Access to successful basic adult education is a concern in many countries the world over. In this innovative study, sixteen researchers from ten different countries of the Western and Arab worlds look at adult education, and discuss how an ecological approach to education, focussing on the cultural traditions and natural environments of communities, can be more useful than education in specialized institutions. Education, they argue, is dependent on the transmission of knowledge and know-how within an environment appropriate to the students.

This interdisciplinary work is a follow-up to preceding works of research on literacy, published in the ALPHA series in Quebec and at UNESCO over the past twenty years. In their humanist, ecological vision of the world, the contributors aim to provide alternatives to neo-capitalist thinking, and improve lives and justice for all people on earth.

Jean-Paul Hautecoeur is an independent consultant from Montreal. He previously worked for ten years for the UNESCO Institute for Education in Germany.

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