytechnic histories.
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